It’s full steam ahead for the anorak artists

Apr 21 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

MICHAEL PALIN surveyed his audience with approval. He revealed that he knew the gathering at Liverpool’s Walker clashed with another at Goodison Park between Everton and Chelsea.

“It’s a great sight to see a few discerning punters have chosen the art gallery option over the other,” he grinned – and this was before he learned that his preferred team of Chelski had won.

But, instead of a trip up Gwladys Street, the Palin love of trains demanded his attention last Thursday evening. This emotional fixation was inherited, “perhaps my father’s earliest and most lasting legacy, as we stood together watching trains, trailing their plumes of smoke, the bustle and thrust of the pistons.”

That’s why, as a deeply committed enthusiast, he was opening the Walker Art Gallery’s big 2008 exhibition, Art in the Age of Steam, for free.

There was something else, too, that he wanted to get off his chest as he looked around at Liverpool’s cognoscenti: “I wish some of my detractors from Birkdale School could see me now, instead of at the end of Sheffield Midland station platform, with my soggy pork pie and paperbag.”

Then his voice began to rise to a crescendo: “Here we have some of the greatest names in art, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Pissarro and Hopper.”

At this point, he actually started jumping up and down and waving his arms: “And do you know what? They were all train-spotting anoraks. It proves that those who like trains do not lack some vital growth hormones that’s left us in a pre-pubescent cul-de-sac.”

There were so many treasures on display in the collection that he could not choose a favourite. About the great US photographer, O Winston Link, he mused, “he’d have to be a train man with a name like that”.

William Powell Frith’s epic panorama of Paddington Station, with numerous platform mini-dramas, he thought “a fine social study” and Andrew Russell’s 1869 photograph of the US east and west railheads finally meeting was the embodiment of the railway’s triumph.

Or how about the post-Freudian psychological age with their under-current of sexual anxiety, such as Delvaux’s naked women, one gesturing in a third class compartment, another lounging over the buffer stops.

“They’re acceptable, but confusing to a whole generation of railway enthusiasts. Yes, I’d have loved to have gone train spotting with Paul Delvauz.

“No other form of transport has inspired so many artists. Would Monet have painted a motorway, what would Hopper have made of a service station? Actually, the sense of social isolation and alienation would appeal to him.

“Would anyone want to paint Heathrow’s Terminal 5? Perhaps Picasso could do the baggage system and Munch the passengers waiting” – cue miming a Munchish silent scream.

Keen to impress that it all started here (meaning the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, rather than pathologically hysterical citizens) he left us with a depressing thought.

“The Liverpool & Manchester was the first double-track passenger railway in the world. It was an unstoppable force. In my lifetime, the railways lost their way. The Victorians had Stephenson and Brunel; I had Beeching and Thatcher. But as we see here, the railways enabled and inspired.”

And it’s an extremely fine inheritance and one that we can use to boost our cultural standing, as this outstanding, world-class exhibition demonstrates.

It is co-curated by the Walker’s former boss, Julian Treuherz, and Ian Kennedy, the latter hails from Marford Hill, near Rossett, just south of Chester. Ian has a transatlantic viewpoint about Liverpool. He currently is curator of European art at Kansas City’s prestigious Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

“Decades ago, we were one of those families who stopped coming to Liverpool as it went downhill. It’s two years since I was last in Liverpool and it’s much improved. People shouldn’t be cynical about Capital of Culture as it’s already making a positive difference in Liverpool.

“Spain has poured money into culture and its economy has overtaken Italy. Kansas City has huge civic pride and everyone there benefits, Liverpool should follow suit.”

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk