Arthur Dooley's Last Studio Ransacked To Make Way For Flats. Its a Disgrace. Exclusive.

How long can Liverpool keep on losing links with its past and its history.

Arthur Dooley was a sculptor that I believe could not have come from anywhere other than here in my home town of Liverpool.

I fought to try and save herbert Tyson Smith's sculpture studio at the Bluecoat, predicting it would become a cheap and nasty gift shop. Guess what has happened.

There next to the garden was an evocative and inspiring glimpse of a man who helped form modern Liverpool. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

He sculpted many of the reliefs on buildings such as Martins Bank Building with its slave iconocraphy and a lot of monuments around the town.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/should-herbert-tyson-smith-sculpture.html

His stone carving that was on display at the Old Post office has been restored and is on show in the Met Quarter which now stands on the site. It may be slightly tucked away from the main drag but none the less with a little seaching you can easily find it. Herbert Tyson smith may have been accepted by the establishment and Liverpools merchant classes. Arthur Dooley never was although most of his work was for the clergy who also had a rennaisance in fortune after the second world war, where they were rebuilding and modernising building some godawful structures along the way.

Now another chance goes begging.

It was Arthur Dooley, I am led to believe who coined the phrase Paddy's Wigwam the Metropolitan cathedral of Christ The King, that is now becoming part of the accepted landscape, mainly by people who dont recall that it was Jerry built and leaked like a collander and needed extensive repairs within years.

Dooley was a character that did not hold back his punches, literally being a bit of a boxer himself he came to blows during one argument with ..........in The Everyman..........now demolished to make way for the New Everyman........isnt that a sexcist term these days, shouldnt it be called the Everyperson.

 I know he would have been fighting against its demolition if he was alive.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/arthur-dooley-bull-piece-of-week.html

He would also have put up a good fight to save Tyson-Smiths Studio.

Now his last studio in Seal street has been ransacked by cretinous property developers right next to the psuedo Liverpool Acadamy of arts that held a fantastic Dooley exhibtion in 2008.

The Acadamy of arts is a pale shadow of its original form that Dooley helped to recreate but none the less it had finance to stage a wonderful exhibition.

June Lornie who runs the present Acadamy has not been able to do anything to inform the public as to the impending disaster that has now unfolded I am informed regrettably, due to ill health.

So no one knew until it was too late.

Whether or not the Do Littles of this city would have cared anyway. 

Whether it would have interupted their Frapaccino lifestyle and they could have helped save it, is now hypathetical, or maybe just pathetical. 

A sad epitaph is now that no-one except the Dooley speculators care. Some of those speculators pretending to be interested in art that wouldn't know a decent sculpture if it fell on them. 

Dooley wasn't the best sculptor around.

 In fact he wasn't even a good sculptor, he got it wrong more times than he got it right. 

But he had something inside him that drove passion which is what we all are now familiar with. 

He fought for  things he believed in.

 Its not his fault that in Brain Drain Liverpool he didn't have a tradition of artistic training for the working class and he became a metalworker first and then used his experience to manufacture emotion by default. Dooleys son Paul told me that upon his fathers death in 1994 the phone never stopped ringing with people who wanted to buy his work, sensing a upward trend they now wanted to buy his art, when for decades he had struggled to pay the bills.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/arthur-dooley-centurion-piece-of-week.html

This is his studio almost intact at 34-36 Seel Street he was a active member of the Liverpool Academy. He campaigned to have the right for Liverpool artists to show their wares outside the Bluecoat. He is slowly being recognised as an important man active in town planning not afraid to have his say.

Remember Him.

I warned about this years ago. It is a sad day when one of Liverpool's ebulient characters studio is ransacked to turn it into …......flats.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/arthur-dooley-remember-him-and-save-his.html

Arthur Dooley Centurion-Piece of the Week.

Arthur Dooley was commissioned  to do the sculptures in the Church of St Marys RC, in the town of Leyland.
Which at the time was famous for making buses.

 This small town was brave enough to look at taking the piety of the cruxifiction and making a contemporary statement by adopting a controversial untrained artist.

http://www.cleo.net.uk/resources/displayframe.php?src=640/consultants_resources/religiouseduc/stations/stationsSmp.html

Dooley was the man of the time, he was on This Is Your Life.

This was where he came up with the idea for the faceless Centurion.

Henry Moore was originally asked, but was too busy and it was said that he recommended that Dooley was given the job.

Dooley was in fact commissioned to sculpt the Stations of the cross in bronze.

In 1965 a BBC programme directed by Eric Davidson titled A Modern Passion was made.

They filmed Dooley talking about his work.

