NUTTALL, Jeff 1933-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born July 8, 1933, in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England; died January 4, 2004, in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, England. Artist, actor, educator, and author. A painter, poet, and performance artist, Nuttall was considered one of the pioneers of the "happening" in 1960s England and is well known for his book Bomb Culture. Entering the art world first as a painter, Nuttall attended the Hereford School of Art until 1951. After serving in the Royal Army Education Corps, he became art master at Leominster and spent a number of years teaching art at other institutions, including at the Bradford College of Art from 1968 to 1970, the Leeds College of Art from 1970 to 1981, and Liverpool Polytechnic, where, beginning in 1981, he was head of the fine art department. Greatly influenced by the Beat movement that preceded him, Nuttall was also gravely concerned about the threat of a nuclear holocaust that so pervaded society during the Cold War. Consequently, an impending sense of doom countered by a love of life led him to try all types of art, including acting in movies and performance art, writing poetry and nonfiction, and becoming a jazz musician and singer. In the 1960s, he founded the People Show in London, a group of artists who developed performance art pieces and experimental films at the height of the "happening" movement in England that paralleled the counterculture movement going on in America at the time. Nuttall appeared in many of movies—over twenty in all—and more recently even ventured into some mainstream productions such as the 1991 television movie Robin Hood, in which he played Friar Tuck. In addition to the People Show, Nuttall became well known for his 1968 book of social criticism, Bomb Culture, in which he noted the difference between the 1960s generation that felt the future held little hope and the preceding generation that had been much more optimistic. He later often wrote in his poems and essays about how society had descended into a self-destructive preoccupation with shallow pop culture and money. A prolific writer, Nuttall produced a number of books, including the poetry collections The Limitless Virtuoso (1963), Love Poems (1969), Grape Notes, Apple Music (1980), and Selected Poems (2003), the plays Kosher (1972) and Barrow Boys (1972), the fiction works The Case of Isabel and the Bleeding Foetus (1967), Snipe's Spinster (1975), and Muscle (1983), and nonfiction works such as Art and the Degradation of Awareness (2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), January 12, 2004, p. 19.

Independent (London, England), January 6, 2004, p. 18.

Times (London, England), January 14, 2004, p. 32.