Not entirely convinced by Billy Childish at the ICA. Recent paintings are on show and a selection of other artifacts (he's a full-on artist-poet-musician combo) for a bit of biographical fleshing out. I'm not sure how long it had been since I had visited the ICA, and as I waited outside for it to open was reminded of a friend's description of it as essentially a civil servant's club, an arty (why not arty?) backdrop for a liquid lunch. I had also heard the ICA ethos casually described as 'militant amateurism', which suits Mr Childish too it seems.
Childish as a painter, has some obvious influences: Van Gogh, Matisse; his Fauvist, expressionistic autobiographical paintings are thick swooshing smearing attacks on unprimed linen (using a perimeter of bare linen as a framing device). There are self-portraits, the odd still-life, other works from photographic sources, poems that have a nice line in black-humoured self-laceration; they have an oomph, accompanied by an apparently accidental delicacy. The oomph comes on as a tirade on modern life (and on modern art), on his own sense of self, his need to create. Intent on this confessional careering career, the artist is presented through a lot of the work as like someone picking themselves apart, and putting the parts back together again, at least the overtly visible parts. There is spelt out in his work, something saying "There are false prophets, but I am real, I am true, whose side are you on?". Not entirely convincing, but pathological?
One of my favourite lines from NYPD Blue describes Andy Sipowicz's struggle to cope with daily life: "It's like he's a watchmaker, takes himself apart and puts himself back together every day". Billy Childish has the disadvantage of being (at least partly) non-fictional but I think it's fair to say that even with a commitment to an admirably amateurist aesthetic (that does have space for self-deprecation) he is packing a lot more ego and pretension than Sipowicz.
Childish as a painter, has some obvious influences: Van Gogh, Matisse; his Fauvist, expressionistic autobiographical paintings are thick swooshing smearing attacks on unprimed linen (using a perimeter of bare linen as a framing device). There are self-portraits, the odd still-life, other works from photographic sources, poems that have a nice line in black-humoured self-laceration; they have an oomph, accompanied by an apparently accidental delicacy. The oomph comes on as a tirade on modern life (and on modern art), on his own sense of self, his need to create. Intent on this confessional careering career, the artist is presented through a lot of the work as like someone picking themselves apart, and putting the parts back together again, at least the overtly visible parts. There is spelt out in his work, something saying "There are false prophets, but I am real, I am true, whose side are you on?". Not entirely convincing, but pathological?
One of my favourite lines from NYPD Blue describes Andy Sipowicz's struggle to cope with daily life: "It's like he's a watchmaker, takes himself apart and puts himself back together every day". Billy Childish has the disadvantage of being (at least partly) non-fictional but I think it's fair to say that even with a commitment to an admirably amateurist aesthetic (that does have space for self-deprecation) he is packing a lot more ego and pretension than Sipowicz.
There are interesting things here, some paintings have a lovely glooping life to them, some poems and text genuinely funny and moving, and Childish is an interesting and sincere fella no doubt, but the personality push that the whole show creates, well, I think my hard-wired cult resistance kicks in. I'm left thinking: wilful eccentric Billy barking away, dismissive of, but really just as self-celebratory as the cooler, more cynical YBAs of his generation.
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