Anything But Dull: the Life and Art of Jeff Nuttall reveals the life lived and the art created by a visionary polymath whose generosity of spirit defined his character. From childhood traumas to revolutionary acts, through triumphs, defeats and resurrections Jeff Nuttall's story is told here for the first time in all its richness and singularity. Based on over eighty interviews and meticulous archive research Anything But Dull shows just what made Jeff Nuttall such pivotal, provocative and important figure in twentieth century life and culture.Performer, poet, artist, writer, musician, teacher, film actor, bon vivant and hell raiser. Throughout his life Jeff Nuttall was always getting into scrapes, provoking outrage, drinking, fighting, falling in and out of love. Those intense experiences became the inspiration for his art. Almost no form of creative expression was foreign to him and within these nothing was forbidden - except, of course, to be dull.
James Charnley is the author of Creative License and Art and Adversity. He studied Fine Art and Art History at Manchester, Chelsea and Leeds Polytechnic. During a peripatetic career he learned furniture making and set design, worked in broadcast television and film animation, scripted and produced videos and, most recently, worked on joinery commissions. Such occupations funded his writing and other creative projects. James Charnley lives in Preston with his partner Louise and a lazy, ginger cat named Rodger.
"What art of any value has ever been produced by craven conformists?", asks James Charnley in this engaging biography of extravert polymath artist and activist, Jeff Nuttall. Charnley attends to this question through a detailed exposition of his subject's morally-charged philosophy of art and life, showing that Nuttall's visceral, aesthetic insurrection simply knocks the spots off the work of many of today's so-called radical artists. If you want to grasp the whys and wherefores of the Counterculture and of one of its seminal contributors, Anything But Dull is the book you need to read. --Peter Suchin, Artist, Critic and Curator It is impossible to imagine telling the story of Jeff Nuttall without giving at least some offence, for that is what Nuttall's entire life was about. Offence without defence. Truth without regret. Life without looking back. This book is a must for anyone interested in understanding the motivations of the legend that was Jeff Nuttall. A Herculean and much needed book you won't want to put down.--Rozemin Keshvani, author-curator, Better Books Better Bookz, Art Anarchy Apostasy Jeff was a teacher with a schoolboy's naughtiness, conventionally unconventional, who gave me the hat off his head but never paid the rent, the funniest man I have ever met. Charnley has perfectly pinned down the big butterfly that Nuttall was, feeding on the flowers of art and literature, and thereby adding to the colour and movement of life.--Patrick Hughes, Artist Nuttall was a paradoxical figure of great complexity and contradiction. James Charnley conveys this with alacrity in this extensively researched biography, through an exhaustive excavation of Nuttall's personal and artistic relationships alongside political and cultural contexts. Moreover, Charnley draws out the raw physicality and obsessional transgressive sexual intensity (and often purposeful obscenity and offensiveness) of his subject's extensive body of artworks, writings and performances, whilst never flinching from its vulgarity or, indeed, the accusations of misogyny and sexism that troubled Nuttall in his lifetime. --Dr Gillian Whiteley, Loughborough University This is an unflinching biography. Anything But Dull uncorks an irrepressible anarchist who charmed with his overwhelming talents and broke all boundaries as artist and writer, poet and teacher. Nuttall led a life fuelled by booze and sex, yet was ruled by a critical intellect that set him apart from fellow conspirators. James Charnley writes with a deep admiration for his legacy in all its provocations. --Jan Herman, Writer and Editor
