Editor, Stephanie Burns, interviewed by Laurence Fuller, UK editor and designer.
Art Influence is an arts journal that will be a premier forum for critical debate on an international scale, by commissioning writing by eminent people on culturally and politically significant events here and overseas; by including on the website an archive containing all of the lectures hosted by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation over the last two decades, and by gradually introducing on its pages the writing of Peter Fuller.
Art Influence is run by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation, PFMF, a charitable trust registered with the Charity Commission in England. The Foundation was set up in 1991 to benefit the arts and culture community. Its stated aim is the promotion for the public benefit of the arts and in particular the arts of painting and sculpture; through an annual lecture and the publication and dissemination of the results of research and educational materials. The annual lecture has been running for seventeen years now and has been given in the past at such illustrious venues as Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Tate Modern, University College London and this year the Peter Fuller Memorial Lecture will be given at The Royal College of Art, London, in October. The previous lecturers have been David Matthews (composer), Robert Natkin (artist), Roger Scruton (philosopher), Howard Jacobson (novelist), William Tucker (artist), Hilton Kramer (writer/editor), Timothy Hyman (artist), Diana Petherbridge (artist), George Walden (writer), John Berger (novelist), Dr Julian Stallabrass (writer), Rudi Fuchs (curator/museum director/writer), James Elkins (art historian), Tal R (artist), Luc Tuymans (artist) and Martin Maloney (artist).
As the founder of the trust I worked as the Chairman of Trustees from 1991 until 1998, when Roy Oxlade took over from me as Chairman. In 2000 Roy Oxlade started a pamphlet, Blunt Edge, for the benefit of ‘the friends’ of the PFMF, a small group of people who donated money annually to the charity and in return were invited to the annual lecture. The pamphlet was published annually and handed out at the lecture, or sent to those requesting a copy; at a later date it was uploaded onto the internet. With the retirement of Roy Oxlade and the other non family member trustees last November, Peter’s family, myself (his widow), Laurence Fuller (our son) and Sylvia Turner (Peter’s daughter) decided to rename and relaunch Blunt Edge as Art Influence, an online magazine for the benefit of the arts and culture community. A term for non family member trustees of the PFMF is three years, with a maximum of six years being optional, many of the trustees looked after the trust for considerably longer. One in particular was Professor Anthony O’Hear who was one of the original trustees, including myself, Professor Roger Scruton, Dr Charles Rycroft and John Bellany. Professor O’Hear remained a trustee for sixteen years, an incredible service and very much appreciated by Peter’s family, as are all the other trustees who have served the foundation with their time, given of their experience with great care and good judgement.
At Art Influence we would like to encourage new ways of looking at and discussing art, to move criticism from the track it is following, one where the primary concerns are journalism, revenue, academia or promotion, to allow a more developed argument and promote a deeper understanding of what the artist is trying to communicate. Phil Day in his column, Nevermind, reminds us that being able to question what we are looking at is one of our fundamental rights. Every person looking at a work of art should ponder the artist’s intentions and try and work out what he or she is trying to say, and once they have worked that out then decide whether what was being communicated was worthwhile to them personally.
Our first issue has started the way we intend to continue, with insightful articles about artists and exhibitions we think matter. We are incorporating the texts from the previous lectures, as time allows and the writers gradually give us copyright permission to do so. We are also incorporating the writing of Peter Fuller, and hope in the future to be able to add some taped recordings of his speeches, his letters, diaries and documentaries.
Peter’s full archive was given to the Tate Gallery in 1992, it is one of the largest archives the institution holds and is available to the public for research. Peter wrote over one hundred and forty diaries in his lifetime, they cover his personal life, the art world, and they document his intellectual life and thoughts over a twenty five year period. So far, besides Peter himself, I am the only person who has read them. Each diary is numbered and each daily entry is written in two parts; the section on his personal life and the art world is very legible and the section on his daily thinking and influences is, if not illegible, considerably more difficult to read fluently. In time we hope to add interesting sections of the diaries to the pages of Art Influence. We have some very intriguing polemical arguments in the form of letters, both from the correspondent and from Peter. All of the original manuscripts of books, articles and lectures are in the archive at the Tate Gallery; we hope to encourage students to use the archive for research and study purposes.
At the moment subscription to Art Influence is free, so please subscribe via email so that you can be sent information about the following issues of Art Influence and the Peter Fuller Memorial Lecture. We do accept and encourage donations to the charity, our running costs are low, as all of the contributors to Art Influence have waved their usual fees, as have those who own the copyright of the images used to illustrate the articles, we thank them all for their generosity; and, of course, the trustees don’t receive any financial benefit. There are associated costs to running any organisation and we appreciate any donation to help with these costs; cheques can be sent to: The Trustees of the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation, c/- Sylvia Turner, 30 Springfield Avenue, London N10 3SU, UK.
We are hoping to reconnect with a number of people, the artists Peter Fuller wrote about, the writers who contributed to Modern Painters during Peter Fuller’s editorship and the interested public who were inspired by the earlier issues of Modern Painters.
