“An exhibition that explores image as icon…” Painting Pop: Paintings From 1960s Britain — Reviewed
It’s 55 years since Abbot Hall Art Gallery embraced contemporary art — at Pop Art’s peak. As their new show looks back, Sue Flowers finds artistic concepts — referencing advertising, WWII and gender politics — topical to then and now…
For anyone living in the rural North-West, there’s always been a cultural dichotomy. Surrounded by stunning natural landscapes that have proved inspirational to artists for centuries, there are, nonetheless, few art galleries and museums outside of the big cities. Thankfully, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal has consistently offered a high quality programme of beautifully curated exhibitions over the last 55 years.
But what was going on in 1962, in the year the gallery opened, to make a sleepy Lakeland town embrace contemporary art? Abbot Hall’s current exhibition, Painting Pop, walks us through some of the cultural and political seismic shifts that were happening at the time, whilst showcasing the work of 16 artists who responded to the early ‘60s predominantly using paint as an artistic medium.
Upon entering the gallery, I feel a cultural familiarity with some of my old favourites: Sir Peter Blake, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj and Joe Tilson are all artists I have grown up with and seen develop. However, I’m not sure I’d previously fully appreciated just how much their work influenced the cultural landscape of British Art.
Richard Smith’s Alpine (1963, pictured, above left) canvas juts out of the wall in playful artistry, questioning the beholders to whether it is a mountain or actually an enlarged version of the cigarette packaging that inspired the work. The 1960s were advertising’s coming of age, when the industry mastered the language of television, absorbed the medium of photography and produced an unprecedented creative approach. So it is no wonder that artists of this era would absorb, respond and appropriate images from the world of advertising. In Smith’s Alpine, besides the form of the work, there is no reference to a cigarette packet, only the 1960-61 advert, which sold cigarettes with menthol as giving the “freshness of the mountains”; clearly the creative prompt for Smith to make the work.
Across the gallery, I am drawn to a relatively small oil painting that feels like it is proffering something really significant. Gravy for the Navy II (1960) by Peter Phillips is hung in the window alcove as if it were the middle panel of a religious triptych, and I am fascinated by the pull of a simple central star image on canvas, painted with a vibrant red rim. Unwittingly, I uncover a saucy illustration (originally by Alberto Vargas) in the centre of the work taken from a 1940s pin up magazine. The painting’s title was taken from US Navy sailor slang “its all gravy”, meaning it’s all good, and it makes me realize just how much the presence of WWII must have had on these artists as they matured into young adults. Clearly, they sensed a new Post-War freedom, enabling them to experiment with newly emerging imagery.
Like a time travelling device, Painting Pop pulls viewers into the past. I ponder on the contemporary relevance of Man Woman (1963) by Allen Jones; a large canvas with vibrant, painterly strokes that homogenises two distinct genders into one painted whole. I wonder whether Jones was deliberating sensing and expressing in paint a more tolerant world to come; the Sexual Offences Act (decriminalising homosexual acts) was passed just four years later, in 1967. Patrick Caulfield’s simple linear painting Christ at Emmaus (1962) also jumps both backwards and then forwards into the future; resembling somewhat the myriad of contemporary media images from the Syrian war. Yet it is a graphic work from over 50 years ago.
The paintings on display in Painting Pop are completely connected to the cultural context in which they were created. It is an exhibition that explores image as icon; the artist critically interrogating the role of something new, often exploring the role of advertising, the product and brand in a fascinating journey into where we once were and what we have now become.
The final space, an engaging ‘60s interactive environment, makes me aware of walking through history, and that artistic practice is very much a living part of our cultural heritage and identity. Artists who were responding to a changing Post-War society with new found freedoms and significant world events, such as the 1969 Moon landing, were in a unique place to use their medium to creatively interpret and catalogue a world that would fundamentally shift from its previously defined axis.
Much has changed in the world as we know it since 1962, and this exhibition provides a great opportunity to see some unique paintings and help us to reconsider the role artists play in representing the world we think we know in new and alternative ways.
Sue Flowers
Painting Pop: Paintings from 1960s Britain is on show at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, until 7 October 2017
Abbot Hall Art Gallery is open Monday – Saturday from 10.30am – 5pm,
Entry for adults costs £7.70 (including Gift Aid) / £7 / Friends of Abbot Hall, Under 16’s and full time students go FREE
Images: exhibition installation shots, courtesy Abbot Hall Art Gallery
