# Jack Vettriano: ‘His paintings are like a double cheeseburger in a greasy wrapper’

The Scot painted singing butlers, ‘broads’ in bras, and tough guys in suits, in works critics found lurid, chintzy, devoid of irony, and often sexist. But they were also hugely popular – showing the power of ‘I get it’ art.



In 1992, Jack Vettriano’s painting The Singing Butler was rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Anyone who has seen some of the dross picked for display in the RA’s annual open submission collision of amateur artists and big stars in recent decades will be thinking: “Ouch, must’ve been a real dud.” But The Singing Butler not only wasn’t a dud, it went on to become one of the most ubiquitous and – whisper it – iconic British paintings since the second world war.

And that tells you a lot about the Scottish artist, . The art establishment has always despised him, but the rest of the world – if you can accept some awkward, problematic conception of “ordinary people” – absolutely lapped up his art. He wasn’t a household name like Tracey Emin or David Hockney. He wasn’t lauded by the art world. He sure wasn’t celebrated by critics. Vettriano was something else, something almost sinful – he was popular.

He wasn’t classy, or clever, or conceptual. He painted people dancing on the beach in 1930s outfits. He painted mobsters and tough guys in suits, “broads” in bras, and men polishing muscle cars. They’re paintings commissioned by people who own multiple convertibles; rich, greasy men with three buttons too many unbuttoned.

The main issue for snobby art types like me isn’t the work itself. It’s that he lacked a conceptual edge, a sense of irony, and any postmodern self-awareness. He didn’t paint sexy midnight trysts between half-clothed women and Brylcreemed men as a comment on gendered power dynamics or as a riff on art historical depictions of the female nude. He painted them because they were sexy. Contemporary art wants more. It wants depth and nuance. It’s not enough to be nostalgic or sexy. But Vettriano’s answer to that is: “Yeah, but it’s _so_ sexy.” And it’s a good argument.

That simplicity, that directness that is totally unburdened by shame or embarrassment is the appeal. He sold countless thousands of prints of his paintings to “ordinary people” because the images so effectively communicate their ideas and emotions. These are works of nostalgia, lust, aspiration, love. You look at a Vettriano and you understand it. That’s a powerful thing, a good thing. And one of the problems with contemporary art is that it often requires you to be smart enough to “get it”, but all that does is push people away. Vettriano’s work pulls you in.

I had a friend who considered himself a foodie. He was obsessed with ferments, micro-herbs, gels, and gastriques, but he’d never, not even once, been to a McDonald’s. How can you love great food if you’ve never understood why so many other people love McDonald’s and everything else at the other end of the spectrum? It’s the same for art – and Vettriano’s paintings are like a double cheeseburger wrapped in greasy paper, precision-engineered to scratch a specific aesthetic itch. They’re not culturally enriching, but they have their place in your artistic diet.

The thing is, you can’t constantly complain that people don’t like Proust and Brahms. Sometimes you just have to find the beauty, or at least the appeal, in Married at First Sight and Banksy. We can learn a lot more from looking for the aesthetic and cultural qualities in “lower” artforms than from outright rejecting them. And Vettriano’s work embodies a battle between “high” and “low” that should have ended long ago, but still tediously rages on.



Photograph: Jack Vettriano

Look, I’m not being entirely honest here. I don’t appreciate these paintings as paintings. I actually think they’re pretty heinous and grim. But I appreciate them for their appeal, for their ability to transcend boundaries, and I like them because other people like them. I like them because they tell you what people are really into – and that’s dancing on the beach, looking sharp and having sex.

## Explore more on these topics

- 
- 
- 
- 
- 

## Sign up to Art Weekly

Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals, and exhibitions

Enter your email address

Sign up

## Privacy Notice

Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google  and  apply.
```