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©
The estate of Michael Andrews / Tate
Michael Andrews

Lights V. The Pier Pavilion

1973
Acrylic on canvas.
152.4 x 213.3 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
452
(
1984.14
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

After freeing himself from the earlier influence of William Coldstream and Francis Bacon, Michael Andrews changed his approach to painting, seeking a vital truth. Lights V: The Pier Pavilion, painted in 1973, is a good example of this transformation. It belongs to the series of Lights, a group of seven large canvases on which he worked for more than five years and which embody his spiritual yearnings through the Zen notion of liberation. The title Lights is a reference to Rimbaud’s Illuminations and, as the artist himself would reveal, was “to do with getting rid of the ideas we have of ourselves. Of what we call the ego.” Before starting on this series, he amassed a motley collection of magazine and newspaper cuttings that grabbed his attention, made notes, and produced collages until it became clear to him what he wanted to paint: the action of flying and the experience of evolving. The artist explained the series in his notes: “Lights is first and foremost about enlightenment; mystical knowledge. And especially receiving or experiencing mystical knowledge: the ecstatic experience.”

The series follows a sequence in which each scene arises as a consequence of the previous one. In a suite of empty landscapes, modern cities and pleasant seaside spas, Andrews paints the solitary progression of a balloon as a symbol of the soul’s voyage in search of liberation until coming to the calm waters of a beach, the chosen landing spot. All these images, infused with poetic and psychological connotations, invite the viewer to reflect on man’s precariousness and his evolution in modern times.

Lights I: Out-of-Doors begins with the pleasant, cheerful experience of a balloon flying over the English countryside; it is the point of departure for attempting to overcome and flee from egotism. In Lights II: The Ship Engulfed, the balloon represents the ego swallowed up by urban life. In Lights III: The Black Balloon, this feeling turns into a somewhat gloomier experience, in which the heavy balloon, painted lead black with a weary appearance, symbolises the effort that achieving enlightenment entails. The central part of the series consists of three works set on the southern coast of England: Lights IV: The Pier and the Road; Lights V: The Pier Pavilion and Lights VI: The Spa. The pleasure pavilions depicted in them symbolise the place where man, liberated from his own ego, can establish relations with others. Self-obsession is beginning to be overcome, and therefore the balloon has disappeared from these large paintings and is only symbolically present outside the composition. The series ends with the most thought-provoking of the images in which the balloon-ego is depicted as a shadow hovering over a beach on which it may be about to land. This last painting is an act of resignation and signifies, to a certain extent, a return to the initial position, following the artist’s realization that the pursuit of enlightenment is a futile effort; enlightenment cannot be found — it appears without warning.

Lights V: The Pier Pavilion in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection is based on a photograph of the Britannia pier in Yarmouth published in the Eastern Evening News on 20 July 1967. Andrews used a grid to transfer the cutting he had kept to canvas, adapting it to the large size. To enhance the metaphorical aspect, the painter gave the picture surface a misty sfumato appearance and decided to spray the waterbased acrylic paint onto the unprimed canvas with a spray gun, thereby accentuating the sensation of a mirage, and to heighten the effect of distancing which he wished to convey. As William Feaver aptly concluded in his study of the Lights series, “painting, Andrews learnt, was the answer.”Andrews confessed in this connection, “I realised that enlightenment, this sudden, beautiful, selfless, consciousness, happened within my own discipline. Each time, in the process of painting a picture, enlightenment happened, over and over again.” For Andrews, painting was no doubt a manner of taking a stand and of representing lost illusions.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Figuración en la posguerra europeaPaintingAcryliccanvas
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Lights V. The Pier Pavilion. Luces V. El pabellón del malecón, 1973
Lights V. The Pier Pavilion
Michael Andrews

©

The estate of Michael Andrews / Tate

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Lights V. The Pier Pavilion. Luces V. El pabellón del malecón, 1973
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Michael Andrews

©

The estate of Michael Andrews / Tate

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