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 Today's Independent carries quite a long feature on Lenkiewicz. The tone is set by the article's tagline: "He had thousands of lovers, faked his own demise, and kept an embalmed corpse in his home. Yes, Robert Lenkiewicz was one of the great eccentrics – and now, prices for his paintings are soaring".
What follows is very much 'Lenkiewicz by numbers', with the author of the first part of the article (Alice Jones) doing little to suggest that she has even seen a Lenkiewicz painting in the flesh. A valiant effort is made by Francis Mallett to steer things away from the predictable, but by that stage it is too late. Most readers will probably already have written Lenkiewicz off as little more than an eccentric from the provinces. The article concludes with a more critical assessment of Lenkiewicz's art. Penned by Tom Lubbock, the conclusion is perhaps unlikely to have people flocking to the Ben Uri later this year. Lubbock comments: "It wouldn't seem so bad if (as one of the art world) I were to say, outright, that I think Lenkiewicz was a very poor painter, and why; for example, that his technique is just a means to an end, efficiently and repetitively delivering certain effects, with no creative life. Or that his emotional repertoire is absurdly cute and pathos-pumping – inside every Lenkiewicz figure, "The Crying Boy" is wildly signalling to be let out. And that his young ladies seem all to have stepped coyly from a copy of Brides magazine, circa 1972. And that he hasn't a clue about colour or how to organise a picture. And that everything glistens". Lubbock concludes his review with a ranking of artists likely to be shown at the Tate: "Class 1: Lucian Freud, Paula Rego. Class 2: Maggi Hambling, John Wonnacott. Class 3: Peter Howson, Jonathan Yeo. Class 4: Lenkiewicz... and probably beyond that, still, Vettriano and Cook". The article can be read in full here.
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