CHARLES CULLEN

The Man and His Art

By Stephen Morris

 

The measure of a great artist is perhaps only revealed as one peels back layer after layer of a lifetimes work. The spectator can read all kinds of hidden meanings and mysteries and indeed messages and great art can be judged by these measures as well as the sublime skill of the artist which can move and inspire. Sex is a driving force in art and plays a vital role in the process. Sex, this three letter word which can excite, horrify, stimulate and shock, plays a very important role in the art of Charles Cullen. Not too long ago, of course, anything to do with sex in art was thought to be unnecessary and obscene. If one revealed a nipple on the female body, for example, it would have been considered shocking whereas today it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

 

Charles Cullen as an artist has lived through the dramatic time where attitudes have been forced to change and it is not only attitudes towards sex that have changed. Political power has moved, equal rights questioned, gay rights established, the women’s movement has emerged as females strive for equality, acceptance and equal opportunities prevail. There have, during Charlie Cullen’s lifetime, startling changes. A  breakdown of class differences and barriers as well as structure. Opportunities have been given to the working class child to be upwardly mobile. Racial prejudices have been revealed at many levels with a continuous process to eradicate it.  Censorship too has been questioned as have many other issues, such as capital punishment, the age of legal marriage and the age of consent.

 

Charlie Cullen’s journey through all this had been fraught with censorship and opposition to his radical views. Ireland in fact, was a long way behind many other European countries in several respects partially to do with the power of the Catholic Church. But eventually changes and acceptance emerged. There had been nothing like The Beatles, Bob Dylan or The Rolling Stones in Ireland nor were there any powerful influences in art such as David Hockey or Jackson Pollock. Ireland had been in the doldrums creatively and it was sometime before the likes of Bono, Bob Geldof and Sinead O’Conner emerged into the world of popular music. Novelist and film director, Neil Jordon, to name but one of a few in the film industry who threw down the gauntlet of protest to ignite change. Charlie Cullen at the time began to lead the pack in the Irish art world. He had revolted against the rigid system that had existed in art schools and his protests led him to be eventually dismissed from his teaching job for some time. The art school for example, didn’t even have a library, exams in art history had to be taken and old methods of teaching art were rife. Notions of having your own space in the studio were introduced and eventually traditional teaching was forced to be disregarded. Changes in art education were taking place and Charlie Cullen, in the early seventies, was a part of an extraordinary revolution.

 

Born in 1939, in Longford in Southern Ireland, as a child he attended an institution called St Mels, a Diocesan College whose main aim was to prepare young men to become catholic priests. They failed though to indoctrinate Charlie and even when young much of his energy went into drawing and into his art. When Charlie was quite young his father, it seems, had   purchased a set of books called ‘The World’s Greatest Paintings’ and Charlie recalls that the books  fascinated him and inspired him in a strange way. They did, he believes, influenced him in some way and possibly also influenced him to in choosing a career in art.  Following a rather traumatic experience in Spain he returned to his native Ireland, via London, where he had a succession of jobs before taking up a post at The National College of Art, in Dublin, where he eventually became the head of the school of painting.  It was during this period of his life that he began to absorb Irish literature, particularly developing an admiration for the work of James Joyce. He began to complete a series of paintings inspired by the book ‘Ulysses’, possibly the most famous book written by an Irish writer.

 

Charlie did realise that Ulysses was and is a complicated book but reading it was an incredible and influential experience for him. Anyone, Charlie believes, can participate in the book where the individual can delve into any part of it and find inspiration as well a spiritual experience. It was from this masterpiece that Charlie’s own now famous ‘Night Town’ series of etchings was created.

 

In the past people have suggested that his paintings are closer to coloured drawings as opposed to tactility and sensuousness of fracture but he leaves these debates to others preferring to be left to his own exploration.  Charles Cullen works everyday at his art and he accepts the fact that he is influenced by others. Artists such as Max Beckman, Durer, Pisanello and Bacon. In addition there are other less known artists particularly the Mexican artist Jose Louis Cuevas and the German artist Horst Jannsen. Charlie is also inspired by the works of Brett Whitely, the Australian artist who did a series of paintings on the Reginald Christie murders, at 10 Rillinghton Place in London. These artists, he feels, push the limits and test the ground, sometimes to the extent where the paintings could become obscene. This though, Charlie Cullen believes, is totally acceptable.  However, now and he is well into well into his third age, he continues through his work to seek new boundaries, to find fresh ground , to experiment and to shock, but most of all to educate and above all to inspire. This is what Charles Cullen is all about. 

The man and his art.