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7 O I L P A I N T I N G S KEITH VAUGHAN MYTH, MORTALITY AND THE MALE FIGURE The work of Keith Vaughan is generally associated with unidentified male nudes and bathers in landscapes. The informed enthusiast and the discerning collector know well that he was also a painter of original landscapes and still-life subjects. However, Vaughan also employed the male nude as a vehicle with which he could explore more profound themes concerning feelings of isola- tion, the nature of time and the brevity of human existence. In doing this he frequently drew on mythological sources, Homeric Legend, Virgil and religious fables. Both Christianity and Classical antiquity furnished him with diverse subjects and, characteristically, he approached them from acute and unexpected angles. On August 2, 1960, a few months before his first visit to Greece, Vaughan quoted the following Homeric passage from The Iliad in his journal: As is the life of the leaves, so is that of men. The wind scatters the leaves to the ground. The vigourous for- est puts forth roots, & they grow in the spring season. Soon one generation of men comes & another ceases. He added a few lines later: The whole problem of life & death, which surely was an invention of the Christian Church, or perhaps of Christ himself, seems not to have existed for the Greeks. The passionate delight, yet acceptance of mortality. All the absurdity of the Romantic protest & its aftermath. The true 'homme revolté' was the civilized Greek. Many of Vaughan's paintings which make up this exhibition are concerned with mythology, mor- tality and, of course, the male nude. The following commentaries are accompanied by apposite quotations from his notebooks and recorded interviews. GERARD HASTINGS Left: Vaughan in his Belsize Park Studio, 1964 (photograph, Tom Smith)

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