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Edward James: Surreal & Discreet!

Art-lovers will have relished the splendid exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery on Edward James (ends 26th July). A poet and patron who financed many of the famous works of Surrealism, he was also a local lad, being born at West Dean near Chichester. What you might not have realised however is that he was rather on the queer side. Yes he was married [for three years], but he also had a series of handsome Mexican companions later in life, and while in the bloom of youth confessed to a crush on the poet John Betjeman.

A truly marvellous exhibition, it included well known works by the artists Salvador Dali, René Magritte and Leonora Carrington amongst others. A less well known painter who featured in the show is Pavel Tchelitchew.

Pavel and Charles

Pavel visited Edward at his West Dean home, Monkton House, in the summer of 1934. He arrived with his boyfriend, the American poet Charles Henri Ford, but unfortunately Charles and Edward didn't exactly hit it off. Edward thought Charles' new erotic work The Young and the Evil 'unwholesome and depraved', and after a heated exchange asked Charles to leave the West Dean estate. He then wrote to Charles and told him he had burned his book! Surprisingly Pavel and Edward remained good friends.

As you might gather from this little tale, Edward was never exactly a sexual revolutionary, in fact journalist Tom Driberg supposedly called him a 'closet case'.

Closet exhibition

That aside, it was a little disappointing that there was scant mention of Edward's sexuality in the exhibition. Especially since John Lowe's 1991 biography Edward James - A Surrealist Life is quite candid in this area. Still, we always can imagine Edward snuggling up to some dishy Mexican ex-boxer on the Mae West Lips sofa...

Edward James' self-designed tombstone in the aboretum at West Dean