He describes how he came up with the concept for the faceless Centurion One of the most remarkable works of contemporary religious work in Britain.
 Davidson says. " Fourteen scenes of the journey. From the judgement seat of Pontius Pilot to the entombment at Mount Golgotha" he continues  “Here are no dull scenes" the narrator states "placed in the openings of V shaped pillars are cast and welded figures, here there are no dull personages, here the holy has invaded the secular, become one with it and it hits us in the pit of the stomach, here is a modern Everyman”

Dooley says, talking about his idea of the faceless Centurion in his own Liverpudlian directness.

“This goes on right through history, they lose their faces, on Panzer tanks, or the Roman soldiers were in armour.
This loss of the personality man becomes a unit, with a sort of a dictator, and an authority, and this obedience to authority, he is the be all and end all, and there doesn't seem any real personal thing about it. Its from the old fascist concept, this soldier business. Its completely unnatural to us and I think eventually soldiers will be done away with well we hope so”.  

Watch the YouTube video above for his full explanation about his concept. 

I particulary love the way he used his own experiences, what he saw on the streets.

 The two women on the street watching a demo and the Echo lad with a placard selling the paper proclaiming the news "Christ Dies John Pleads Peace". This is so touching and so, makes us able to relate to it with our own eyes as if it happened here, before us.

My Centurion (pictured above) is 76cm high and made of bronze with some additions and signed AD 74.

I sold a Bull by Dooley some time ago.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/arthur-dooley-bull-piece-of-week.html

I have been banging on about saving his last studio for some time now.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/arthur-dooley-remember-him-and-save-his.html

Sean Rice-Sculptor.

 Sean Brian Rice-A Sculptor And A Very Clever Man.

It is a rare occasion, that you see a Sean Rice sculpture, that is unless you are in The Metropolitan Cathedral up on Mount Pleasant, that Sean Rice's contemporary Arthur Dooley christened Paddy's Wigwam.
 Inside there are works by him. The Stations of the Cross.

I don't think of him as religious as Dooley in fact his work seems to be made up of more of devils and horned demons not angels. But he was commissioned by the architect Gibbard to decorate the interior with contemporary but religious relief.

Mr Rice has a way of expressing himself that at times may not be pretty, but always workmanlike and craftsmanlike.

His work always has a quality of manufacture, that astounds me. He was able to take metals mainly copper and bronze and transform it into movement with heat and the hammer by which he forged.

In doing so he also forged his reputation amongst people who know how difficult it is to acquire his skills, those that know are those who understand that these skills cannot be acquired overnight.
Instead it takes years, decades maybe to be able to make and cut a flat piece of copper and bend it, so as it looks like the lightest length of drape or ribbon billowing in the breeze. He made tough tensile metal flow like water. making an art of showing the flow of a welders torch as decoration. He poured in as much oxygen into that flaming torch as into his fertile mind that dreamt up the landscape where he frequented.

In reality he worked from a workshop so far removed from the glamour of his creations that, must have been, at time resembling the hobs of hell with fire and brimstone curdling in the red hot air.
This fiery world was where he was at home.

He loved the open air and his motorbike, going off on long journeys to the continent.

No-one has his style even though some foolish writers of the recent past lump him and Arthur Dooley together.

Dooley's sculpture was in another league, four levels below that of Sean Rice. Where most of Dooley's work is lumpen and flat lacking movement The work of Sean Rice rides.

They should not be viewed in tandem. They are chalk and cheese and I would prefer Cheddar.

So if you have a piece of work by Mr Sean Brian Rice give me a call and let me know how much you want for it.

Arthur Dooley Bull-Piece of the Week.

 I used to think Arthur Dooley was a bad sculptor......that was until I saw this piece that I had to buy and strong it is.
I then wrote up his biography in simple form and in doing so I began to understand him more.
Born in Liverpool in 1929, Dooley worked as a welder on the Ark Royal.


He was working, tirelessly, around Liverpool, right up until his death in 1994. He was a boxer and once came to blows in the Everyman with Arthur Ballard an art teacher who had taught Stewart Sutcliffe.

He created numerous religious figures in polished bronze using unorthodox techniques and unusual interpretations. The Black Christ on Princes Avenue being one, that went down like a lead balloon.

He buttonholed Hesseltine after the Toxteth Riots and pleaded with him “Don’t let them knock down the Albert Dock”.

His first sculpture was made in an army prison in Egypt where he served a sentence for going AWOL. Conflicting reports, one saying he tried to join the PLO.

Upon his unceremonious return from the army, he joined a drawing class at the Whitechapel gallery in London.

He was then employed as a janitor. His job included clearing up after the sculptors and setting up materials, then he began to make his own work...using scraps of metal left over.

