Artistic interlude

In place of the normal 5 points of Friday Five, we have a painting to reflect on relationally.

I am trying to be an honest blogger, so I'm not going to copy an image I don't have a licence for!  Instead, I'll ask you to click on this link to see the painting “Coming from the Mill” on the site of its owner, the Lowry Museum:
http://www.thelowry.com/gifts-and-souvenirs/coming-from-the-mill-1930/print-coming-from-the-mill-1930 

L.S. Lowry is famous for his unique style of painting “matchstick men” against urban industrial scenes in Northern England. Lowry was a solitary figure, a keen observer of the lives of the industrial working class during the first half of the 20^th century.  He painted around his other commitments – working as a rent collector, and caring for his bedridden mother for many years.  He never married.

Lowry’s paintings and drawings depict an austere beauty in the mills and factories, the achievements of scientific, technological, industrial Man.  But what of the impact of urban industrialisation on people’s lives and relationships?

The figures are atomised, drawn individually, many not touching another.  And where walking, the people are bent forward, faces downcast, scurrying home as if before a thunderstorm. 

Sadness, loneliness and isolation dogged Lowry’s life, and he saw the same things mirrored in the industrial workers of Salford and Manchester.  The matchstick people are frail and insignificant, having become slaves of the great, monolithic factories and mills they invented.

Such images may look quaint and historical to 21^st century European eyes, but this scenario is highly contemporary in China, India and other countries going through rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.  In 2010 people are still becoming matchstick men and women, as they migrate into the cities from their village way of life, often becoming isolated from their families, roots and relational support structures.

Lowry’s painting causes us to reflect on the relational cost of capitalism, which disregards the fragmentation of families and communities caused by large scale production and so easily reduces the strength, uniqueness and creativity of people’s labour to a cost line on a budget.