Sam Bassett 'One-And-All'

About

Sam Bassett was born in St Ives and he has recently returned. The town has been his families home since 1695. The artistic traditions of the town had an undoubted influence over him as a young boy, but his Grandfather, a fisherman by trade was also a keen painter, as was his other Grandfather in Newlyn. They supported him with encouragement but also with painting materials.

He now occupies a studio space at the prestigious Porthmeor studios; coincidently sitting above his Grandfather’s former net loft.

His work is autobiographical, cataloguing the day to day of his life with honesty - both humour and pathos. Providing an insight in to his fast paced unique mind, the work displays enormous energy and experiment. His paintings could be described as a ‘psychological cubism’, where the inner and the outer self reveal themselves and coalesce.

Over the last few years his life has had significant highs and lows. Much of his work, writing and research has been an attempt to seek guidance and clarity during this time. The period of lead up to the making of this exhibition, he recalls reading Dante’s Inferno as notable in his attempting to deal with navigating an unfamiliar personal path. This coincided with a rediscovery of the paintings of the Sienese School and in particular Duccio and Botticelli from the Florentine School. Looking at paintings and diagrams benefited Bassett’s greater understanding as he drew ideas from these works and delved deeper in to wider symbolism. He began replicating contemporary versions of the stories illustrated in these works; creating personal parables or parodies, the process bringing a cathartic understanding and balance, and guide to where he wants to be, as a person and an artist.

Some works also take influence from closer to home specifically the artist Peter Lanyon, in particular his work ‘The Yellow Runner’ from 1946. Lanyon painted this having just returned home to St Ives, it is warm, energetic and joyful and Bassett felt an immediate connection. His most recent works imbue a celebratory connection to his home - his landscape, its community and his heritage.

“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.

I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.

I love the great despisers because they are the great reverers and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, but who sacrifice themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the overman’s.

I love him who lives to know, and who wants to know so that the overman may live some day. And thus he wants to go under.

I love him who works and invents to build a house for the overman and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him: for thus he wants to go under.

I love him who loves his virtue, for virtue is the will to go under and an arrow of longing.

I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides over the bridge as spirit.

I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and his catastrophe: for his virtue’s sake he wants to live on and to live no longer.

I love him who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a noose on which his catastrophe may hang.

I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and returns none: for he always gives away and does not want to preserve himself.

I love him who is abashed when the dice fall to make his fortune, and asks, ‘Am I then a crooked gambler?’ For he wants to perish.

I love him who casts golden words before his deeds and always does even more than he promises: for he wants to go under.

I love him who justifies future and redeems past generations: for he wants to perish of the present.

I love him who chastens his god because he loves his god: for he must perish of the wrath of his god.

I love him whose soul is deep, even in being wounded, and who can perish of a small experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is overfull so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things spell his going under.

I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to go under.

I love all those who are as heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the advent of lightning, and, as heralds, they perish.

Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud; but this lightning is called overman.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None’, 1883 - 1885