Cruising Down to Clapham
Studio Voltaire, London
Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland
15th May – 25th August, 2024
I never go to Clapham. A friend once described Fulham as the ‘missionary position’ of London, and despite the Common’s history as a cruising spot, in general, Clapham has always seemed to me like the city’s home of ‘lie back and think of England’. So it’s even funnier to me that this is the first post I’ll have to give a light NSFW warning on, as SHOCK HORROR there are a couple of cartoon cocks and bums in the pics below. But yes, truly, this show at Studio Voltaire makes it worth heading down to Clapham.
Despite a few whips and chains, it’s really about two artists who deal with pleasure rather than pain, and a total rejection of shame. It’s also about class, the different costumes we wear, and people enjoying their lives and not giving a damn what anyone else thinks about it.
Pulled together by Studio Voltaire director Joe Scotland, who put out a public call last year for people to lend their Beryl Cook works for the show, it sets out a vision where ‘larger than life’ is an ideal rather than a cliché. And I don’t think it devalues anything to describe it as ‘kitsch’, especially when all the work plays so knowingly with its own self-awareness.
But to the artists, and so: ladies first. Probably one of the most popular British painters of the late 20th century, Beryl Cook (1926–2008) was effectively ignored by the gallery and museum landscape for most of her career, and has since faded into a sort of comfortable obscurity – the world of calendars you find in old cupboards and quirky dentists’ office prints.
A pal I bumped into at the opening didn’t know Cook’s work, but said it reminded him of a mix of Colombian painter Fernando Botero and English photographer Martin Parr. And I think that’s a perfectly fair assessment. But both those artists are men, and there’s something unconditionally and unapologetically feminine about Cook’s eye into the worlds of women, as well as the men in and around their orbits.
She never trained as an artist, and only started painting in her thirties. She spent most of her life running a guest house in Plymouth, wandering around the Devon port city with her photographic memory, and then painting the things she had seen when she was back at home. You can get a little taste of what a laugh she was here in this short clip.
There are loads of highlights. In ‘Personal Services’, Cook paints Cynthia Payne or ‘Madam Cyn’, proprietress of a South London brothel where (allegedly) high-flying members of society would pay in ‘luncheon vouchers’ to be dressed up in lingerie and whipped. Elsewhere it’s a big girls’ night out of women who don’t care what you think, enjoying pints, games of pool, strippers, hair appointments, or just munching away on a sandwich in a cafe.
You might also not have heard of Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920–1991), but you’re far more likely to know his work as Tom of Finland. There’s a similar sense of unashamed joy in the face of society’s judgement in his work, but with a more openly radical edge. His kinky, winky drawings set the foundation for every leather clad lad who ever followed: Jean Paul Gaultier and Freddie Mercury upwards and onwards.
The show explores some of the tamer, but still incredibly erotically charged cowboy and biker culture imagery published in so-called ‘beefcake’ magazines like Physique Pictorial in the post-WWII years. Then it moves into the more overtly pornographic work which Laaksonen was able to print as it became legal from the late 60s and 70s onwards.
And there are all the aforementioned cocks and bums galore. The juxtapositions with Cook’s paintings and prints are well handled, and while the exhibition is not as massive as some as the members on display, I imagine Beryl would have probably said – with a smirk – that it’s perfectly ample.
There’s also excellent merch, as per usual from Studio Voltaire. I think it’s good to have tasteful, (loosely) affordable bits to bring home with you, but really the main thing to take away is that this is a great thing to see this summer, whether it leaves you hot under the collar or not.
