“Matchstick Men’s Association”
Lowry hid behind a solid exterior, but this unassuming demeanor may have led some to dismiss his work as unskilled. When I asked him why his photos were filled with so many matchstick figures, he said that he starts with just a few people, but then says, “for design reasons,” and eventually “the photos are full of people.” In the 1957 film, he claimed that he did not mind people calling his figure Matchstick Man, but in later years he came to resent this as a patronizing view of the work of a trained artist.
Nevertheless, two years after Lowry’s death, musical duo Brian and Michael paid tribute to him, and the idea struck a chord with British record buyers. Match handle man, match handle cat and dogIt topped the UK charts for three weeks. This sentimental one-hit wonder features a children’s chorus and key changes, and includes lyrical twists such as the line “Now he takes up his brush and waits outside the factory gates” becoming “Pearlful Gates” in the final chorus.
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The same year that the BBC aired the short film, Mr. Rowley received a letter from 13-year-old Carol Ann Rowley. The question was, since we share the same last name, did she have any advice on how to become an artist? He did not reply, but several months later he turned up unannounced at her home in Rochdale. After her initial alarm at this strange man on her doorstep, she ends up becoming something of an adopted daughter. When he died in February 1976 at the age of 88, the unmarried artist left most of his fortune to her.
A few months after his death, the Royal Academy held a retrospective exhibition of his work which was very well received. Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman wrote in the exhibition catalog that Lowry’s collected works would dispel the idea that he was “just a self-taught ‘primitive’ with a passion for industrial archaeology”. According to him, “There is a terrible melancholy in his work. He is a painter of solitude.”
Although Lowry valued the recognition that membership in the Royal Academy afforded him, he remained skeptical of the artistic establishment it represented. The Queen tried to award Lowry a record five times, including making him an OBE in 1955, an OBE in 1961, and a knighthood in 1968, all of which he refused. According to fellow artist Harold Riley, a friend told him this was because he didn’t want to change people’s perception of him, not because he had “something against the system.”
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
