MICHAEL BRICK: OBITUARY

MICHAEL BRICK: OBITUARY

This is a brief summary of the obituary of Michael Brick by Frances Spalding that was published in the Guardian newspaper of 10^th October 2014.

Michael Brick

The artist Michael Brick was born on 11^th May 1946: he died on 22^nd August 2014.  He worked primarily with abstract or emblematic shapes.

His style was minimalist.  His works are more like objects than paintings: their authority when on the wall is undeniable.  Brick’s work stands in the tradition of European constructivism: it is exhibited widely in the UK.

Michael Brick was born in the English Midlands and at the age of 13 moved with his family to south Wales: his father was a Welsh radical.  Brick inherited his father’s liberal outlook and staunch Labour party views.

Brick began university at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1964 – a contemporary of Stephen Buckley, Bryan Ferry, Tim Head, Mark Lancaster and Sean Scully, all of whom were taught by Richard Hamilton.   After graduating, Brick served a further year as a Hatton teaching fellow; he was committed to abstraction.  This led to immediate success as an artist, being associated with several London galleries. 

In 1970 Brick married the cultural historian Jill Steward, and they had a daughter Emily.  The marriage ended in 1992.  Brick returned to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1986 as a half-time lecturer: his relationship with students was good.  In 1993 he married Manucha Lisboa, a lecturer in the modern languages department.

In 2001 Brick formed a working partnership with the printmaker Kip Gresham.   Their most significant work was The Size of What I See (2010) – ‘a set of 12 prints aligned with poems by Fernando Pessoa (writing as Alberto Caeiro) and which had been translated by Brick’s wife Manucha’. 

Spalding writes: ‘The cruciform shape is a recurrent motif in Brick’s work. Aware of the essentially non-referential nature of Brick’s aesthetic, as well as his complete aversion to any form of religious belief, Gresham asked Brick whether he was concerned that this might be read as Christian symbolism.  “How could it not?” Brick replied, admitting an undeniable connection to religion in his work, because religion had influenced art in the past, giving to the cruciform, and other shapes and words, an inextricable set of associations’.