Matthew Carr, who died of leukaemia on February 23 aged 57, was a figurative artist who ranged from individual portraits to depictions of 18 stuffed monkey heads, prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs and a “penis series” featuring the genitalia of 12 golfers.
Matthew Carr in his studio Photo: REME CAMPOS
Working in monochrome with conte pencil on prepared charcoal paper, as a draughtsman Carr was in a league of his own. Yet his pictures — minutely detailed studies isolated in fields of grey — could never be dismissed as merely “photographic”. What was notable was his ability to get under the skin of his subjects, investing his depictions with an emotional life, an honesty and humanity attained by few other modern artists.
The Daily Telegraph’s art critic Richard Dorment recalled sitting for Carr as an experience he would not choose to repeat: “Hunched over a stool about 18 inches from my face and turning a harsh electric light towards me, he asked me not to move a muscle for an hour and a half or more. During each of our three sittings there was no conversation, just tedious hours sitting in frozen-faced silence, when, aware of eyes boring into me with frightening intensity, I listened to the scratching of pencil on paper and the ticking of my wristwatch.”
But others found the process pleasurable. Tom Stoppard found the silence of Carr’s concentration left his mind free to wander. By contrast, Michael Holroyd enjoyed Carr’s lively conversation, which banished his fear of boredom. What united all their experiences was their recognition that Carr “got” everything about them.
His sitters found Carr just as fascinating as he found them. Tall and painfully thin, despite an addiction to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (economy size), his enormous eyes and shaggy hair made him look, according to a friend, “like a chewed toy lion”. The whole effect was rendered more extraordinary still by an eclectic wardrobe which might team harem pants and bright yellow vests with fox fur stoles and tiny sporrans — all carried off with raffish swagger.
Carr’s character, too, was a tangle of contradictions. He was, by turns, loyal and conspiratorial; tolerant and disapproving; emotional and impervious. He was once seen crying as he took his seat at a large sit-down dinner — because he had just read the name cards to either side of him. But on another occasion, when he was grossly insulted at a dinner party, prompting his friends to walk out in protest, they were somewhat taken aback to see, through a window from the street outside, Carr pouring a drink for his detractor and cackling with cheerful laughter.
As an artist, Carr’s standards were uncompromising, which was why he rejected oil paint as a distraction and concentrated on perfecting his drawings. He was always dissatisfied with what he had achieved, and perhaps it was the strain of not matching up to his own impossible perfectionism that contributed, during the middle part of his career, to a downward spiral of alcohol and drug addiction.
When he emerged into sobriety in the late 1990s, it was with a clear sense of what he had lost but also a determination to work on his own terms. He declined commissions in favour of choosing his own sitters, who included contemporary English writers and the semi-preserved dead in the catacombs at Palermo. These corpses, which Carr drew in 120 degree heat, were incorporated as individual drawings grouped within one large frame — a technique he applied to other subjects, including the stuffed monkeys and male genitalia.
The effect was to demonstrate that things which appear at first glance to be similar are in fact almost infinite in their variety. As Richard Dorment observed: “Once you overcome your initial hesitation, what is so striking is their curious humanity. It is the pathos of the monkeys’ existence and the indignity of their fate that we end up seeing. Long eyelashes, a soft moustache, and an open mouth make a desiccated corpse look as though it is asleep. And there is something sad and vulnerable about these clinical rows of blubbery paunches, flaccid penises and fat thighs, absolutely devoid of any sexual or procreative connotations.”
The second of three sons, Matthew Xavier Maillard Carr was born in Oxford on February 5 1953. His father was the historian, foxhunter and former Warden of St Antony’s College, Sir Raymond Carr. He was sent to Eton, which he disliked, leaving at 16 to go to Camberwell School of Art, followed by Cheltenham School of Fine Art.
In his twenties he returned to his parents’ home in north Oxford, where he taught art and art history by day and stalked the streets by night, often with a female accomplice, in search of sitters for a series of life-size nude drawings, or partied into the small hours with friends.
One weekend in the late 1970s, Andy Warhol and his retinue descended to hang out with Oxford’s jeunesse dorée. Hearing a rumour that Warhol was looking for somewhere to give a party, Carr persuaded his parents to make their house available. When the partygoers left, they took Carr with them and installed him for several days in Warhol’s suite at the Ritz.
The encounter with Warhol was a turning point in Carr’s life. Through Warhol he met the gallery owner Robert Fraser, who appointed himself his agent, put on the first show of his work in 1983 and began to scout for portrait commissions among the wealthy — work which took Carr from London to Venice and New York.
In 1986 Carr met and fell in love with the historian Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the 11th Duke of Beaufort. They married in 1988 and had a daughter. But while his marriage made him supremely happy, his health deteriorated.
