5 days ago
The gloriously impure world of Edward Burra
Every few years the shade of Edward Burra is treated to a Major Retrospective. The pattern is long established: Edward who? Forgotten genius, sui generis, well known for being unknown save by beardy centenarians and art tarts with ginny voices. Why have I never heard of this man? LGBT-ish avant la lettre, Polari-ish. After the show inhumation beckons again and he will disappear into an obscurity that cannot be relieved until the curatocracy once more lets loose the dogs of hype. George Melly and Dan Farson are no longer around to peal his name and Jane Stevenson's impeccable and often funny biography suffers from its subject's being a forgotten genius, sui generis, unknown save… etc.
In later years Burra was the very picture of a different neglect: physical. He gave a fine impression of being an embittered down-and-out: a seamy, slight invalid, reedy-voiced, equipped with a tramp flask, 40 Gauloises and a lag's hairdo. A perfect role for David Bradley. Although he was no Joë Bousquet – 'Ma blessure existait avant moi: je suis né pour l'incarner' ('My wound existed before me: I was born to embody it') – he was nonetheless a super-valetudinarian. He suffered an enlarged spleen, jaundice, anaemia, rheumatic fever, chilblains, crippling arthritis, more or less permanent pain, depression. His background was provincial upper-middle-class. His animosity towards Rye's tweeness fuelled him – and he knew it, he spent most of his life there. He was supported by his devoted family of local grandees. These circumstances might have been conferred on him so that he could devote his surprisingly long life to his art.
He was no joiner, he loitered uncommitted, fag between his lips, on the fringes of the British Surrealist Group.
