Perhaps in atonement for its recent rather puerile 'Britain's Most
Exciting Museum', 'competition' today's Guardian carries a full page
report on the opening of a £16m museum and gallery devoted to the
unique 'Ashington Group', better known perhaps as the 'Pitmen
Painters'. Anyone familiar with the work of this remarkable group of
Northumberland colliers will surely be pleased to learn that their
work has now, at long last, found a permanent home.
For anyone who is even remotely interested in mining art and in
particular art created by 'untutored' working-class artists and
their development during the 1930s under the tutelage of committed
lecturers from the WEA can do no better than read the remarkable
book, 'Shafts of Light Mining Art in the Great Northern Coalfield',
McManners, R. & Wales, G., Gemini Productions. 2002, for a deep
insight into the history of art in mining and of the work of these
men together with superb reproductions of some of their work. For
this writer the book is on a par with Klingender's famous 'Art And
the Industrial Revolution'.
Pete Challis
|