Background
Basil Beattie was born in 1935 in West Hartlepool, England, United Kingdom.
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Basil Beattie was born in 1935 in West Hartlepool, England, United Kingdom.
Beattie attended the West Hartlepool College of Art from 1950 until 1955. He continued his education at the Royal Academy schools from 1957 until 1961.
Basil began a long teaching career: during the 1980s and 1990s, Beattie taught at Goldsmiths College in London. He retired from the role in 1998, spending a further year as an assessor at the Chelsea School of Art. An exhibition of paintings produced from the 1990s was held at Tate Britain in 2007.
Throughout his career his work has always been distinguished by his sensuous and physical use of paint – characteristics which he shares with the Abstraction as practiced by other English painters such as John Hoyland, Albert Irvin, and Gillian Ayres – all of whom have developed from that period of American Abstract Expressionist influence.
In the late 60s and into the 70s Beattie was preoccupied with making paintings where there was no trace of the hand. The work was like ‘nature’ not so much in appearance but in the manner by which it was made, where gravity and the consistencies of paint were fundamental in the forming of the image. These works showed an acute awareness of the work of Morris Louis and Jules Olitski.
It was in 1987, in his exhibition at the Curwen Gallery London, that Beattie’s pictographic language began to evolve. This was followed in 1991 with a drawing Installation – Drawing on the Interior, at the Eagle Gallery London, consisting of 376 drawings. The work explored the emerging imagery, such as ladders, stairways, corridors tunnels, towers, doors, and ziggurats. Many of these images became subjects for paintings. Beattie has said of these images that they were not attempts to paint literal things but were used as vehicles for conveying symbolic and metaphoric associations. The ziggurat triggered the Witness Series of paintings and a key work titled ‘Present Bound’. The image of the ziggurat in this painting is the only part of the work which is painted – the rest of the linen is left untouched.
The language of the paint defining the image suggests a narrative of vitality and life while remaining separated and isolated from the surroundings. A metaphor perhaps for a human condition.
Beattie’s current paintings have the collective title of the Janus series. Janus the Roman God, originally of light, opened the sky at daybreak and closed it at sunset. In time, he came to preside over all entrances and exits. He is often represented as having two faces, one in front and one behind, one to see into the future, and one to see into the past. In this series Beattie uses a stack of three units, sometimes four, to frame a series of horizons, often with perspectival suggestions of travel and journeys. However, any resulting illusion of space is contradicted by the raw physicality of the paint. It has been suggested the framing units resemble rearview mirrors and windscreens. Beattie recognizes and accepts these references simply because the view through the windscreen might be said to denote the future and the view in the rearview mirror, the past. Work from the Janus series was shown at the Two Rooms Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand in 2008.
He is a major figure in the Britishavant-garde of the late twentieth century and an important precursor to thedevelopment of the abstract art. In both respects he has influenced a younggeneration of British artists.
He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Painting Prize in both 1998 and 2001, in addition to the Charles Woolaston Prize in 2000.
Cause and Effect IV
1973Cause and Effect V
1973Circus
1984City
1986Door
1992Imagine If
1993Jarrow Wine
1985Loose Ends
1998Never Before
2001Orange No.1
1969Picture
1974Present Bound
1990Reds
1973The Difference Between II
2005Untitled Drawing
2000Untitled Drawing
2000Untitled Drawing
2002Untitled Drawing
2002Untitled Drawing
2002Witness V
1992
