Page 48 - Studio International - July/August 1967

Allen Jones: the potent image

Ira Licht

Allen Jones recent paintings magazines, covers of 'adults only' paper-backs, Frederick's
are on exhibition at Arthur of Hollywood lingerie catalogues, 'Little Annie Fanny',
Tooth, London, until July 15. and from Vargas' pin-ups as well. Except perhaps for
Illustrations to this article
the water-colours of Vargas, who is admired for his
are courtesy Arthur Tooth
& Sons Ltd. brilliant technique, this popular genre is dismissed for its
technical gaucheries as well as its content. Its general
figure style is a compound of extreme simplification,
anatomical distortions and wild exaggerations of form,
all but incoherent if viewed as a totality. Studied close to,
however, as one expects erotic drawings are, the forms
are read sequentially, much the way actual experience is
perceived, providing the viewer with a succession of
sensual events with which he can empathize. The
manners and conventions used to achieve this identifica-
tion are the major issues of the style.
Whether or not these methods are lawful and proper,
the illustrations are effective as intensely tactile and im-
mediate experiences, and it is this iconic potency that
attracts Jones. Always an inventor of the supercharged
hieroglyph, and a superb draughtsman, he has turned
the devices of these off-beat illustrators to his own ends.
Jones' new paintings starkly present lovingly modelled,
shinily slick female legs in excruciatingly high spike-
heeled shoes, centered and isolated in a space devoid of
incident. They make an imperative image. Employing
the full equipment of the fetish artist, Jones takes a close-
up of the legs, crisply limns the sharp and sinuous con-
tours and models the calves and thighs to a tumescent
palpability. Tightly contained but bursting with colour
and energy, the legs—never meant for walking—are
erotic instruments boldly stepping out of the artist's
fantasy into our space.
Such extreme modelling, amounting almost to physical
presence, plus the power of the figure itself; begins to
create a situation wherein the unity of canvas and repre-
sentation is strained. Jones dilates on this. The idea
demands a support for the projecting mass, so he furnishes
Female spear 1965-6 each painting with either a three-inch formica ledge or a
canvas. set of tiled stairs merging into the painted depth. Like
72x 36 in.
the conventions of the fetish artist, though for rather
different reasons, depth marked off by tiles in perspective
Images of fetishist shoes and rubber-clad or stockinged is, at present, a thoroughly discredited device; ledges
legs are the subject of Allen Jones' latest exhibition. and steps are almost unspeakable. Besides establishing
Fetishist both as particular erotic object and as inanimate the spatial premises of the paintings, these expedients—
article wherein indwells an intense, if not supernatural, spatial conventions made real and reality made into
presence, the paintings explore the fringes of current conventions— enhance the fleshy presence of the legs by
taste in subject matter and formal conventions. creating an environment analogous to the viewer's own.
Their subject and style are drawn from the mass of Jones is taking an extreme stance with these contrivances,
quasi-pornographic caricatures which illustrate fetishist but one necessitated by his desire to give substance to an