Painting till the end

From The Times December 31, 2009 “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” argued Picasso. Now a Yorkshire artist will put that theory to the test after buying a clifftop house just so that he can document its collapse into the sea. Kane Cunningham, a landscape painter, bought the house at Knipe Point near Scarborough for £3,000. The property was worth £150,000 but its location, a few feet from the edge of an ongoing landslip, has reduced its value. Several neighbouring properties have succumbed to the 200ft plunge into Cayton Bay, but for Mr Cunningham the purchase is a solid artistic investment. The art lecturer, who paid for the house using his credit card, plans to turn its demise, which could occur at any moment, into an “installation”, rigging the rooms with cameras and filming the sunrise before the ultimate property crash. Mr Cunnningham, 48, head of the fine art degree course at Yorkshire Coast College, said that the house symbolised “lost dreams, financial disaster and threatening sea levels”. He said: “People might ask can a house that is about to fall into the sea be a work of art? I say it can.” The artist is using the bungalow as a studio and has completed two paintings of the property and the view over Cayton Bay below. Mr Cunningham is hoping that local artists, poets and musicians will brave the unsteady ground and come up with with ideas about how the project could develop. He said the opportunities for painting should not be missed because the house offered “one of the most amazing views along this coast”. More at ; http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6971801.ece