In Search of Art..After Nyne Meets Dr Michael Paraskos
In 1966, the artist Stass Paraskos was arrested and tried for obscenity after by a member of the public complained about the works in his show Lovers & Romances at Leeds Institute. Now, fifty years on the show is back. The Tetley in Leeds are showing the exhibition which gives us all a time for reflection on the nature and freedom of art, its purpose and how national tastes and tolerance have changed over that time.
After Nyne's Editor Claire Meadows was thrilled to get the chance to meet with the artist's son, Dr Michael Paraskos, last week. Dr Paraskos has forged a career as one of the leading figures in contemporary. The conversation takes in the past, present and future and a reflection on two lives very much devoted to art
Michael, your father’s journey was an incredible one. From son of a peasant farmer to cultural luminary. What was his driving force?
I was asking my uncle about this recently and he said that even as a child my father (Stass) was never satisfied with his life. He said Stass always wanted something more, it's just he didn't know what that 'more' was, so he kept searching for it. When Stass came to England in 1953, and was working in restaurants, he wasn't satisfied with that either. So, you are right, it's not just the incredible journey he made across Europe, from Cyprus to Britain, which was not an easy trip in those days for a penniless migrant. It's also the journey of a poor peasant boy, with very little schooling, who became an artist, almost accidentally, and eventually went on to become a university lecturer. More than that, he eventually went on to start his own art school, and managed to turn it into a magnet for some of the greatest names in modern British art, like Terry Frost and Euan Uglow and Rachel Whiteread. It's such an incredible story it sounds almost like a film script.
It’s 50 years since the Leeds Institute obscenity trial. What was your father’s reaction to the trial?
It changed over time. When he was first arrested I think he was frightened. He thought he was going to go to jail. You have to remember, his only experience of the police had been the British colonial police in Cyprus, and they could be brutal. Then, after the trial, he wrote some articles on the experience where he was clearly very angry. In one he effectively said, right if you think I am a pornographer I'll be a pornographer. After that, for many years I think he felt it almost overshadowed his career, so that he was known as the artist prosecuted in 1966, and not so much for his later work. And finally, when two of the illegal paintings were acquired by the Tate, in 2002 I think, he seemed to recognise that it was a significant event in the history of British art, and be pleased of his role in it. He certainly thought it funny that in 1966 the British state arrested him for these pictures, and nearly forty years later it wanted them for its main art gallery.
Rather like the Chatterley trial, or the trials of the Rolling Stones in the 60s this strikes me as a ‘old guard vs anything that’s new’ clash. What are your thoughts on this?
There is some truth in what you say, but it's very complicated in unexpected ways. It's worth remembering that the police in Leeds did not want to prosecute. They thought it would make them look ridiculous. It was Norman Skelhorn, the Director of Public Prosecutions in London, who insisted they prosecute. What I think was happening was that two cultures were colliding, a modern forward thinking culture which welcomed change, and a backward provincial culture that was afraid of it. You might be too young to remember a ghastly woman called Mary Whitehouse. She would appear on television night after night, denouncing films and plays for being immoral smut. She hated Dennis Potter in particular, even though he was one of the best British playwrights of the twentieth century. It's like she couldn't see past the sex and swearing. But there were plenty of other people like her at the time, all wanting to stop Britain becoming a modern liberal country. They wanted to go back to the 1950s, before sex was invented, and I think Stass was an easy victim of that backwardness.
How much input have you had into the show at the Tetley?
To be honest I don't know. That probably sounds ridiculous, but I did not choose the works, all I did was put word out that 2016 is the fiftieth anniversary of the trial. I wasn't trying to get an exhibition put on. But a friend of mine, called Tom Steele, told the Director of the Tetley, Bryony Bond, and she and the curator, Zoe Sawyer, turned that into a show. It's better they did it rather than me. I think there is a problem having the family do these things all the time. You need some academic distance from the subject. Bryony and Zoe did it because they like the work and the story behind it, not because they are related to the artist.
Where do you think your father’s work stands in the history of art in this country?
I think Stass is part of a generation that is largely forgotten in the history of art, and even in the history of British art. Everyone remembers the Pop Artists of course, but that's on the back of the American Pop Art industry. Whenever someone mentions Warhol and American Pop, someone else says we had Pop Art in Britain first you know. But it's far harder to talk about other British artists of the time like that, even though many of them are far more interesting than British Pop. There are early performance artists like Robin Page and Ken Turner for example, and people like Harry Thubron, who was a great artist, but also revolutionised British art education. One day someone will realise how interesting these people were, and I hope Stass will fit in with that. But at the moment this whole period in British art is almost forgotten. It's very sad.
