Jonathan Evens talks to Richard Nathanson about the significance of the clown in the life and work of Albert Houthuesen.
Houthuesen said that human beings "stand in mystery" and that through the poetry of the Bible - which he described as "an amazingly imaginative idea of the world, based on truth" - we are trying to express about our life "what is so terribly difficult to understand." In speaking about Houthuesen’s sense of the mystery of life, Nathanson emphasized how wonderfully down-to-earth Houthuesen was; that every aspect of his work is a direct manifestation of his own experience and observation of people and the world.
“’We walk in mystery,’ is a simple statement of wonder – that the beauty which surrounds us cannot be explained. He saw a universal meaning and connection in everything. This is mirrored in his paintings of fruit wrapped in tissue paper. Their mood and movement echoes seascapes with the surf crashing over the rocks, ‘eating the world away’. There is a tremendous sense of completeness in his work – evidence of his determination to do utmost justice to his subject – no matter how slight the work or fleeting the moment depicted; to do it ‘as well as I can’.
His religion lay in his veneration of life - the beauty and mystery of nature and human beings – and in his desire to pay homage, as humbly and nobly as he was able, to the act of creation. He sought always to share his joy and understanding and his ‘little gift’ with others.
Houthuesen venerated Christ but only once or twice directly alluded to the haunting, terrible image of the Crucifixion. In his tragic, magnificent still-life Crown of Thorns, in Tate Britain, it is brutally present. Perhaps the violent nature of his father’s terrible death made it impossible for him to paint this subject; although it was one he could all too vividly imagine. For Houthuesen, Christ was ever-present and an absolutely real individual with this incredible imaginative ability to communicate, very simply, the deepest universal truths. Christ, for him, exemplified the way humans beings should think and behave. This focus is a very effective way of getting people to think again about Christ. All Christ did was to speak tremendous sense and we should focus on what he did and said.
Houthuesen said that for many artists it was 'out' to be interested in things like the Bible. He spoke about "people who are groaning and dying of thirst" who "simply won't turn to the jar of water that is to hand", meaning the teachings of Christ. Although Houthuesen never thought in these terms, it may be that the equation of spirituality with clowning which we find in the work of Houthuesen, Collins, Chagall and Rouault is a reflection of the fragility of belief in an era of aggressive secularism. As Collins argued, the Fool or Clown is easily destroyed by the world.
Collins once painted an angel comforting a Fool who has been broken by the world. Houthuesen found his angel in Catherine, who, “unlike his mother, recognised and encouraged Albert’s talent”[i] . She supported them both, through the long years when Houthuesen’s work went unrecognised, by teaching Art at St Gabriel's College, a Church of England teacher’s training college.
Houthuesen said “a person’s development is a very long and mysterious process”: “Very, very gradually, through wisdom and experience, you become freer. You can’t pinpoint a particular stage of development. You weep more, you laugh more, you are older and somehow you have changed. The world is such an incredible place. And for an enquiring mind it is so mysterious and wonderful that there is no time to be bored. It enthrals me from the moment I awake. When one says one hopes to make one’s work more cosmic, it sounds arrogant; but it’s only what painters are trying to do all the time. They are all conscious of these intense infinities in Nature, in everything, everywhere.”Or as Collins would have phrased it, the vision of the Fool has been recovered and the Artist-Clown sees “love and its manifestation in that harmony and wholeness which we call beauty.”
[i] Walk To The Moon, BBC Omnibus Production, 1976
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Jim White - If Jesus Drove A Motor Home.
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