Page 19 - Studio International - November 1965
P. 19
3 British artists in New York
Allen Jones photographed by Tony Evans
and dirndl skirts and burned-out buildings and Euston pop imagery but whenever there is a movement or a
Road on a gray Saturday night. You could enjoy manifestation of any sort going on there will always be
Piccadilly Circus and Charing Cross Road and the someone who will be looking around to find the father
popular films one enjoyed. They got away from the of it, and he usually turns out to be somebody who was
'kitchen sink' school subject matter and before that, working in obscurity. Although an artist may work in
the work of people like Robert Colquhoun and Robert obscurity and then find his point of view confirmed in
Macbryde with their portrayals of romantic decay. the emergence of some current movement, I also think
Jones They were the first British painters I remember such an artist improves his position because of the
when I was first at art school. They were two Scotsmen impact of the people who come after him, even if his
and they painted Picasso type still-lifes with severed work does not deserve the extra attention. So I don't
sheep heads and skulls, so that the subject matter as think chronology is as important to the current style
well as their execution was second-hand. The painter as it is to the artist who wasn't known until some idea
they were influenced by was Janke! Adler. It's interest he employed came into wide usage. And I don't
ing how the big man in this group was in fact a minor believe that an older painting is made any better because
painter. At a posthumous show of his work at some it has fragments of something which is happening now.
little gallery around Marble Arch not too long ago, the Glaser Why is pop art so strong in England, in any case?
attendance was remarkable small. It was a nice show In relation to this I was struck by a comment of Annette
because you sort of felt his seriousness, but these other Michelson's that appeared in one of her articles in Art
two characters, I believe, capitalized out of the style. International, where she said that she felt pop art
Glaser To get back to the influence of the ICA would comes only from affluent societies, where there are
you say that the imagery of pop art had its roots in the signs of satiety and waste, and she specifically cited
ideas and the exhibitions of this group? Is there any the fact there is no pop art coming from Spain, where
thing to the claim that British artists invented pop art? there is clearly nothing like the affluence of England.
Jones I think the ICA was responsible for some of the Is there a link between the situation in post-war
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