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One of the most extraordinary contemporary artists living today, Sargy Mann returns for another awe-inspiring solo exhibition. Since completely losing his sight in 2005, Mann has continued to paint, constantly exploring new ways of seeing.
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C A D O G A N C O N T E M P O R A R Y
87 Old Brompton Road
London SW7 3LD
Tel : +44 (0) 207 581 5451
20th May - 14th June 2013
The Little sitting room
Sargy Mann in conversation with Peter Mann
What I need to paint a picture is a real, physical subject external to myself. I have
never been comfortable with the idea that I
could just imagine everything. I suppose what
I feel is that if I only used my imagination then
I would be in danger of simply repeating my-
self. The thing about external reality is that it is
always making demands on you, telling you
things you don’t know and giving you
problems you don’t know how to solve. It’s the excitement of discovering what reality, what
the truth, is like, that drives me as a perceptual
painter.
*
One day I was standing at the top of the stairs
with my back to what had become known to us
as ‘The little sitting room’ and I suddenly
realized that there was something about the
scale of the space I was in, the handrail and the
stairs going down which was actually very like
the terrace at Ma Roulotte in the Bonnard
paintings. I had been to Ma Roulotte and had
spent hours looking at those paintings and I
thought, well, I could imagine it was like that.
Instead of the stairs going down into the
kitchen with a wall at the end I could simply
imagine that the wall wasn’t there. This space,
which I had painted many times over the years,
could become a new subject, with a landscape
at the bottom of the stairs, possibly with a little
river running through it.
I didn’t in fact make that painting but the
moment was a very important one. It was a liberation to realize that I could make paintings
about a very real space, with real figures, and a
geometry, which I could feel, measure and try
to understand, and then I could extend that to have a space beyond the figures, which was
imaginary.
The particular space of the little sitting room
was also very important. Why it really came
into its own was its size. The way I paint now
is by arranging figures and objects in a space
that at least in principle I can touch, and then
that reality is my subject and I feel answerable
to it. I realized that within this small space I
could have standing figures, sitting figures and
lying figures all within touching distance,
either with my hands or sticks. And this
excited me.
*
The problem was what to have beyond what I
could touch. Whatever I invented had to
integrate with the foreground space so that
there was a believable light and space in the
painting.
Landscape is now literally out of reach to me
and although I knew I could imagine a
landscape I didn’t believe in my imagination
enough to feel answerable to it in the way I
knew I needed to in order to make a painting.
This problem in fact turned out to be a great
opportunity.
Somehow the one landscape that I can completely imagine and feel utterly true to is
water. I have never been a great fan of water as
a physical reality in my life, I never sailed and
I don’t like swimming much. But I love the
visual qualities of water. I love reflections and
I love the fact that water can look blue and
therefore can bring large areas of blue into a
painting. For a long time now I have wanted to
use the full range of tone from white to black
and a full range of colour intensity, I want to
have a lot of saturated colours. But more than
either of those things what I want is to paint a
believable light and space. The challenge of
making a believable light and space with very
saturated colour is something that has been one
of the main driving forces for me in all of my
painting life.
*
So the little sitting room had become a sort of
bathing hut by the sea. When I have Frances
posing for me then I am almost exclusively
concerned with drawing, understanding the form
and the way it occupies the space and refers to
other figures in that space. Of course sometimes I
am also thinking about the light I have imagined
and how that light is falling on the figure. And
then there are times when I just stand in that room
and try to imagine the space I have imagined in
the painting - that I am standing in a little bathing
hut with the sea out there, a bit of landscape
through the window, the sun behind me casting
my shadow across the floor in front of me.
What’s going on in my imagination is different at
different times. I would like to be able to imagine
the whole subject at all times and only take
decisions about parts from that total experience,
but I can't do that, its too difficult.
*
In the past I was always scared of painting
figures, I always felt more relaxed in a landscape
than in the company of people but through
blindness the presence of people and the
immediacy of them is so essential to my existence
that I have had to embrace them more.
*
I think that the problems of making pictures now
that I am blind, both in terms of the sheer
physical problems of negotiating the canvas and
mixing colour and the imaginative problems to do
with finding a subject and understanding it, have
made demands on more of my nature and the
whole of who I am than was the case before. I
think it could be that in a strange way there is
more of me in my paintings now than there was
when I could see.
