Petruschki's Journey Into The Blue - Chapter 11 - Hans Hartung and the Beatles - Nicolas de Staël

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Cover picture: Stuart Sutcliffe around 1960 Source

This Chapter has taken a long time to get published. And that's how it happened: I always met them on my journey as an actress. I fell in love with them early on, whether with Shakespeare or Beckett, with Roberto Ciulli or George Tabori: the CLOWNS. So in the fall I was lucky enough to do a master class with the great master and teacher Jango Edwards, the inspiring Claudia Cantone and the Nouveau Clown Institute. And now it went on in February and March. Who knows what's still coming. There will be a chapter about it.

I split this chapter. Otherwise it will take even longer. Maybe it was a crazy idea, a long time ago, the connection between Hartung and the Beatles. I thought it was exciting back then. In the sense of “everything is connected”. But that's also what inspires me about the trip, the parallel trip, on which I discover the many crossing or connected paths. The stories in these two chapters tell of artistry at a high price.

In May 2020 I read about the death of the photographer Astrid Kirchherr. She was almost 82 years. The photos that you could see of her back in the day showed her, whether young or old, mostly with a still expression on her face. She looks very cool into the camera, whether she is 20 or 70 years old. That interested me. In some articles she was a bit sensationally called the inventor of the Beatles hairstyle. But, of course, that was far from what made her stand out. She took the first impressive black and white photos of the Beatles when they were just in their early twenties in 1960. Her later photos of the Beatles have also become famous. And very quickly I'm on a kind of time travel. There are the Beatles, not yet known, as youthful seekers, as rebellious kiddies. And the legend of the Beatles today, their songs, their photos, it's all still there, but like something antiquarian, from another distant world. I started to read about Astrid Kirchherr.

Astrid Kirchherr Self Portrait by Diego Sideburns CC BY-NC-ND2.0

The first thing I learned was that Astrid Kirchherr was visiting the Hamburger Kaiserkeller one evening in 1960 with her friend Klaus Voormann. She said about this time:

"Our philosophy then, because we were only little kids, was wearing black clothes and going around looking moody. Of course, we had a clue who Jean-Paul Sartre was. We got inspired by all the French artists and writers, because that was the closest we could get. England was so far away, and America was out of the question. So France was the nearest. So we got all the information from France, and we tried to dress like the French existentialists ... We wanted to be free, we wanted to be different, and tried to be cool, as we call it now. "

Voormann later produced the band -Trio- during the time of the “Neue Deutsche Welle”. I immediately remembered: Da Da Da, du liebst mich nicht, ich lieb dich nicht. He was actually a jazz fan and listened to classical music. That was the first time he heard real rock and roll. He is said to have been speechless about the Beatles' performance. Jürgen Vollmer, who is now considered the "inventor" of the Beatles' hairstyle, was there. I've found quite a few and very different stories about it, I like this quote:

“Astrid and Klaus were very influential. I remember we went swimming once and my hair was down from the water and they said, ‘No, leave it, it’s good.’ I didn’t have my Vaseline anyway, and I was thinking, ‘Well, these people are cool – if they think it’s good, I’ll leave it like this.’ They gave me that confidence and when it dried off it dried naturally down, which later became ‘the look” from George Harrison Anthology

Somehow a touching idea, such a wet young Beatle who needed the encouragement of friends in order not to gel his hair.

Astrid Kirchherr was very impressed that evening and she too made a lasting impression. Especially Stuart Sutcliffe, on bass at the time. She said about this evening: "It was like a merry-go-round in my head, they looked absolutely astonishing... My whole life changed in a couple of minutes. All I wanted was to be with them and to know them."

Soon the two were very much in love.

He himself said at the time:

“Just recently I have found the most wonderful friends, the most beautiful looking trio I have ever seen. I was completely captivated by their charm. The girl thought I was the most handsome of the lot. Here I was, feeling the most insipid working member of the group, being told how much superior I looked – this alongside the great Romeo John Lennon and his two stalwarts Paul and George: the Casanovas of Hamburg!” Stuart Sutcliffe Anthology

Stuart Sutcliffe Foto : iirraa liscensed by CC BY - NC - ND- 2.0

Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon met at Liverpool Art College. They became close friends. George Harrison later said of him that he was a pretty good painter even in those days.

In early 1960, Lennon moved into the apartment that Sutcliffe and a fellow student lived in. They painted the walls yellow and black.

