From right to left: Professor David Alan Mellor with Jeremy Deller, Turner Prize-winning artist and his former student

It is with great sadness that we have heard of the death of our former colleague, Emeritus Professor David Alan Mellor, at his home in Machynlleth, in West Wales.

David came to Sussex as an undergraduate student from his home town of Leicester in 1967 to study with Quentin Bell and Hans Hess, the founders of Art History at the University. David stayed at Sussex until his retirement in 2018. He was one of the country’s leading scholars in the fields of twentieth century painting, film and photography. His publications ranged from some of the earliest research into the Mass Observation Archive after it entered the University collections, on Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, and on Robin Denny, Cecil Beaton and Bill Brandt. He curated major exhibitions at the Barbican and Tate, most memorably Paradise Lost: The New Romantic Imagination in Britain (1987) and The Sixties (1993), at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery - notably his exhibition on Charleston - and in Paris and Madrid. He will always be remembered for his key role in re-establishing the significance of the work of the 1960s artist Pauline Boty, whose canvases are now in major public collections.

David was a truly great essayist in the long tradition of English writers. As a teacher, generations of students testify to his unique insights into British culture. David was teaching the inter-relations of media long before the subject became an academic discipline at the University and was sensitive to art and the environment from the beginning of his career. Generations of students will fondly recall seminars held in David's office, shelves bulging with paperbacks, exhibition catalogues and copies of Picture Post; a wooden coffee table towered with books. It was a warm and stimulating space where David artfully guided them across far-ranging cultural landscapes via first-person accounts of artists and exhibitions, irreverent takes of theatrical fads, and astute links between seminar materials and current events or pop culture. Over a period of fourteen years, he taught Art History students on ten study trips to Venice and Rome, covering all periods from ancient to modern, so deep was his knowledge and enthusiasm.

We will miss him greatly and our sympathies go out to his wife, Liz, his children Leo and Nansi, and his grandchildren. There will be a memorial gathering for David on the University campus in late November. 

Emeritus Professor Maurice Howard