Lowry @ The Tate

The day before my half marathon in Maidenhead I went with Becks to visit the Lowry Exhibition at Tate Britain. I'm sure I must have been dragged round the Tate as a kid, but I couldn't remember having ever visited the museum before.

The exhibition was large and spacious with six rooms filled with Lowry paintings and thankfully not too many other people. Going to university up in Manchester I've seen a few Lowry paintings before and been attracted to the quirky way he drew people, but never thought to deeply about his pictures.

It was interesting to read the information booklet we were given on the way into the exhibition and to see so many of his pictures in the one place. The booklet noted how he liked to study the flow of people. It's obviously really, but something I'd never thought of before. Instead of looking at all of his stick men individually, when you look at them as a whole, you see masses of humanity streaming out of the mill or flocking towards a football match on the weekend. Looking at his paintings as a study of society / movement put a completely different lens on them for me.

Also evident when you saw so many of his paintings together was the style that he worked in, particularly when he was painting scenes of mills / urban life. He worked in a fairly consistent palate of colours and there was grading through his paintings from a detailed foreground to a highly washed out background that was little more than the fount outline of his subject.

I'm not sure I would have paid full price for the exhibition, but it was well worth seeing using Beck's Tate membership.