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A painfully beautiful vision without illusions
ANGUS REID ponders the psychology behind the arresting canvases of the working class painter Maurice Wade
Tileries at Westport [Trent Art]

Maurice Wade: Silent Landscapes
The Andy McCluskey Collection
Trent Art, Newcastle

 

TWENTY-FIVE years before Morrissey, Maurice Wade contemplated the urban cityscape of Stoke on Trent as though every day were like Sunday.

These paintings, “silent and grey,” are the visual midwife of Morrissey’s reactionary miserablism. They render the city as though it were made entirely of ash, and entirely devoid of people. They are painfully beautiful.

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