Taking your background into consideration, was art always going to be a natural career choice for you?
No, originally I didn't want to be involved in art. I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know how you became a writer. I guessed you went to university and studied English, which I did, but I combined it with art history. I don't know why, it was done almost without much thought. But it was only when I started to have a really miserable time on my English course that I began to think of myself as an art historian. That has had an impact on the way I write. My writing probably seems quite unstructured, but that's because rather than starting with a structure and writing to fit into it, I just write and let the structure develop out of the process of writing. That is how most of the best visual artists I know seem to work too, keeping the possibilities open for as long as possible, and I have probably learned it from them. But I don't think it's how you are supposed to organise a novel.
What, in your own eyes, has been your single biggest achievement?
That's a very difficult question. Are we supposed to boast about our achievements? If pushed, I think I am largely responsible for rescuing the British art theorist Herbert Read from obscurity. Alongside John Ruskin and Roger Fry, the only British art theorist to really make an impact on the world stage was Herbert Read, but he was almost forgotten before I started going on about him. It goes back to what I was saying about British art history being so neglected. So that's a real achievement I think. I also got Harlow in Essex to put up new road signs saying Welcome to Harlow Sculpture Town, so in a way I managed to rename an entire town. And then there was the invention of a new national cocktail for Cyprus, called an ouzini. It's been taken up by the national tourism board so it will probably be my only lasting achievement.
In your time in the field, has the position of the arts in society shifted at all?
Yes, very much. As I was saying about Stass, it is almost a miracle he became an artist. There was nothing he was doing when he came to England that even vaguely suggested he might be an artist. He was just a waiter and pot washer. He wasn't doing an art evening class or painting in his spare time or anything. But along came Harry Thubron and he invited my father to join his art classes at Leeds College of Art. You cannot imagine that happening today. So it seems like the art world used to be more open, but now it is being closed off from ordinary people. What I mean is, ordinary people no longer seem welcome to take part in the arts by becoming artists themselves. They are only allowed to be spectators at the latest mega art venue. That is a big change.
Tell us about your debut novel, In Search of Sixpence
Sixpence is a kind of detective story, based very loosely on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, but with lots of real world characters in it. They are all fictionalised to some extent, so the woman called Mariella Frostrup in the book is not the real Mariella Frostrup of course. The point is the boundary between fiction and reality breaks down, and when that happens you are faced with something like madness. It was written not long after my father died and some of the pain, and the madness, of that experience underpins it. So, one minute it is 2016 and you are catching a number 137 bus to Oxford Circus, and the next you arrive, it's 1953, and you see your own father in his first job as a washer up in an ABC Tearoom. Then, without much pause for breath, you witness a brutal murder. So Stass is in the book and so am I, and other people I used to know, and the narrative slips between different forms of fiction and non-fiction writing. The aim with all that is to try and ensure there is a way out of the madness, which is what all art tries to give us.
What do you think your father would have thought of today’s arts luminaries?
Stass was always very catholic in his willingness to accept different art forms, but he did believe in quality, and quality meant working hard at making things again and again and again. So easy image making was not art for him, and I guess he did not really have time for what he used to call circus tricks. Ultimately art had to be made, and making meant a kind of three-way physical engagement between the body, the medium and the world around us.
What projects are you currently working on?
I am spending most of my time writing another novel. It's a kind of homage to the Ealing comedy films Kind Hearts and Coronets and Passport to Pimlico, but with another detective culled from my teenage reading, Inspector Maigret, added to the mix. He's not called that, for legal reasons, but in my mind that's who he is. But the writing process is very similar to In Search of Sixpence, so the structure of the book is still forming as I write. Also, I am trying to expand on one of the themes that came up when I wrote Sixpence, about a novel almost being self-aware. It's an idea I have explored in art too, that we can think of a painting as a kind of alternative reality rather than a representation. It's really a theory of art based on anarchist thinking, the idea that art doesn't just reflect aspects of our world, but is a way to create new worlds.
Stass Paraskos: Lovers & Romances is on at The Tetley until October 9th. www.thetetley.org