His lead cast piece of a crucified Jesus received a good response around the college. From these humble beginnings, in 1962 he exhibited at St Martins Gallery, a stones throw from the college where he had worked. Cast a bronze bull for London weekend’s south bank building. He met the great art critic Greenberg and made several appearances on the "Tonight" programme. I saw an interview he made with Bill Shankly. He dubbed the new Cathedral Paddy’s Wigwam. He was featured on This is Your Life.

When Henry Moore, overworked turned down the Stations of the Cross at the Benedictine Community of Ampleforth Monastery Dooley took up the commission.

Later he would say the shipyard was really my art school.

Deeply concerned about social problems of his day. He was a member of the communist party. He was always an outspoken and immensely religious letting the materials he worked with speak. His workshop 34-36 Seel Street is intact. It needs preserving.

He was a active member of the Liverpool Academy.
He campaigned to have the right for Liverpool artists to show their wares outside the Bluecoat. He is slowly being recognised as an important man active in town planning not afraid to have his say.


Remember Him.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dooley


http://www.arthurdooley.org/biography.html

http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/dooley/dooleyarthur.html

His work has been going up at an amazing rate...........it now seems he is trendy something he would have hated I think. It is now not being afforded by the people who deserve his work.
 I also think that some of those buying his work driving his prices up are more likely to be investors who would not know a good sculpture from a bad sculpture. It should not be that someone owns a Dooley, but do they have a good one, because there are many not so good ones out there.
His work can be confused with Brian(I am now a native American Indian) Burges and Sean Rice.
 If you study his work you can feel his influences.
His pupil Stephen Broadbent has mad a fortune churning out Dooley inspired works to undescerning patrons with more money than sense.

Arthur Dooley-Remember Him and Save His Studio.

The highlight of 2008, in Liverpool as European Capital of Culture, for me was not a pseudo Klimt expo or a giant spider, but an exhibition staged in the Liverpool Academy. This did not advertise Vienna; it bowed its head with a retrospective of one of Liverpool’s characters, by people who knew him. Someone who dripped passion, a self taught man, who proclaimed himself as an Irish Liverpudlian and was proud of his tough working class background. He made the sculpture Four Lads Who Shook The World in Mathew Street. He was, Arthur Dooley, and how I admire him.
I had sold several pieces of his work and I thought some of it was bad. But one was an amazing bronze Bull on a marble base AD75, that I never was able to part with. Sometimes it’s not about money. This was a journey into the thinking mans mind. An antagonist who took on the establishment and proved he was cleverer than them. For which he was revered, and shunned.
Born in Liverpool in 1929, Dooley worked as a welder on the Ark Royal.
He was working, tirelessly, around Liverpool, right up until his death in 1994. He was a boxer and once came to blows in the Everyman with Arthur Ballard an art teacher who had taught Stewart Sutcliffe.
He created numerous religious figures in polished bronze using unorthodox techniques and unusual interpretations. The Black Christ on Princes Avenue being one, that went down like a lead balloon.
He buttonholed Hesseltine after the Toxteth Riots and pleaded with him “Don’t let them knock down the Albert Dock”.
His first sculpture was made in an army prison in Egypt where he served a sentence for going AWOL. Conflicting reports, one saying he tried to join the PLO.
Upon his unceremonious return from the army, he joined a drawing class at the Whitechapel gallery in London.
He was then employed as a janitor. His job included clearing up after the sculptors and setting up materials, then he began to make his own work...using scraps of metal left over.
His lead cast piece of a crucified Jesus received a good response around the college. From these humble beginnings, in 1962 he exhibited at St Martins Gallery, a stones throw from the college where he had worked. Cast a bronze bull for London weekend’s south bank building. He met the great art critic Greenberg and made several appearances on the "Tonight" programme. I saw an interview he made with Bill Shankly. He dubbed the new Cathedral Paddy’s Wigwam. He was featured on This is Your Life.
When Henry Moore, overworked turned down the Stations of the Cross at the Benedictine Community of Ampleforth Monastery Dooley took up the commission.
Later he would say the shipyard was really my art school.

Deeply concerned about social problems of his day. He was a member of the communist party. He was always an outspoken and immensely religious letting the materials he worked with speak. His workshop in Seel Street is intact. It needs preserving.

Arthur Called this sculpture THE TOWN PLANNER and I have to say it has a resemblence to the current planning officer the Riechmarshal Nigel Lee, who has done more damage than the Luftwaffe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dooley

http://www.arthurdooley.org/biography.html

http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/dooley/dooleyarthur.html

This is his studio almost intact at 34-36 Seel Street he was a active member of the Liverpool Academy. He campaigned to have the right for Liverpool artists to show their wares outside the Bluecoat. He is slowly being recognised as an important man active in town planning not afraid to have his say.

Remember Him.