CONROY MADDOX (BRITISH, 1912-2005) §
THE CONQUEST, 1977
£4,000
Auction: 27 March 2019 from 13:00 GMT
Description
signed and dated (lower right) and titled (to reverese), oil on canvas
Dimensions
121cm x 93cm (47.6in x 36.5in)
Footnote
Exhibited:
Conroy Maddox, Camden Arts Centre, London, 17 January-5 March 1978, no. 104
Note:
This work belongs to a major phase in Maddox's oeuvre inspired by the investigations into insanity carried out in the nineteenth century by Jean-Martin Charcot at the Parisian Salpêtrière hospital. Charcot was responsible for novel ideas about mental illness and its treatment, particularly in the sphere of hysteria, which, at the time, baffled medical thinking. Sigmund Freud, who had studied under Charcot between 1885 and 1886, was particularly struck by his mentor's investigations into what he termed 'the most enigmatic of all nervous diseases'. Maddox was similarly mesmerised by Charcot's ideas and the photographs of his experiments, regarding them as 'poetic statements'. The art critic Robert Melville believed that Maddox had been deeply motivated by what he knew of Charcot, and also that his paintings were direct references to the Salpêtrière: 'He no doubt remembers the assertion made by Breton and Aragon, in connection with Dr. Charcot's experiments and observations, that "hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon and may in all respects be considered as a supreme means of expression", and C.M. may even be attempting to piece things together in a state of experimental hysteria'. (Robert Melville, catalogue, Grabowski Gallery, London, 1963). Maddox himself admitted that he 'became obsessed with the Hospital of the Salpêtrière, that grand asylum of human misery, where [...] the experiments and observations of hysteria carried out by Charcot revealed a means of expression akin to what the surrealists later called convulsive beauty'.
In The Conquest two young girls in white nightdresses are seen alone in the internal courtyard of a prison-like edifice. One girl wanders aimlessly, while the other lies lifeless on the chequered paving. There is a door, but it only leads to the interior of a practically windowless building. The sense of incarceration is overwhelming. Beyond the brick-walled complex there is nothing but an expanse of barren, snow-covered landscape. Maddox's Salpêtrière is an eerie place from which there is no escape.
We are grateful to Dr. Silvano Levy for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.