Infinity Pool III Oil on canvas, 78” x 96”
Three Bathers Oil on canvas, 60” x 72”
Frances x 3 Oil on canvas, 72” x 60”
Four Bathers Oil on canvas, 60” x 72”
See the girl with the red dress on Oil on canvas, 60” x 44”
Bathers on the stairs Oil on canvas, 60” x 44”
Old Compton Street Oil on canvas, 46” x 38”
Yellow Chair, White Book Oil on canvas, 46” x 38”
Frances Remembered Oil on canvas, 40” x 32”
Frances Remembered II Oil on canvas, 40” x 32”
Remembrance Oil on canvas, 20” x 25”
Self-Portrait Oil on canvas, 20” x 24”
Sargy Mann
Born in Hythe, Kent 1937
Dartington School, 1943- 53
Oxford Technical College, 1953- 58
Camberwell School of Art and Crafts 1960- 64
Postgraduate, Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts 1967
1969-88 Teaching, Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts 1969-88 Teaching, Camden Arts Centre
1994 Co-Curator for ‘Bonnard at le Bosquet’ at the Hayward Gallery, London and Laing Gallery, Newcastle
1996-7 Lecturer at Verocchio Art Centre, Italy 1999-08 Visiting Lecturer at the Prince’s Drawing School
2007 ‘In Touch with Art’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Selected Exhibitions
2012 Lynn Painter-Stainer Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London 2010 ‘New Paintings’, Cadogan Contemporary, London 2009 ‘Gouaches’, Cadogan Contemporary, London 2008 ‘Frances’, Cadogan Contemporary, London
2008 Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize shortlist, Mall galleries, London 2006 ‘Cadaques’, Cadogan Contemporary, London 2005 Cadogan Contemporary, London 2003 Cadogan Contemporary, London 2001 Solo Exhibition, Cadogan Contemporary 2000 Hunting Art Prizes Exhibition, Royal College of Art, London 1999 Cadogan Contemporary, London 1998 ‘Small Paintings 1967-1984’, Cadogan Contemporary, London
1996 Cadogan Contemporary, London 1995 Ernst and Young Exhibition 1995 Royal Academy Summer Show, London 1995 The First Aldeburgh 100 Exhibition 1995 Hunting Art Prizes Exhibition Royal College of Art, London 1994 ‘Earlier Paintings 1967-1984’, Cadogan Contemporary, London 1993 Chappell Gallery, Mixed Exhibition, Colchester
1993 Cadogan Contemporary, London 1992 Discerning Eye, Collector’s Choice, Mall Galleries 1991 The Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich, ‘Sargy Mann/Graham Giles’
1991 Cadogan Contemporary, London 1990 Works on Paper, Cadogan Contemporary, London 1190 Royal Academy Summer Show, London 1990 Aldeburgh Festival 1990 ‘Spaces’ 1989 Director’s Choice at New Academy Gallery/Business Art Galleries 1989 Ken Howard's Choice at the Arts Club, London 1989 Cadogan Contemporary, London 1987 Royal Academy Summer Show, London (Daler Rowney Prize, 1988) 1987 Arts Council Touring Exhibition, ‘The Experience of Landscape’ 1987 Cadogan contemporary, London 1983-85 Upper Gallery, Royal Academy, London 1983 6th international Drawing Biennale (2nd Prize) 1983 Hayward Annual
Sargy Mann
Born in Hythe, Kent 1937
Dartington School, 1943- 53
Oxford Technical College, 1953- 58
Camberwell School of Art and Crafts 1960- 64
Postgraduate, Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts 1967
Public and Corporate Collections
Contemporary Art Society
Arts Council of Great Britain
Cleveland County Council
Salomon Brothers Int. Ltd
Cable & Wireless
Private Collections
The late Sir John Betjeman
The late Cecil Beaton
Dame Iris Murdoch
The late Sir Kingsley Amis
Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE
Daniel Day-Lewis
Jilly Cooper
Sir Robin Day
The Sultan of Oman
Mrs Kate Capshaw Spielberg
Margareta Baerentzen
Awards Director’s Choice at New Academy Gallery/Business Art Galleries
Royal Academy Summer Show, Daler Rowney Prize, London
Spirit of London, South Bank, First Prize
2nd International Drawing Biennale, Second Prize
Selected Writings
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984
‘Drawings by Bonnard’, JPL Fine Art
Catalogue of Raoul Duffy
Conceived and Selected ‘Past & Present’
Exhibition for the Arts Council for Great Britain and wrote introduction for catalogue 1987-88
‘Bonnard Drawings’, published by John Murry
Selected Press
Blind Artist—David Whitely, Diana Hare, BBC One East, 27 February 2012
Repainting Giverny—Irma Kurtz, BBC Radio 4, 27 September 2011
10,000 hours: Sargy Mann—Laura Barber, Port Magazine, Autumn edition 2011
Sargy Mann: The blind painter of Peckham—Tim Adams, The Guardian, 21 November 2010
Sargy Mann and the power of blind faith—Tim Adams, The Observer, 21 November 2010
Never losing sight of the artistic vision—Jane Wheatley, The Times, January 2007
Sargy Mann—Documentary short by Peter Mann, 2005, funded by British Documentary Film Foundation
20th May - 14th June 2013
C A D O G A N C O N T E M P O R A R Y
87 Old Brompton Road
London SW7 3LD
Tel : +44 (0) 207 581 5451
