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Beryl Cook
- Studies in World Art, Book 113
- Narrated by: Jim Spring
- Length: 9 mins
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Summary
When Beryl Cook died, she was the subject of a large number of obituaries. Some of them were predictably condescending, which I suspect she would not have minded a bit. The really telling thing, however, is what has happened since then on the web. If you go to the site maintained by The Times, still regarded as the British paper of record, and look for the paper’s obituary archive, you will find a section within it devoted to "Artistic Genius". The subtitle is "Artists and makers who changed the way we see". And what is the illustration that the site’s designers have chosen to head this section? A self portrait by Beryl Cook.
Further down the computer screen are Robert Rauschenberg, Jörg Immendorf, Sol LewItt, Bernard Meadows, Patrick Caulfield, Eduardo Paolozzi, Agnes Martin, Allan Kaprow, and Nam June Paik, but Beryl lords it triumphantly over them all. Without, I think, actually meaning to tell us this, The Times, in its Internet incarnation, has made a valid point. Beryl was one of the most completely recognizable artists of her epoch - at any rate here in Britain.