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Lot Essay
The majority of Vaughan’s later erotic drawings are intensely private. His final years were harrowing and distressing; he was sick with cancer, deeply depressed and dependent on various drugs and alcohol to get him through each day. He retreated from the world and became increasingly reclusive, working when he was able. Painting, which was physically taxing, was out of the question for much of the time and so drawing became Vaughan’s central means of expression. It formed part of a routine and formalised process, undertaken in the evening, after a day’s painting, and before confiding in his journal. These bleak, nocturnal sessions were often accompanied by alcohol: 'These habitual night-long semi-drunken vigils are an utter waste of time. I do some not-too-bad erotic drawings sometimes, which is better than the rigmaroles of sentimental rubbish I write here' (Tuesday 4 February 1975, unpublished).
Once completed, the drawings were filed in homemade cardboard folders and variously labelled Figure Drawings, Reclining Figure, Standing Figure and Grafitti Drawings (misspelled in Vaughan’s characteristically dyslexic manner). The present examples were discovered after his death.
The male figure continued to absorb Vaughan as his recurring sexual desires were fleetingly expressed and urgently notated. Professor John Ball, a close friend, said: 'Keith had an overwhelming compulsion to visualise his fantasies in a ritualised manner. He needed to reveal them on the page in front of him; it was part of his daily routine, a kind of formal procedure'.
Vaughan articulated himself in a very direct fashion in these drawings. They are uninhibited, devoid of censorship and were executed for personal, cathartic purposes. They assisted him to investigate his erotic projections and live out his alternating tender and sado-masochistic desires. In some ways making them kept him rational and grounded. He confessed in his journal: 'I manage to do a few mad pencil drawings at night when everyone has gone to bed. Otherwise the days are a nightmare of domestic trivia' (Friday 26 March 1975, unpublished).
Vaughan’s Grafitti Drawings [sic] provide an insight into his psychosexual core, so important in feeding his wider creative abilities; they represent the culmination of decades of draughtsmanship. In them he chases his fleeting thoughts and keeps his mental fantasies animated whilst giving them visual form. They give voice to what John Ball described as Vaughan’s complex sexuality and his refined artistic vision. They are wonderfully evocative and masterfully concise. For me they’re some of the finest things that Keith produced – distilled rather like Beethoven’s late quartets or Eliot’s best poems – seemingly effortless, yet packed with significance. There’s such an economy of means – a few lines express an entire biography or a complex persona. Keith drew to work out his passions and make his emotional requirements concrete. Most are terribly personal and so very moving in their honesty; they’re concerned with basic and often brutal human truths and examine complicated inter-relationships – what more can one ask of an artist?' (quoted in G. Hastings, Keith Vaughan: Four Decades of Drawing, London, Gallery 27, 2010, p. 6).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of?Drawing to a Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan?(Pagham Press) and?Keith Vaughan: The Photographs?(Pagham Press), for preparing this catalogue entry. He is currently working on an edition of Keith Vaughan's previously unpublished and private writings to be published later in the year. ?
Once completed, the drawings were filed in homemade cardboard folders and variously labelled Figure Drawings, Reclining Figure, Standing Figure and Grafitti Drawings (misspelled in Vaughan’s characteristically dyslexic manner). The present examples were discovered after his death.
The male figure continued to absorb Vaughan as his recurring sexual desires were fleetingly expressed and urgently notated. Professor John Ball, a close friend, said: 'Keith had an overwhelming compulsion to visualise his fantasies in a ritualised manner. He needed to reveal them on the page in front of him; it was part of his daily routine, a kind of formal procedure'.
Vaughan articulated himself in a very direct fashion in these drawings. They are uninhibited, devoid of censorship and were executed for personal, cathartic purposes. They assisted him to investigate his erotic projections and live out his alternating tender and sado-masochistic desires. In some ways making them kept him rational and grounded. He confessed in his journal: 'I manage to do a few mad pencil drawings at night when everyone has gone to bed. Otherwise the days are a nightmare of domestic trivia' (Friday 26 March 1975, unpublished).
Vaughan’s Grafitti Drawings [sic] provide an insight into his psychosexual core, so important in feeding his wider creative abilities; they represent the culmination of decades of draughtsmanship. In them he chases his fleeting thoughts and keeps his mental fantasies animated whilst giving them visual form. They give voice to what John Ball described as Vaughan’s complex sexuality and his refined artistic vision. They are wonderfully evocative and masterfully concise. For me they’re some of the finest things that Keith produced – distilled rather like Beethoven’s late quartets or Eliot’s best poems – seemingly effortless, yet packed with significance. There’s such an economy of means – a few lines express an entire biography or a complex persona. Keith drew to work out his passions and make his emotional requirements concrete. Most are terribly personal and so very moving in their honesty; they’re concerned with basic and often brutal human truths and examine complicated inter-relationships – what more can one ask of an artist?' (quoted in G. Hastings, Keith Vaughan: Four Decades of Drawing, London, Gallery 27, 2010, p. 6).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of?Drawing to a Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan?(Pagham Press) and?Keith Vaughan: The Photographs?(Pagham Press), for preparing this catalogue entry. He is currently working on an edition of Keith Vaughan's previously unpublished and private writings to be published later in the year. ?