Nightlife by British artist Nigel Cooke

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Nigel Cooke's work is a dark and melancholic world, his paintings are full of the deepest psychology. "Atmospheric" landscapes suggest complete inaction of the authorities, and gloomy characters remind of devastation (which, as you know, is happening not in closets, but in heads). Cook's work is a symbol of how the allegorical world created by the author and populated by philosophers and poets can lead the attempts of producers (and the capitalist consumer society as a whole) to interact with living creativity. Now this place is populated by vagabonds and psychos, driven to this state by their own attempts to stand out. "They no longer know the reasons, they have no goals, these people rush headlong into the maelstrom of the unknown."

Nigel Cook's exhibition is called "Night Crossing", apparently it can be translated as "Crossing the night." This name was borrowed from the famous German artist Max Beckmann: this was the title of a number of paintings created by him from 1933 to 1935 and having the same “crushing” character. Filled with fear, this cycle of Beckman's works concentrates on suffering, but ends with more joyful motives, the artist postulates a belief in the possibility of redemption and the completion of earthly suffering through metaphysical rebirth. This is roughly the same as the main meaning of Cook's works, but they are more modern and relevant. The artistic means of the masters also differ: Beckman's characters are calm, they cannot resist the world around them and simply go with the flow, while Cook's characters are aggressive, they want to be the rulers of nature and do not want to obey its laws. As a result, destructive arrogance clashes with the indifference of the world and philosophy can no longer find reasons for consolation.

The characters identified by Cook react in a very peculiar way to different situations and even sometimes show some semblance of courage - meaningless valor mixed with constant reflection. These images are taken by the artist from the works of Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Sartre. They often display the motives of ignorance, excessive arrogance and frivolity bordering on stupidity, traditional for this kind of characters. These are not directly negative characters, they are “negative in perspective”. Nigel Cooke's works ridicule the emptiness of modern art, the stupid glee of the current "masters", completely devoid of self-criticism and believing that they are the "ray of light in the dark kingdom" destined to start a new cultural revolution.

But, despite such a terrible state of affairs, which the artist describes, his personal skills have increased, he has his own concept and a bright "energetic" style. Cook says that understanding did not discourage him from working, but, on the contrary, inspired him to create new works. After all, if, according to the author, there can be no question of a cultural revolution, then someone should still open their eyes to the true state of affairs.

Now Cook's characters have become more lonely, and the set of circumstances in which they find themselves has greatly increased, now the viewer can see the artist's bearded heroes in the most unusual places, for example, in a nightclub. Their world full of darkness, inevitability and loneliness contrasts sharply with an even more impoverished (emotionally) and dull world around them. The characters, captured by the master's creative gaze at the moment of euphoria, are surrounded by sham architectural "freaks" (apparently their authors were also not spared by "creative dystrophy").

Nigel Cooke was born in Manchester in 1973, now he lives and works in London, where most of his solo exhibitions are held (although he is also a frequent participant in international forums), from time to time his work is exhibited abroad. Cook received his PhD in Fine Arts in 2004 and his Master's title in 1997. Unfortunately, the artist does not have a website, but there are a lot of his works on the Internet.