Nursery Frieze II, 1936
By John Piper
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John Piper was born at Epsom in Surrey, 1903. Following his father’s wishes, he spent 5 years in the family law firm before pursuing art, firstly at Richmond School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art. In the 1930s Piper exhibited abstract pictures and constructions, then reverted to creating landscape and architectural images, developing the picturesque style that features in his later work.
Piper experimented with printmaking from as early as 1923 when he produced four wood engravings. Piper’s prints embody his love of Britain through their depiction of its art, architecture and topography. However frequently underpinning their design, as the artist Rigby Graham has indicated, are the elements of collage, construction and assemblage that featured in his modernist work of the early 1930s.
Piper experimented with printmaking from as early as 1923 when he produced four wood engravings. Piper’s prints embody his love of Britain through their depiction of its art, architecture and topography. However frequently underpinning their design, as the artist Rigby Graham has indicated, are the elements of collage, construction and assemblage that featured in his modernist work of the early 1930s.
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The minotaur was a powerful archetype which occupied Michael Ayrton for over ten years of his artistic life. Beginnning in 1961, Ayrton wrote and created many works associated with the myths of the Minotaur and Daedalus, the legendary inventor and maze builder. Works include bronze sculpture, the autobiographical novel 'The Maze Maker' (1967), and the 'Minotaur' Etchings (1971).
'At the centre of the Maze, in all meanings of the expression, is the Minotaur, and Michael Ayrton’s identification of himself with the Minotaur, as well as with Daedalus, lies at the root of his compulsive image. Half bull and half man, the Minotaur stands isolated among the hybrids of the Classical World, since he alone possesses an animal’s head attached to a human body. Whereas Satyrs and Centaurs symbolize the animal urges of man, held in check by civilization, the Minotaur represents, in the words of John Berger, the animal in captivity of an almost human form, and, the suffering which is caused by aspiration and sensibility being rejected because they exist in an unattractive, that is so untamed, uncivilized body. Either way the Minotaur suggests a criticism of civilisation, which inhibits him in the first case and dismiss him in the second.
During the last years of his life, Ayrton continued to explore the theme with further drawings and small bronzes. The Minotaur thus remained, in his frustration at being unable to communicate fully with the world, a potent symbol for Michel Ayrton, and his deep, if not obsessive, attachment to the theme was stated unequivocable by his Personal Janus of 1970.' Peter Cannon-Brookes, Michael Ayrton - An Illustrated Commentary, 1984
'At the centre of the Maze, in all meanings of the expression, is the Minotaur, and Michael Ayrton’s identification of himself with the Minotaur, as well as with Daedalus, lies at the root of his compulsive image. Half bull and half man, the Minotaur stands isolated among the hybrids of the Classical World, since he alone possesses an animal’s head attached to a human body. Whereas Satyrs and Centaurs symbolize the animal urges of man, held in check by civilization, the Minotaur represents, in the words of John Berger, the animal in captivity of an almost human form, and, the suffering which is caused by aspiration and sensibility being rejected because they exist in an unattractive, that is so untamed, uncivilized body. Either way the Minotaur suggests a criticism of civilisation, which inhibits him in the first case and dismiss him in the second.
During the last years of his life, Ayrton continued to explore the theme with further drawings and small bronzes. The Minotaur thus remained, in his frustration at being unable to communicate fully with the world, a potent symbol for Michel Ayrton, and his deep, if not obsessive, attachment to the theme was stated unequivocable by his Personal Janus of 1970.' Peter Cannon-Brookes, Michael Ayrton - An Illustrated Commentary, 1984
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