Kitchen sink realism

also: kitchen sink school

movement mid-1950s-early 1960s England United Kingdom

Kitchen sink realism was the mid-1950s British revolt against genteel culture, determined to show working-class life exactly as it was lived. The name came from the visual arts - painters of the Beaux Arts Gallery circle such as John Bratby turned cluttered domestic interiors, prams, mops and dirty dishes into subjects for serious painting - but it spread quickly to theatre, fiction and film. John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956) gave the mood its voice; Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and the films made from them filled British screens with angry young men and women in cramped flats and dead-end jobs. Everything was deliberately unpretty: grey northern towns, regional accents, drudgery, boredom and defiance on full display.

Photo of Joan Plowright as Jo and Billy Dee Williams as her sailor boy friend from the 1960 Broadway production of A Taste of Honey .
Photo of Joan Plowright as Jo and Billy Dee Williams as her sailor boy friend from the 1960 Broadway production of A Taste of Honey .Public domain (credit: Bill Doll and Company, New York-publicity agency) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Domestic clutter as hero: kitchen sinks, unwashed dishes, cramped bedsits and back yards
  • Unvarnished working-class subjects - drudgery, boredom and dead-end jobs
  • Coarse, heavy handling and harsh light in the paintings; grainy black-and-white realism on film
  • Claustrophobic, tightly framed interiors packed with everyday detail
  • Angry young protagonists chafing against convention and authority
  • Regional accents and everyday speech on stage and screen

Key figures

  • John Bratby (1928-1992) — Painter of cluttered domestic interiors whose work gave the kitchen sink school its name
  • John Osborne (1929-1994) — Playwright whose Look Back in Anger (1956) gave the movement its voice
  • Shelagh Delaney (1938-2011) — Playwright of A Taste of Honey (1958), staged when she was nineteen
  • Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) — Novelist of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)
  • Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994) — Filmmaker who brought the movement's gritty realism to the screen (This Sporting Life, 1963)

Example works

Sources

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