Ian McKellan has signed to star in a new BBC documentary about cult artist L.S. Lowry, with a focus on unheard audio recordings that Lowry made in the final four years of his life.
As reported by the Guardian, “Fifteen years ago, Sir Ian McKellen was among the leading arts figures who criticized the Tate for not showing its collection of paintings by L.S. Lowry in its London galleries and questioned whether the ‘matchstick men painter’ had been sidelined as too northern and provincial.” Now, the storied English actor will embody Lowry’s own voice, as it was memorialized on tapes containing what’s being called the longest interview the artist ever gave.
“These tapes reveal an intimate insight into the artist’s thoughts—his ambitions, regrets and his humor,” McKellen said. “Anyone like me, who admires his paintings and drawings, will be intrigued and delighted that the artist is brought back to life through his own words.”
In an article last spring about the rising market around Lowry’s work, Artnet News wrote, “L.S. Lowry is best known for humdrum industrial cityscapes heavily populated by an anonymous mass of darting figures. He stuck so faithfully to this singular formula that you can spot a Lowry from a mile off. Monotonous as his paintings may be, they remain cult favorites, regularly making headlines as yet another sells for an eye-watering sum.”
The audio tapes recorded by Lowry, who died in 1976 at the age of 88, “offer personal insights as he reminisced about his life, discussing experiences that shaped him from his childhood,” according to the Guardian. In the forthcoming film, to be titled L.S. Lowry: The Unheard Tapes, McKellan will lip-sync the remembrances while playing the role of an artist he has long admired.
Richard Grossick, a representative of Lowry’s estate, said, “It is good fortune that these compelling recordings of interviews have survived and are being used in this way.” Of McKellen, he said, “It is hard to imagine any other actor better equipped to channel the rhythmical allure of Mr Lowry’s distinctive bygone Lancastrian tones.”
