| Summary: | This essay concerns a group of drawings made and exhibited in 1930 by L. S. Lowry in Ancoats, then a notorious (and pictorially unpromising) Manchester slum. Though many are now lost, we know enough about those that survive to say something about the representational project they exemplify. What does it mean to draw a slum? Lowry, one of the few artists to take up this question, adopted a notably uninflected manner, descriptive, but not dramatic. His images depict, but do not preach, adopting a reserve that spoke to and of their local audience, the founders and patrons of the Manchester University Settlement. Hitherto unpublished documents establish this context, when studied alongside a wide range of other materials. These include contemporary maps and photographs, social and urban histories, and theories of drawing and knowledge.
|
|---|
