In memoriam: Joe Tilson RA
By Michael Craig-Martin RA
Published on 28 January 2024
Michael Craig-Martin RA pays tribute to an influential and generous artist, who was a prime mover in Britain’s Pop art scene.
From the Spring 2024 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA.
I was already aware of Joe’s early Pop work while I was still a student in America in the early 1960s. We were surprisingly well-informed about the new art being made in Britain. I came to the UK in 1966 because I was offered a teaching job at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire. There I became friends with the painter Mark Lancaster, who introduced me to many of the leading British artists of the time, including Joe and his extraordinary wife Jos. It was as difficult then as it is even now for me to talk about Joe without saying “Joe and Jos”.
I saw Joe as a key figure in the immensely influential cultural revolution that had transformed Britain from the pinched austerity of the 1940s and 50s into the youthful centre of the contemporary world of art, music, fashion, theatre and cinema of the 1960s. He seemed to me to be emblematic of the new generation of the young British artists I met: optimistic, confident, international in outlook, outgoing, instinctively in tune with the times. Though Joe was a modest and sweet-natured man of exceptional personal warmth and generosity, he was also strong willed and independent minded. It is easy now to forget how daring, original and influential Joe’s work was at the time (Nine Elements, 1963).
I had my first ever exhibition at the Rowan Gallery in London in 1969. Though they barely knew me personally at the time, Joe and Jos offered to throw a large after-opening party at their wonderful large house just off Kensington High Street. They invited everyone in the contemporary London art world, which meant that virtually everyone saw my show before going to the party. I could not have hoped for a better introduction for my work and myself, and I remain deeply grateful to this day. I have to say that my most vivid memory of the evening is of Bridget Riley having a heated argument with the critic Charles Harrison and knocking his hat off, which flew down the stairs.
In the postwar years of the 1950s many British artists were fascinated by America and American culture. Though this was true of Joe, he always saw himself as a European artist. He perceived Italy as the living heart of Western civilisation and increasingly reflected that belief in his work. From the 1970s he adopted Italy as his second home, spending much of his life in the countryside of Tuscany and then in the magical city of Venice.
He loved Italy and Italy loved him, coming to see him as one of its own. Much of his career was made there. I was fortunate to visit Joe and Jos in their house in Venice on one of his last trips there. The whole house felt like a studio, a place of simple living and living work. They took me to a local restaurant where they were welcomed and embraced as the much loved and respected old friends they clearly were.
Joe remained young at heart to the very end. His was truly a life well-lived.
Michael Craig-Martin RA is an artist.
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