Further notice on the artist, poet and actor
07 January 2004

John Calder's otherwise excellent obituary of Jeff Nuttall [6 January] contained a major
error, writes Michael Hrebeniak. Nuttall in fact fathered a girl and five boys -
complementing his overwhelming masculine exuberance - all of whom he regarded with a
characteristically visceral passion.

Accordingly, as a lifelong socialist he loathed the bilge and cant of the Blair administration,
and his overlooked book Art and the Degradation of Awareness, which Calder published
in 2001, remains a peerless analysis of New Labour's venal Year Zero aesthetic, and what
Nuttall saw as its complicit Brit Art racketeers, led by the advertising millionaire Charles
Saatchi.

The poet and cultural critic Eric Mottram called Nuttall "the only genius I've known" - Mottram
was in a good position to judge, having moved freely within the circles of the post-war
American avant-garde. And indeed, as a painter, sculptor, poet and "instigator of the drama",
Nuttall probably had few equals in Britain. He also played jazz trumpet with a nod to Henry
"Red" Allen, thereby completing his mastery of art disciplines.

With his passing, to join Mottram and Bob Cobbing, the New British Poetry has lost its final
most significant proponent. He was a true Dionysian, whose energies - emotional and physical -
would brook no compromise.