Memories of Kinship in Keith Vaughan's Post-War Paintings

Abstract

This essay explores the themes of memory and kinship in the art of Keith Vaughan after the Second World War. Vaughan's paintings, which, in this period, focus on the male body, both alone and in groups, are examined in terms of their flexible and expansive attitudes to time, relationships and sociality. They are considered alongside his pre-war trips to Pagham, his own wartime service as a conscientious objetor in the Non-Combatant Corps, and his post-war life in London: these experiences, often focused around fleeting moments of intimacy, recur in his art. Drawing on Vaughan's extensive journals, now held in the Tate archive, this essay traces the way in which the experiences and memories of these social bonds were negotiated, restated, and renewed in his art. His paintings are considered alongside a flexible, embodied kinship to trace how Vaughan registers the joys and difficulties of living as a homosexual in Britain in the 1950s.