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‘Full Stop’, a painting by John A. Walker, oil on linen 140 x 100 cm (2006). I asked
various people - some of whom were laypeople and others artists, critics and
theorists - to interpret:
Viewer 3 says 'a black hole or shell, a life that is beautiful is being left behind'. Also:
‘I once had an experience like this, of entering the dark tunnel, after being stung by
a nest of bees. My world closed in on me like the lens of a camera and I knew that
was it. I was a bit sad when it turned out not to be permanent and I returned to the
land of the living. The other interesting aspect of that experience was the feeling of
peace and objectivity. This is also very present in your picture: as if the world was
being seen from the position of a ghost. I didn't get far enough to encounter any real
Viewer 4 wrote: ‘Well it seems to be about death but also about representation and
how there's nothing "behind" the picture plane but that's just off the top of my
Viewer 5 wrote: ‘Your new painting is very disturbing and I'm struggling to make
sense of my response to it. The black spot is straight out of 'Treasure Island' with all
approach of 'three score years and ten' and wonder what might carry me off
and when. It speaks of real fear but also resignation. I'm intrigued and also puzzled
by the red altar-like feature in the background and also by the California orange
grove landscape - an Eden to which we might hopefully return, perhaps? (We visited
the Eden Project in Cornwall while we were away, so possible association of ideas
here.) Or maybe the spot, especially in its central and imperative position at 'dead'
being able to appreciate the paint etc. The symbolism of a black hole in what
many connotations, not least because you've called it Full Stop ‹ the ultimate finish.
If it had been produced by someone who had no knowledge of art rather than
somebody educated in Lathamesque [ie John Latham, British artist] language, Full
Stop or first instance, it might have surreal overtones like a black ball/balloon or
other round object floating in a painted scene or a reference to seeing a black hole in
the image and possibly a personal statement about your attitude towards art and life
and signifying an end, to one or both. Knowing the producer has a history in
painting as picture and a painted sign as statement. I suggest you have reasoned
these and other readings, the implication being a linguistic dialectic, involving them
all, revolving around the notion of coming to a conclusion, as in The End, possibly to
suggest a new beginning. The point is, I'm not convinced as to its pictorial narrative,
it being too obviously a reference to Latham's full stop. As I said, a photo cannot
fully sum up seeing a painted surface. Hope your not contemplating the obvious,
Viewer 7 wrote: 'Current fashion is for painters to only to sign their works on the
attention to himself, and deepening the correspondence between his own personal
identity and the depicted content of the painting. The work contains a dominating
full stop which indicates, literally, the centrality of text over art in the artist/writer's
life. It also, of course, signifies finality and, in conjunction with the graveyard
behind it, seems to suggest that the artist/writer (who is now retired, and ill), is
pondering his own mortality. It may be significant that the graveyard, which is lit by
a bright sun, and has luxuriant, almost tropical foliage, is a more joyous place
(hinting at a 'paradise') than the world of text (wordly conflict), and that in some
way Walker welcomes death. It is also significant that the author, who is known as a
Marxist materialist, depicts a place of burial, rather than cremation, with all the
connotations of religion that burial is more likely to have. In summary then, as the
artist/writer faces the enormity of dying, his materialist convictions become gently
Viewer 8 wrote 'with the title given and the image, I interpret it as a statement on
death, or an observation of its unremitting factuality. Death is a big black spot that I
can only see as a hole in the image and much more horrible than the images of
if I reflect some more, I think about full stops as grammatical entities and could get
all tricksy about death as end of language or language as a type of death (veering
into poststructuralist waters here) and I find it curious that despite the reference to
language there are no words on the gravestones. The picture exudes anonymity. It
also looks vandalised in a way, because of the black hole, like a magazine picture
My own commentary
Esher, Surrey I pass virtually every day - upon which is superimposed a black disc -
the full stop of the title. A graveyard is a common emblem of death and has been
because the latter seems a waste of land.) In my view death is the end of human life.
Since I am now old, death is ever present in my mind but I do not believe in an
Spencer’s famous 1923-7 canvas ‘The Resurrection, Cookham’ (Tate Gallery), which
shows a churchyard with the graves giving up their dead at the time of the
(disused) in the actual place. The headstones over the graves are so old they have
lost their inscriptions and so the people who are buried are now anonymous and
forgotten. No one living leaves flowers on their graves. This oblivion is the fate of the
renew itself.
In its mix of the pictorial and the linguistic the painting harks back to my 1965
Latham’s 1961 painting ‘Full Stop’ - a black disc on a white ground - and by my
memory of van Gogh’s painting ‘Peasant cemetery’ Nuenen 1885, which has a
The painting is also a mix of representation and abstraction. The black disc in the
vision and ‘spoils’ the spectator’s enjoyment of the naturalistic landscape. (Death, of
Since the disc is flat, it also asserts the reality of the flat surface in contrast to the
illusionist depth of the landscape around it. A small earlier painting of mine
employed a similar contrast - ‘Grey painting with border’ 1971 (14 x 10 inches, oil
hole in the sea. Thus the ‘painting’ is blank or abstract while its border is
THE PAINTER: John A. Walker (b. 1938, Lincolnshire, England) was trained as a
painter in a University art department in Newcastle upon Tyne from 1956 to 1961.
and worked in the Civil Service, public and art libraries, and for many years wrote
art criticism for a range of art magazines and taught art history in a number of
British art schools. Before he retired in 1999, he was Reader in Art and Design
History at Middlesex University. He has written 15 books and over 100 periodical
articles about van Gogh, John Latham, the fine arts and mass media, and visual
decades.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Univision Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1958; The Gallery, London, 1975;
1959, 1960. London Group show 1965; Small Paintings exhibition, Wills Lane
Gallery, St Ives & Bulls Eye Gallery, Lichfield, 1972; 'Art & Society', Whitechapel
Art Gallery, 1976; Farnham Maltings Show, 1976; ‘Death Show’, Kettle’s Yard,
Cambridge, Dec 1987. 'Eat art' exhibition The Robert Phillips Gallery, Walton on
Thames, November 2005. 'Art below', (poster) London Underground, 2007. 'Life's a
Exhibitions organized: 'Van Gogh in Provence' (Book & photo display) Camden
Public Library, 1970; 'Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht’, Pentonville Gallery,
London, 1986.
COLLECTIONS
Works in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Wolverhampton