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The year the pope died and Liverpool won the European Cup
16 September - 8 October 2005
"1978 was the year two Popes died and that Liverpool F.C. won the
European Cup. I was living in Rome having won the Prix de Rome scholarship
– a young student living in a beautiful studio. During my two years
in Rome I wandered the streets fascinated by the city, its culture, and
society; I spent hours studying the Quattrocentro and Renaissance paintings
in that city, all of which played a role in the development of my own
paintings. When I returned to Rome this year though I recognised something
which had been an even greater influence on me.
On this most recent trip I decided to visit to the Baths of Diocletian.
In the central courtyard, as in lots of places in Rome, there are on display
many fragments of Roman sculpture dating back over two thousand years.
These sculptures ranged from complete or near complete classical figures
to barely recognisable, partially eroded fragments. What struck me on
that visit was that imbued in all of these sculptures and fragments, irrespective
of how abstract, was the human presence.
These sculptures are of their time and yet in a strange kind of way they
also echo the needs of our own time and all times. These pieces, gathered
from many generations of sculptors, reflect the whole spectrum of the
human condition; of the beautiful and the ugly, of love and of hate, of
fear and of joy. Looking at these sculptures in the courtyard one recognises
the need of the human race to glorify certain of its members (celebrities)
– literally putting them on a pedestal, also the desire of successive
generations to leave a mark of their own existence by accommodating the
fear of mortality on one hand and celebrating the achievement of human
expression on the other.
For twenty years or more these elements of fragment and juxtaposition
have also been unconsciously the driving force in my painting. I use fragments
of figures indicating a human presence, these fragments often appearing
in different picture planes within the painting; a way of showing two
or more timescales, places or emotional states of being.
What I didn't realise until my visit to the Baths of Diocletian was where
those elements had come from. I found out in July 2005 - the year Pope
John Paul II died and Liverpool won the European cup - again."
Peter Griffin London August 2005
Peter Griffin Home Page
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My crazy youth oil on canvas 213 x 168cm 2005
Satellite of Love
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