In the hyperconnected, always-online art world, it is rarer than ever to discover an artist who is exceedingly famous in one country and hardly known in another. This, until recently, was the case for Beryl Cook, the late painter whose rounded, jolly figures found their way onto tea towels and postcards throughout her native England but who remained relatively unknown in the United States. For decades, academics and members of the art-world elite dismissed her work as unserious. Once described by the British comedian Victoria Wood as "Rubens with jokes," Cook is still not represented in the collection of Tate.
This week, the artist’s work is making its West Coast debut with “Beryl Cook Takes Los Angeles,” which runs at the Maybourne Beverly Hills from Feb. 26 through early April. The exhibition—which originated in New York in 2022 at the gallery A Hug From the Art World—spans Cook’s entire 40-year career and makes the case for her as a key figure in British art history who deserves global recognition.
The artist, who died in 2008, specialized in capturing the glamor and pleasure of the mundane: glossed-over eyes at a pub, a gang of giggling women jumping into the back of a black cab, sailors exchanging flirty glances with women at a restaurant. Cook did not start painting until her 40s, but her experience as a showgirl and guest-house operator, as well as her husband’s service in the merchant navy, all inform her jocular artworks, which ooze with humor, honesty, and heart.
Although Cook’s work was never shown abroad during her life, some of her paintings reflect her travels to the Big Apple and Tinseltown. Now, thanks to gallerist Adam Cohen and the Beryl Cook estate, New Yorkers and Angelenos alike can see themselves through her eyes. Ahead of her Los Angeles debut, CULTURED spoke with the British-born Cohen about his long quest to bring Cook’s work to an American audience.
CULTURED: Could you shed light on your process for organizing this exhibition, which presents work spanning five decades?
Adam Cohen: From the moment I started A Hug From The Art World, I wanted to do a Beryl Cook exhibition. To be honest, even before that. Growing up in England, Beryl was very much part of the social fabric. I always loved her work and maybe unlike the establishment I always saw in her work the artists that clearly influenced her, like Stanley Spencer and Edward Burra. Those guys were in the Tate; why was Beryl not? I am not sure why but I think it suited the establishment to pigeonhole Beryl as the naive outsider.
You ask what influenced my decision to show five decades worth of work. It was simple: My aim was to position Beryl as anything but a naive outsider. She had never had an exhibition outside of the U.K. On a whim, I contacted the estate over email explaining my intentions for the exhibition. Their immediate response was a flat no. I wrote them back saying I won't give up that easily. Needless to say, I convinced them.
Any exhibition would have made me happy but it became apparent quickly that based upon the works the family still owned, we could do a comprehensive retrospective with 40-odd paintings, drawings, and archival materials. Success came in the form of a New York Times review. A number of U.K. newspapers got wind of it and wrote about it. The Daily Telegraph posed the rhetorical question, “Why the Americans have fallen for the very British Beryl Cook.”
CULTURED: Your first show of Cook’s work took place in New York. How has the change in location, to LA, affected this next chapter of the exhibition?
Cohen: We placed a number of works from the first exhibition in major private collections and museums, so a few did not make the journey out west. I suppose that was the consequence of doing a good job. The good news is the estate gave me access to a number of additional works, so while the bulk of the exhibition is the same, there are few surprises which have never been exhibited before, including the very early work, The Choir, from 1967, and a totally unusual work painted on a firescreen called Fuchsia Fairies from as late as 1994. These works are for sale in addition to a few others I have negotiated. If the right collector comes along, we have an opportunity to continue to further Beryl's legacy. In addition, the estate has released a special print, Hollywood Cafe, 1989, available exclusively through the Maybourne hotel and A Hug From The Art World.
CULTURED: What new facets of Cook’s work arise in an American context?
Cohen: I slightly tongue-in-cheek told people that it fits somewhere in between Botero and Norman Rockwell. I think it is her popular appeal that helped me get there. But the whole point of doing the exhibitions in the U.S. was for people to draw their own conclusions. In New York, they got it, and I am sure they will in LA. Jackie Collins collected the work, as does Yoko Ono. Beryl celebrated American life, and that is apparent in a number of her works.
CULTURED: Cook started painting in her 40s. This show includes her first-ever painting, along with her last (separated by 42 years). Can you speak to the evolution of her craft over the years?
Cohen: She just got better. She already had a life before she started painting, living all over the world. While on a 10-year stint living in Africa, she painted her first painting, Hungover, 1962. There is an instinctive rawness to the early work which is more [Henri] Rousseau than Burra, but she simply improved her technique. Her ability to capture the nuances of British culture depicting familiar scenes that lay just beneath the surface in perfect detail remained consistent throughout the decades.
CULTURED: What’s most surprised you about Cook’s oeuvre over the course of organizing these two exhibitions?
Cohen: What I saw in Beryl has been so far confirmed. She is one of Britain's most major artists and she is now getting the further credit she deserves. It would be a nice surprise if Tate acquired work from “Beryl Cook Takes Los Angeles.” We have met all other aims and goals thus far and for that I am very grateful.
“Beryl Cook Takes Los Angeles" is on view through March 31, 2024 at The Maybourne Beverly Hills.
