Michael Prodger at the New Statesman:
Burra’s hard-to-categorise career is the subject of an immaculate and revealing new exhibition at Tate Britain. It shows a man whose art reflected a rare sense of engagement with his times, especially its queer fringes. The works of the 1920s and 1930s treat his experiences in France and New York and verge on both satire and caricature. Burra used watercolour almost as oil paint and built up layers to give unusual depth of colour and subtle gradations.
It was a technique he employed in teeming images: tight-suited sailors at a bar (“Everyone was sailor mad,” said Ashton), burlesque reviews on stage and riotous Harlem ballrooms. Burra moved in a gay milieu and in such places he found a liberating sense of sexual freedom and cross-class slumming. The pictures are peopled with “types”, from heavy-on-the-make-up women and lascivious and sinister men to simple beefcakes and beauties. Some are white-eyed, as if the headiness of the bars and clubs were acting as a narcotic. It is as if Bruegel or Jan Steen had wandered from the Low Countries into seedier and more cacophonous climes.
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.