Introduction I Visiting information and Events I Room Guide I Further Reading

The Deer Park, 1962
Tate © Estate of Michael Andrews

During the early 1960s Andrews's subject matter turned increasingly to the behaviour of people interacting in social groups. In part these developments reflected his own lifestyle. Around this time Andrews's social circle in London included Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Bruce Bernard and John Deakin as well as friends from the Slade. The celebrated Soho drinking club, The Colony Room, was a favourite haunt and is the subject of one of Andrews's best known paintings (no. 16) which is displayed in this room.

Andrews was also an avid party-goer. Although shy, he was nevertheless highly sociable. He both enjoyed and was fascinated by parties, seeing them as an occasion to observe one of the things that most interested him: human behaviour. However, the parties depicted in The Deer Park 1962 (no.18), All Night Long 1963-4 (no.20) and the major triptych, Good and Bad at Games 1964-8 (no.21) are inventions: convivial situations staged in the artist' s imagination. These fantasy parties allowed Andrews to celebrate and contemplate certain social situations and, thus distanced, to explore his response to them.

Good and Bad at Games (the title refers to the 'games' people play in social situations) shows three stages in the course of an imagined party. The painting is unusual in Andrews's Ïuvre in that the human form is subject to distortion. The artist shows the waxing and waning of the party-goers' mood as a result of their experiences over the course of the evening. Some of the partygoers get bigger and more dominant as the evening progresses, while others fade away completely.

The party paintings are complemented by several smaller paintings - studies made for a final (but never completed) party painting which would have included various contemporary celebrities - as well as his major commissioned painting, The Lord Mayor's Reception 1966-9 (no. 22).

Next Room