11th February 1949 - 2 August 2023
I am saddened to hear yesterday of the passing of my old friend, the fine artist John Goto who’s obituary I only just discovered. We met through the art world in Oxford when I worked as front of house for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford as it was then called. He was always a joy to meet, a brilliant teacher at the local Poly Art School and something of an iconoclast in his own extraordinary body of work.
As a visitor to MOMAO in Oxford we got to know each other and at my invitation he helped start the Oxford Artist's Group which went on to begin Oxford Artist’s Week back in the eighties. He then was involved in deeply collaborative work with the painter Paul Eachus. He was always someone I admired very deeply, he was friendly to a fault and always solicitous of my well being and we had a lot of fun too. Possessed of a huge body of knowledge, his later work on Terezin (a concentration camp in the Czech Republic) moved me beyond words. An intellectual of course whose breadth of knowledge and interests were at once breathtaking but always with an abiding sense of fun, sardonic humour and playfulness. We liked each other I like to think.
We once attended the same meeting to discuss an anniversary exhibition proposal of Oxford Artweek and I challenged the dates someone had reported and John looked at me and said “Gosh and I thought I was the resident old curmudgeon!” I have used his anointed description of myself ever since
My thoughts are with his wonderful wife the noted psychoanalyst, Celia and his daughters Jade and Zoey from his first marriage, all of whom I remember fondly also.
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