{"id":1027,"date":"2010-04-14T12:28:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T11:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2010-04-29T18:02:45","modified_gmt":"2010-04-29T17:02:45","slug":"patrick-procktor-rises-again-at-the-redfern-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=1027","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Procktor Rises Again at the Redfern Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 14th<\/sup> April 2010<\/p>\n

Have you heard of Patrick Procktor? Maybe not. In his day, which was the 1960s, he was the \u2018twin\u2019 of David Hockney, wonderful painter, much feted, outrageous figure, friend of Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret round for drunken candlelit evenings etc. On Monday, before it opened, Marcus Coleman, England\u2019s leading clock mender, owner of outstanding Procktors, was doubtful that this Redfern Show and launch of a book, Patrick Procktor: Art and Life <\/em>by Ian Massey (Unicorn Press \u00a340) would do much to boost his old and now dead friend\u2019s sunken reputation and prices.<\/p>\n

He was wrong. Redfern seething last night for the opening, many on sticks it is true, \u00a375,000 the highest price (I do love prices) and the work, at its best, ravishing. It is<\/em> a fragile talent. He must have worked quickly, a lot of watercolour, hit and miss, can be rather slight or sentimental. Works in oil risk veering the other way, into ponderousness. But fragility is a strength. Flowers, exotic landscapes, finely wrought portraits of weirdoes and boys , small-scale, delicate, colours you hesitate to call pastel, capture some kind of elusive beauty. None were quite as stunning as the painting of the boy in white swimming trunks on a beach in Greece which is in the private collection of Marcus Cargill \u2013 \u00a0long landscape picture, nothing to it but blue sky, sand and small figure of the boy oddly reproduced over and over, caught in a few brushstrokes.<\/p>\n

Who should I run into at the Opening but Eric Vaughan, 85 if a day, of a different generation of Poor Little Rich Gays, partner of Lionel Moore (not present) who produced a famous TV Drama serialisation in the 1980s.\u00a0 \u2018That man\u2019s trying to pick me up,\u2019 he announced. \u2018He\u2019s a roofer.\u2019 It didn\u2019t seem very likely. When I last saw Eric he was a la port de mort,<\/em> with an awful cancer that drills holes in your bones \u2013 but now, like Patrick Procktor, revived, although PP actually really dead of course, not that that is standing in his way now. Eric and Lionel knew everybody, and still do. Once Lionel couldn\u2019t think who the tall woman standing next to Edna O\u2019Brien was. \u2018D\u2019you know Mrs Onassis?\u2019 Edna inquired (you have to imagine the upward Irish lilt).<\/p>\n

Only the most famous woman in the world!<\/p>\n

Eric is worried. \u2018That Chinese woman. She\u2019s the owner of the Gallery. Doesn\u2019t know anyone. We must help her.\u2019 I say, \u2018What about Redfern? Where is he or she?\u2019 Eric is confidential: \u2018Long gone but I can tell you. Leather harnesses. Used to lock them in an upstairs flat and throw the keys down the stairwell.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Andrew

Andrew Logan, of the Alternative Miss World, at the Patrick Procktor Opening<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 14th April 2010 Have you heard of Patrick Procktor? Maybe not. In his day, which was the 1960s, he was the \u2018twin\u2019 of David Hockney, wonderful painter, much feted, outrageous figure, friend of Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret round for drunken candlelit evenings etc. On Monday, before it opened, Marcus Coleman, England\u2019s leading clock mender, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}