Lot 70: Sam Haile (1909-1948)

Then lie there, Precious White Pyschiatrist
signed and dated 'Haile VII/38' (upper right) and inscribed 'Then lie there Precious White Pyschiatrist' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm.)

Aldeburgh, Peter Pears Gallery, Festival Exhibition, June 2006, no. 18.

Purchased from the artist circa 1947.
Private collection to 1994.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 25 May 1994, lot 16, where purchased by the present owner.

Among Haile's targets in his fight against the exploitation and debasement of man's essential and creative, if not sacred values, is psychiatry and its pretensions to put the individual's mind right again. The psychiatrist's transformation into an elephant's skull to plough through the mind, and descent into animality encounters monsters of fragmentation and death, a challenge to his own 'precious' determination to be logical and rational.

M.R

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