ANYTHING BUT DULL: The Life And Art Of Jeff Nuttall
About Anything But Dull
Artworks hosted the book launch for:
ANYTHING BUT DULL: The Life and Art of Jeff Nuttall
on Thursday 24th November 2022, 6.30-8pm.
The event included wine, soft drinks, nibbles, entertaining speeches, artworks by Jeff Nuttall and a video projection featuring his television and film appearances, as well as the chance to buy a signed copy of the book by the author, James Charnley.
Press Release
Announcing the PUBLICATION and BOOK LAUNCH of the first, full length biography of the legendary performer, poet, artist, musician, teacher, actor and provocateur JEFF NUTTALL
During his lifetime (1933 -2004) Jeff Nuttall’s creative genius found expression in radical, insurrectionary artforms while his flamboyant lifestyle was legendary. Nuttall left a trail of anecdotes wherever he went in his pursuit of total freedom of expression, a pursuit in which nothing was forbidden, except to be dull. From childhood traumas to revolutionary acts, through triumphs, defeats and resurrections the author JAMES CHARNLEY tells Nuttall’s story in all its intense singularity. Based on over eighty interviews and meticulous archive research Anything But Dull shows just what made Jeff Nuttall such a pivotal, provocative and important cultural figure.
Anything But Dull: The Life and Art of Jeff Nuttall by James Charnley is published by ACADEMICA PRESS, Washington DC and London. https://www.academicapress.com/
Available on Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells, Barnes and Noble and all leading booksellers in the UK, USA and internationally.
Reviews
This is an unflinching biography. Anything But Dull uncorks an irrepressible anarchist who charmed with his overwhelming talents and broke all boundaries as artist and writer, poet and teacher. Nuttall led a life fuelled by booze and sex, yet was ruled by a critical intellect that set him apart from fellow conspirators. James Charnley writes with a deep admiration for his legacy in all its provocations.
Jan Herman, Writer and Editor
“What art of any value has ever been produced by craven conformists?”, asks James Charnley in this engaging biography of extravert polymath artist and activist, Jeff Nuttall. Charnley attends to this question through a detailed exposition of his subject’s morally-charged philosophy of art and life, showing that Nuttall’s visceral, aesthetic insurrection simply knocks the spots off the work of many of today’s so-called radical artists. If you want to grasp the whys and wherefores of the Counterculture and of one of its seminal contributors, Anything but Dull is the book you need to read.
Peter Suchin, Artist, Critic and Curator
It is impossible to imagine telling the story of Jeff Nuttall without giving at least some offence, for that is what Nuttall’s entire life was about. Offence without defence. Truth without regret. Life without looking back. This book is a must for anyone interested in understanding the motivations of the legend that was Jeff Nuttall. A Herculean and much needed book you won’t want to put down.
Rozemin Keshvani, author-curator, Better Books Better Bookz, Art Anarchy Apostasy
Jeff was a teacher with a schoolboy’s naughtiness, conventionally unconventional, who gave me the hat off his head but never paid the rent, the funniest man I have ever met. Charnley has perfectly pinned down the big butterfly that Nuttall was, feeding on the flowers of art and literature, and thereby adding to the colour and movement of life.
Patrick Hughes, Artist
Nuttall was a paradoxical figure of great complexity and contradiction. James Charnley conveys this with alacrity in this extensively researched biography, through an exhaustive excavation of Nuttall's personal and artistic relationships alongside political and cultural contexts. Moreover, Charnley draws out the raw physicality and obsessional transgressive sexual intensity (and often purposeful obscenity and offensiveness) of his subject's extensive body of artworks, writings and performances, whilst never flinching from its vulgarity or, indeed, the accusations of misogyny and sexism that troubled Nuttall in his lifetime.
Dr Gillian Whiteley, Loughborough University
About the Author
James Charnley is the author of Creative License and Art and Adversity. He studied Fine Art and Art History at Manchester, Chelsea and Leeds Polytechnic. During a peripatetic career he learnt furniture making and set design, worked in broadcast television and film animation, scripted and produced videos and, most recently, worked on joinery commissions. Such occupations funded his writing and other creative projects. James Charnley lives in Preston with his partner Louise and a lazy, ginger cat named Rodger.