Articles by Katarzyna

Peter How­son (b. Lon­don 1958) is one of these painters who are “writ­ing” their art with their life; or — in other words — they con­tin­u­ously pro­voke chal­lenges and arrange “scenog­ra­phy” in order to give their work a rea­son for exis­tence. In that sense How­son occu­pies the oppo­site side to, for exam­ple, Henry Matisse or Joan Miro who lived com­par­a­tively ordi­nary lives of fam­ily men and their paint­ings seemed to emerge, first of all, from their intense inner life. Peter would be one of these artists, with whom Mar­cel Duchamp was likely to be fas­ci­nated. Artists with an amaz­ing per­sonal story and con­tro­ver­sial work. I found myself being fas­ci­nated by that story both as a human­ist and a per­son study­ing art.

Peter How­son met with vio­lence and humil­i­a­tion at a young age being bul­lied by his class­mates. He was small, quiet and “dif­fer­ent”, he wouldn’t play foot­ball dur­ing brakes sim­ply because he pre­ferred to stay inside and draw. Lately, he names his sick­ness of the soul as the Asperger’s Syn­drome. The psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of that early lone­li­ness and bru­tal­ity were to be long-lasting. At 17 he got into Glas­gow School of Art (Peter’s fam­ily moved to Scot­land when he was four and he’s rec­og­nized as a “Scot­tish” artist) but he found him­self fight­ing with bad, non-understanding teaching.

Dis­il­lu­sioned, he quits school after a year and enrolls in the British Army. It’s quite an unusual move for a sen­si­tive, intro­verted boy with the his­tory of bul­ly­ing. He stands mil­i­tary life for nine months and appre­ci­ates the period as being one of the most for­ma­tive in his entire life. Per­son­ally, I admire that choice made just in the right time and prob­a­bly with the instinct that in order to learn how to swim one has to throw him­self into deep water. Peter How­son had con­fronted his fears and per­haps bad mem­o­ries and he did this strug­gling through the hard, an extreme way. That “extreme” trait will develop to be the painter’s alter ego — How­son as we know him now.

Hav­ing fin­ished the art school (thanks to an encour­ag­ing teacher — Sandy Mof­fat) Peter starts yet another fight, this time last­ing through­out his mature life of an artist and man. It’s a bat­tle of wills between Peter How­son — a vic­tim of his own psy­che and Peter How­son — a man of action and adven­ture, a tal­ented painter with a great insight in the human soul.

In his early 20s the painter faces his fas­ci­na­tion with the gym and heroes in A. Schwarzenegger’s type. Soon he admits that because he took things to a ridicu­lous extreme he had became so muscle-bound that he hated the way he looked. Also, his first paint­ing series would be an acute, although slightly car­i­ca­tured depic­tion of body builders, hard men and hooli­gans. At the same time the artist speaks out how much he actu­ally detests the world he depicts: I hate vio­lence. And I believe that every­one, no mat­ter how gen­tle they think they are, has the capac­ity for it within them…

Through mid-1980s his pro­file rose steadily and within rel­a­tively short period of time How­son found him­self being col­lected by Madonna, David Bowie, Bob Geldof and being rejected by the respectable muse­ums at the same time. Ini­tially thrilled by the fame he soon real­izes a trap he and his admir­ers have set up — a trap of gen­er­at­ing works in a one, rec­og­nized style and in a one pop­u­lar the­matic cir­cle (just think about dozens of other artists who would never try to escape from such a com­fort­able trap). He knew he had to make him­self different.

That’s how he threw him­self into another very deep water — he became an offi­cial painter of the war in the for­mer Yugoslavia, so-called Bosn­ian War (1992–1995). That was cer­tainly the most extreme chal­lenge of the “extreme painter”. First time he went unpre­pared and came back seri­ously sick, the home press labelled him “a cow­ard”. He had returned and demanded an army uni­form and to be treated like a sol­dier. That expe­ri­ence was about to make him a dif­fer­ent man. The war is one of the most bar­baric in the his­tory — a civil butch­ery based on eth­nic grounds with mass frat­ri­ci­dal killings and rapes, tor­tures and muti­la­tions. How­son called it a war of vio­lence and humil­i­a­tion becom­ing him­self a kind of a poignantly expe­ri­enced expert in both. What exactly the painter wit­nessed remains his mys­tery (he rejected the pres­ence of jour­nal­ists at his sec­ond visit) but he admits that he had never been closer to sui­cide and — para­dox­i­cally — never felt more alive.

A series of Howson’s Bosn­ian huge-scaled can­vases caused a big debate in Great Britain and beyond with the major media — The Times, BBC being involved. And it started even before they had their pre­mière at the Peter How­son: Bosnia exhi­bi­tion in the Impe­r­ial War Museum (Lon­don) in 1994. Some of the paint­ings appeared “too explicit” for a pub­lic view (espe­cially the pow­er­ful Croa­t­ian and Mus­lim depict­ing a bru­tal rape), some were ques­tioned on a basis of their his­tor­i­cal value as the painter admit­ted not to wit­ness him­self some of the scenes (but “just” using his imagination).

The paint­ings belong to the most pow­er­ful images of the con­tem­po­rary fig­u­ra­tive art. They depict women being raped, cas­trated men, hanged ani­mals, ragged refugees and above all — anony­mous faces, for­mi­da­ble, unfor­get­table phys­iog­nomies of those who went through hell. These works have the drama, fan­tasy, emo­tional inten­sity and vision­ary qual­ity of W. Blake’s and H. Bosch’s paint­ings. They were born from sin­cer­ity and an authen­tic spir­i­tual pain, from pas­sion and courage, from a sin­ful fas­ci­na­tion by the evil side of the human nature and a heroic strug­gle against it. It has to be said that the con­tem­po­rary art seems to be noth­ing like that…

Recently, Peter How­son makes head­lines over abus­ing drugs and alco­hol. He turned towards reli­gious themes.

In Phaidon’s 20^th Cen­tury Art Book his name appears among 499 the most impor­tant artists of the past century.

Here is Howson’s offi­cial web page:Peter How­son

For fur­ther read­ing I do rec­om­mend books:

- Jack­son, A. A Dif­fer­ent Man, 1997

- Heller, R. Peter How­son, 1993

P.S.

Dear Read­ers,

With David’s per­mis­sion I would like to invite you on my own page I’ve been devel­op­ing through­out the last week — Terra Incog­nita

We agreed on cross-posting (I will pub­lish some of my texts/images on both blogs and David — feel free to post on my site), but I would like also to con­tribute some pieces designed just for this site.

All The Strange Hours will remain a ter­rain of my debut, so it will always be a lit­tle bit spe­cial for me.