Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Stu Sutcliffe

The artist Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe is eighty years old, yet he still obtains the beauty of himself when he was 20. He never does interviews because, as an artist, he feels that his work can speak for itself and doesn't fully believe in words can describe a visual work of art. For decades, Sutliffe has turned down interviews regarding his old band, The Beatles, because he didn't look back once he left the group. He's still that way regarding his entire life. For him, it's now and forward. And the future is never known for sure. He's comfortable with that setting. Strange enough, he stayed and painted in Hamburg up to the 80s, when he made the decision to move to Liverpool. He briefly taught painting at the university there. Still, it was such a magnet for Beatle geeks that he decided that perhaps teaching is not for him, nor is his interest in fame which bores him.

The only reason that I could interview Stu is because of my dad Wallace Berman. When he was in Germany, Stu sent an ink drawing to Wallace in the hopes that he would put it in his Semina journal. Either Wallace lost the picture or didn't care for it, but it never made it into Semina. Still, Wallace and Stu would write letters and send postcards back and forth for years - up until my dad died in 1976. Their works were nothing alike, but Stu, like many younger artists, admired Wallace for his lifestyle and how he positioned himself as an artist under his own conditions. Stu did the same. He hooked up with the Robert Fraser Gallery in London. Sutcliffe did have a painting exhibition at the Nick Wilder Gallery in West Hollywood. Still, he mostly had shows in Germany and one extensive retrospective that took place in Tokyo and Kitakyushu.

They never married, but his long-term partner-in-crime, Astrid Kirchherr, focused on photography and is known for her early images of Stu and the other members of The Beatles. It's hard for me to bring up the subject of John, Paul, and George because he left them for the world of Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi was teaching at the Hamburg College of Art. Stu felt that here is a person who really challenged him in the same manner as Astrid and John Lennon.

Part two will be the interview between Stu Sutcliffe and me, in which he talks about painting, Astrid, a bit about the Fab Four, as well as current projects. See you tomorrow. -Tosh Berman

Thanks to Dennis Cooper for the inspiration in his blog today.