Whether it was Robert Fraser who got him into drugs is not clear (Fraser himself was a notorious drug user and died in 1986 of Aids, aged 49); but Carr later said their friendship had marked “the beginning of 20 wasted years”. He continued to work, but the alcohol and drugs took their toll on his health and his art.
By the mid-1990s he was down to 8½ stone, and, by his own account, “doing stupid things” — though, as he later explained, he realised he had hit rock bottom only when he accepted a commission to paint the singer Diana Ross. “A week after she’d gone I received a big, brown manila envelope in the mail. It was filled with lurid images of sunsets and palm fronds. She wanted me to put them in the background.” To his shame, he obliged.
But above all his decision to kick his alcohol and heroin habit was an act of love for his wife and child, and once he had succeeded he never looked back. As well as rediscovering his talent and taking his art into new directions, he taught himself to play the piano. His last 10 years were the most productive of his life, and his work was shown at two shows at the Marlborough Gallery, in 2003 and 2008.
Widely-read, with a deep appreciation of architecture and classical music, Carr was a sympathetic conversationalist with a capacity for private acts of kindness and gallantry. Among other things, he held a one-night spectacular to raise money for the Action Trust for the Blind, of which he became a board member. He befriended prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs and would do the shopping for housebound residents of the council block where he had his last studio.
Matthew Carr’s wife and daughter survive him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8412088/Matthew-Carr.html
When he emerged into sobriety in the late 1990s, it was with a clear sense of what he had lost but also a determination to work on his own terms. He declined commissions in favour of choosing his own sitters, who included contemporary English writers and the semi-preserved dead in the catacombs at Palermo. These corpses, which Carr drew in 120 degree heat, were incorporated as individual drawings grouped within one large frame — a technique he applied to other subjects, including the stuffed monkeys and male genitalia.
The effect was to demonstrate that things which appear at first glance to be similar are in fact almost infinite in their variety. As Richard Dorment observed: “Once you overcome your initial hesitation, what is so striking is their curious humanity. It is the pathos of the monkeys’ existence and the indignity of their fate that we end up seeing. Long eyelashes, a soft moustache, and an open mouth make a desiccated corpse look as though it is asleep. And there is something sad and vulnerable about these clinical rows of blubbery paunches, flaccid penises and fat thighs, absolutely devoid of any sexual or procreative connotations.”
The second of three sons, Matthew Xavier Maillard Carr was born in Oxford on February 5 1953. His father was the historian, foxhunter and former Warden of St Antony’s College, Sir Raymond Carr. He was sent to Eton, which he disliked, leaving at 16 to go to Camberwell School of Art, followed by Cheltenham School of Fine Art.
In his twenties he returned to his parents’ home in north Oxford, where he taught art and art history by day and stalked the streets by night, often with a female accomplice, in search of sitters for a series of life-size nude drawings, or partied into the small hours with friends.
One weekend in the late 1970s, Andy Warhol and his retinue descended to hang out with Oxford’s jeunesse dorée. Hearing a rumour that Warhol was looking for somewhere to give a party, Carr persuaded his parents to make their house available. When the partygoers left, they took Carr with them and installed him for several days in Warhol’s suite at the Ritz.
The encounter with Warhol was a turning point in Carr’s life. Through Warhol he met the gallery owner Robert Fraser, who appointed himself his agent, put on the first show of his work in 1983 and began to scout for portrait commissions among the wealthy — work which took Carr from London to Venice and New York.
In 1986 Carr met and fell in love with the historian Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of the 11th Duke of Beaufort. They married in 1988 and had a daughter. But while his marriage made him supremely happy, his health deteriorated.
Whether it was Robert Fraser who got him into drugs is not clear (Fraser himself was a notorious drug user and died in 1986 of Aids, aged 49); but Carr later said their friendship had marked “the beginning of 20 wasted years”. He continued to work, but the alcohol and drugs took their toll on his health and his art.
By the mid-1990s he was down to 8½ stone, and, by his own account, “doing stupid things” — though, as he later explained, he realised he had hit rock bottom only when he accepted a commission to paint the singer Diana Ross. “A week after she’d gone I received a big, brown manila envelope in the mail. It was filled with lurid images of sunsets and palm fronds. She wanted me to put them in the background.” To his shame, he obliged.
But above all his decision to kick his alcohol and heroin habit was an act of love for his wife and child, and once he had succeeded he never looked back. As well as rediscovering his talent and taking his art into new directions, he taught himself to play the piano. His last 10 years were the most productive of his life, and his work was shown at two shows at the Marlborough Gallery, in 2003 and 2008.
Widely-read, with a deep appreciation of architecture and classical music, Carr was a sympathetic conversationalist with a capacity for private acts of kindness and gallantry. Among other things, he held a one-night spectacular to raise money for the Action Trust for the Blind, of which he became a board member. He befriended prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs and would do the shopping for housebound residents of the council block where he had his last studio.
Matthew Carr’s wife and daughter survive him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8412088/Matthew-Carr.html
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