Nicky Charlish
posted 29 August 2007

Fat ladies, saucy sailors, hen parties. Yes, we’re in the garish, giggly girly world of Beryl Cook. But a book that’s been published to coincide with her breakthrough exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead reveals that there’s more to Cook than the art establishment view of an amateur painter who got lucky and captured the public imagination.

The book’s foreword by Peter Doroshenk, director of the Baltic, has the feel of a document that is, shall we say, an example of grace under pressure. It doesn’t exactly bubble over with passionate praise. Cook is a ‘true original’, a ‘most exuberant artist’ and so the Balitic is a fitting venue at which to present her work because it’s ‘just half a mile from the bars and clubs of central Newcastle’. Enthusiasm seems to be lukewarm here. One hopes that booze in the bars of the Bigg Market has bit more kick.

A much more zealous attitude to Cook’s work is displayed in the introduction by Jess Wilder. This is to be expected: Wilder is from London’s Portal Gallery – which has been representing the artist for some 30 years – and is Cook’s gallerist. Outlining her life (born in Surrey in 1926, teenage showgirl touring with the musical The Gypsy Princess, marriage to a man in the motor trade, farming in East Anglia, landlady of a Plymouth guesthouse) Wilder shows how Cook’s career developed – via enthusiasm from a local antique dealer and an actress who stayed at Cook’s boarding house – to early coverage in the media including appearances on ITV’s South Bank Show and BBC2’s One Pair of Eyes (now sadly defunct).

Wilder tells us that art critic Edward Lucie-Smith was an early enthusiast for Cook’s work. Another fan was art critic Dan Farson, and Wilder mentions Cook and her husband socialising with him at the Colony Room (‘Murie’s’), Soho’s legendary artists’ watering hole, saying how the couple would leave before things got too riotous. You feel it’s this sense of reserve and decorum that’s helped Cook to keep a sense of level-headedness about life and ensure that she’s not sucked into a maze of publicity. But the most interesting part of Wilder’s introduction concerns Cook’s friendship with Barbara Ker-Seymer, a photographic portraitist whose career started in the 1930s and which spanned several decades. Ker-Seymer was a friend of painter Edward Burra (1905-54), which we can compare with Cook’s work.

All this top-level patronage makes us wonder why the art world’s recognition of Cook was given so grudgingly. Jerome Sans, director of programmes at the Baltic, had a interview with Cook which is published here and which contains some clues. As well as being self-taught, Cook explains that a failed attempt to paint like Stanley Spencer (an artist for whom she was enthusiastic) showed the importance of trying to use her own talent. She suspects that her work is frowned upon because it is comical, it shows people having a good time (although not anarchically so – there are no drunk or fighting peasants in her work). And she enjoys showing women having a good time in public. We can see the establishment’s case building against Cook here: self-taught, doesn’t belong to any particular school of painters (so escapes easy classification), shows ordinary people (women in particular) enjoying themselves without bacchanalian bovver, sets out no social programme. Add to this a certain sense of propriety – along with a feeling that she isn’t particularly clubbable – and we can see why the establishment has taken its time in taking her to its heart.

As three of the pictures in the book show, Cook could have gone down another road – that of concentrating upon the darker side of humanity, a sort of painterly equivalent of film noir - if she’d wanted. 'Lottie and Felix Playing' (c.1974) shows a cat straddling a dog on a tiger skin rug during a about of domestic animal disharmony, while 'To Stonehouse Ward' (2005) shows her comatose husband being wheeled by three calm and efficient nurses along a hospital corridor. 'Bed Show' (1986) shows a woman on the door of a peepshow whose face simultaneously radiates despair caused by – and the desire to escape from – the not-so-bright lights of the big city.

And what of the other pictures in the book which have been selected to introduce us to Cook’s world? What’s especially eye-catching? 'Dustbin Men' (1979) shows them getting on stolidly with their disagreeable work, although one of them seems to be amused at something he’s discovered in the bin that he holds. 'Ladies' Night (Ivor Dickie)' (1981) shows women with a male stripper. Uproarious laughter is matched by looks of disappointment, perhaps because Dickie doesn’t, well, measure up to expectation, or because of embarrassment. 'Girls in a Taxi' (1991) gives five girls dressed for a night on the town, entering a taxi whilst its bewildered driver fears for what the journey ahead will bring. 'Window Dresser' (1994) has a girl whose taste in black tops and leopard skin leggings emphasise not only her fashionista leanings, but also – unfortunately for her – her plumpness: the shop window in which she dresses mannequins the nearest her body lets her get to the catwalk. 'Party Boys' (1999) shows gay men exhibiting a collection of gay styles – disco-bunny, dray queen, clone – but who are enclosed within the confined space of a back-street provincial gay pub. They seem more exuberant – and yet more innocent – than their Soho compatriots. In 'Smoker’s Delight' (2006) a woman, cigarette in hand, leaned back as she blows smoke rings. And almost-full packet of cigarettes beside her promises further pleasures.

These pictures aren’t simply a celebration of human happiness and eccentricity. They are also a memorial, a record of ‘smart-casual’, pre-smoking-ban pub and social life where the participants were booted and suited rather than hooded and trainered. This book is a small but perfectly-formed tour of Cook’s world.