Andrew Lanyon: Von Ribbentrop in St. Ives – Art and War in the Last Resort 

Andrew Lanyon, Still Life with Lump of Uranium, 2000

Over three years artist, writer and filmmaker Andrew Lanyon created a densely rich and elaborate narrative project in both book and exhibition form. Comprising paintings, drawings, mechanical vignettes, sculptures, artefacts and texts, this gesamtkunstwerk proposes an alternative reading of events based on the historical facts, episodes and encounters that stem from German Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop’s brief visit to Cornwall in 1937. Throughout Lanyon’s multi-layered presentation, idiosyncratic parallels are drawn between the threatened Nazi invasion of Cornwall and the encroaching dominance of abstraction over realism in modernist art.
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