Eric Ravilious : drawn to war

Eric Ravilious; Drawn to war by Margy Kinmouth

I don’t know art. I have a national art pass. I got it last Feb. I had grand visions of seeing everything in London within my first year of membership. 

17

The mature crowd, by any observation. One most apparent is how important Andy McDowell is in fashion. All the women with greys went grey. Not a dyed hair in the house aside from…well, mine. So knowing nothing Of Eric’s artwork, I was slightly intimidated to find myself in a sold-out screening.

While enframed with Eric’s final moments as a slight biopic, he was in an airplane crash while flying from Reykjavik. The film is an elegy more than an obituary, with a mix of remote-found footage and vox pops.

The letters and correspondence by Eric and His wife make up the bulk of the film as we have a certain gentle idyl of their lives portrayed to us.

Alan Bennet and Grayson perry do give very rounded views of the work. While his infatuations and suspected adulteries are mentioned yet breezily flown over, this feels very much an attempt to capture the best of a man and his work rather than some critical deconstruction of him with the best part of a century to filter it. And the familial strengths are shown as we see interviews with his daughter and granddaughter. The letters of the mother do offer some of the burdens. But with the choice of voices, it all seems a bit ….call the midwife, not opposed to the damage but more an emphasis of ..victoria wood would say..turning the wireless up and getting on with it. They were largely left to raise the children themselves. Having breast cancer and a child aborted immediately afterward, I would like to have heard more about his wife. I feel that would be a film of its own and more of a social commune than an artistic one.

The artwork itself. Well. This was the moment I felt engrossed. Having never heard of the man, I realized how impactful his work is as a legacy on so much I have seen since. It had a great place on a big screen, allowing the detail of the smallest cross-hatching to be bathed in, being at once highly expressionistic to my Caligari-trained brain, with a color vividity is impressionism. I am using these terms in my auto-didactical sense. Other real technical terms may apply.

His woodwork and water paintings amazed me. There was a length of detail I never could master. To do that sort of carving and have all my nails intact would have been a dream. I was kicked out of art and was a straight ‘D’ from GCSE onwards.

The role of the war artist does have a weird schoolboy adventure tone throughout, even from the narration of his letters. It’s hard to imagine this was a rounded image, but rather more the stiff upper lip at a time of great horror.

Even a petty, almost partridge-esque aspect of his character came through to lighten the tone as he bemoaned losing a commission of Paul Nash…AGAIN!

I find it hard to judge. It made me think of Raymond Briggs, of the Larkins, and it was clear this was propaganda, opposed to kitchen sink/. I was mesmerised and enthused.

To see some art. To have it brought to you., on this scale. You really should. It is a true privilege.