Mechanical Communications

Author: Marijke Peyser

The room in which Conroy Maddox’s figures find themselves has no exit: it is contained within red barriers – totally on the left side and partially on the right. The red base and the red in the figures and in the background evoke an image of an overheated engine room. This impression is further strengthened by the distorted bodies of the figures, which are made up from mechanical components such as gear wheels and screw threads. Disintegration and fragmentation are key in these kinds of ‘machine paintings’, which Maddox made during the Second World War. Instead of the various components and figures interacting with one another and functioning logically, they are isolated and withdrawn. In works like Machine for Spreading Alarm and Despondency (1941) and Little Wind Machine (1941), the ‘machine’ is seen as a weapon of destruction.^[1] It was Maddox’s protest against the destructive potential of the machine in wartime.

Maddox’s fascination with modern art began in Birmingham, when he got hold of Reginald Howard Wilenski’s books on modern French art with illustrations of work by Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst.^[2] The reproductions of these works and the ideas he encountered made an impression on the young artist. It was also in Birmingham that Maddox met the painter John Melville and his brother the art critic Robert Melville in 1934. The contact was made in response to Maddox’s criticism of the lack of interesting displays of art in the city.^[3] Robert Melville’s interest in Surrealism had an effect on Maddox: not only did he grasp every opportunity to talk about the work of Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí, he also set himself the objective of dedicating himself completely to Surrealism and investigating all its aspects. This resulted in his pursuit of automatism without the intervention of reason – one of the core ideas of Surrealism.^[4]

Although Surrealism had already taken off on the European mainland, in the United Kingdom interest in the movement was at best sporadic prior to 1936. In Paris plans were made to bring about a change in this. The New Burlington Galleries in London hosted the International Surrealist Exhibition from 11 June to 4 July 1936. The moving spirits behind it were the artist and collector Roland Penrose and the poet David Gascoyne. Various committees were established to select the works.^[5] The exhibition included work by the European Surrealists, ethnographic objects and work by twenty-three British artists, among them Eileen Agar, Paul Nash and Henry Moore. Maddox decided not to take part because he was not convinced that all the exhibitors were dedicated to Surrealism.^[6]

Maddox is now regarded as an important representative of the later generation of British Surrealist artists and for this reason Mechanical Communications, acquired in 2014, was an interesting acquisition for the collection. It is a work that conveys the sense of war and reflects Maddox’s activities during the war, when he was in a reserved occupation, making drawings for machine parts and aircrafts.