“Paul and I got to know Stuart Sutcliffe through art college. Stuart was a thin, arty guy with glasses and a little Van Gogh beard; a good painter. John really liked Stuart as an artist. Stuart obviously liked John because he played the guitar and was a great guy. Stuart was cool. He was great-looking and had a great vibe about him, and was a very friendly bloke. I liked Stuart a lot; he was always very gentle. John had a slight superiority complex at times, but Stuart didn’t discriminate against Paul and me because we weren’t from the art school. He started to come and watch us when we played at parties and he became a fan of ours. He actually got some gigs at parties for John, Paul and me to play at.” George Harrison Anthology

Sutcliffe sold one of his paintings for £ 64. It was a good price, a small fortune at the time (around £ 1200 these days) and he really wanted to get canvas and paint for it. John Lennon and the others convinced him to buy a bass. He wasn't a good musician, but he was handsome and John Lennon seemed to admire his "coolness". Later he often played out of the spotlight, feeling uncomfortable that he couldn't play well. Paul Mc Cartney said they were all a little jealous of him then because John Lennon admired him so much and he was a good painter.

Stuart Sutcliffe Hamburg Painting No. 2

The first manager of the then called “Silver Beatles”, arranged a tour for them as a support act in Scotland. During this tour, the band members gave each other stage names. Stuart Sutcliffe called himself Stuart de Staël after the painter Nicolas de Staël.

Beatles 1960 Photo: Astrid Kircherr Source: Diego Sideburns CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In August 1960 they drove to Hamburg to first appear in a strip club called Indra. It must have been really, really wild. Fights, drugs, all that stuff. Because of their unleashed appearances, they soon developed into an insider tip.

From October 1960 they played in the Kaiserkeller. Astrid Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe met here and soon became a couple. At the end of November, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Pete Best were expelled from Germany. George Harrison for being underage, the other two for alleged arson. Stuart Sutcliffe stayed with Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg, meanwhile they were engaged. The connection between him and the other Beatles did not break. He and Lennon often wrote long letters to each other. But when the Beatles returned to Hamburg in 1961, he hardly played with them anymore.

Stuart Sutcliffe, Untitled (1961-2) Source

From June 1961 Sutcliffe concentrated on his studies at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. He was supported by a small grant from the Hamburg Senate. His professor was Eduardo Paolozzi, who said he was one of his best students.

Astrid Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe

Again and again he suffered from severe headaches and had several breakdowns, also in the art academy. He lived with Astrid Kirchherr and her mother. Astrid Kirchherr's mother had made sure that he was carefully examined and that a whole series of tests were carried out. But they couldn't find any reason for the headaches. His condition got worse. The pain kept getting worse. He couldn't bare any light.

On April 10, 1962, Sutcliffe died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Astrid Kirchherr's arms of a cerebral hemorrhage. How it finally came about is still unclear today. Works and letters left by Sutcliffe are in the possession of his younger sister Pauline. In 2001 she published the book “The Beatles' Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe His Lonely Hearts Club”. She wrote there that Lennon and her brother had a love affair and Lennon hit him once in a fit of jealousy.

Astrid Kirchherr remained friends with the Beatles. Kirchherr described how difficult it was to be accepted as a female photographer in the 1960s: "Every magazine and newspaper wanted me to photograph the Beatles again. Or they wanted my old stuff, even if it was out of focus, whether they were nice or not. They wouldn't look at my other work. It was very hard for a girl photographer in the 60s to be accepted. In the end I gave up. I've hardly taken a photo since 1967.”

Until her death she said that Stuart Sutcliffe was the love of her life.

When she died the Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn wrote about her on Twitter. He praised her involvement with the band as "immeasurable", and credited her as an "intelligent, inspirational, innovative, daring, artistic, awake, aware, beautiful, smart, loving and uplifting friend to many".

The 1994 film Backbeat tells about the early years of the Beatles and in particular about the love between Astrid Kirchherr and Stuart Sutcliffe. You can see the trailer here.

There exists also a Graphic Novel Baby's In Black – The Story of Astrid Kirchherr & Stuart Sutcliffe by Arne Bellstorf. It was published 2010 by Reprodukt.

Sources: wikipedia / The Beatles Bible (detailed website)

Stuart Sutcliffe would have been an excellent painter ... But who was the painter again after whom he chose his artist name?

Who was Nicolas de Staël?

I have to admit that I had never heard of him before. Although he is considered one of the most prominent artists of the French post-war period. And as the one who influenced many subsequent generations of painters. But he, too, was forgotten for a long time. Only since maybe 10/15 years there have been exhibitions again and his paintings are sold for a lot of money. You can find out more about him and what he has to do with Hans Hartung in the next chapter.

Portrait of Nicolas de Staël drawn by Yan Ten Kate 1937