Cathy's Art Diary

Clear online lecture from the London Art History Society looking at British Pop Art. Ben Street guided us clearly through the British Pop Art movement and how it differed from its American counterpart. He started by looking at the definition of Pop Art as laid out in a 1957 letter by Richard Hamilton. He also looked at how art before this in this country had been quite sombre and austere. He told us about the 1956 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition “This is Tomorrow” which included art, architecture, fashion and more and then led us through some of the main British Pop Art works often comparing it with American pieces. He looked in particular at work by two women in the movement, Pauline Boty and Jann Haworth. He concluded that British Pop Art had more of a sense of the hand crafted whereas America looked to the mass and mechanically produced.

Interesting exhibition at Eames Fine Art featuring Pop art collages mainly by Eduardo Paulozzi. There was a lovely selection of work with some original maquettes as well as prints by the artist many from the archives of his printer Kip Gresham. In addition, there were some works by Peter Blake and Joe Tilson. Closed 30 November 2025

Interesting exhibition at the Redfern Gallery looking at the career of Pop Art pioneer Peter Sedgley. The show included work from 50 years in paintings on paper, canvas, panel, light and kinetic form of work which played with the eyes and seemed to move. I must admit I am not fond of this type of work but do find it clever and innovative. Closed 30 November 2024  

Fun exhibition at Eames Fine Art of Pop Art prints. The show included a lot of Andy Warhol pieces including three versions of The Scream, some Marilyns and Dollar signs. It was interesting to see some early Joe Tilson pieces having recently seen a show of his new prints as well as a Gerald Laing, some Keith Harding and a Marc Quinn. My favourites were from the “Moonstrip Empire News” series by Eduardo Paolozzi, fun collections of images with his added colour and shapes. Closed 3 September 2023  

Fun exhibition at Pallant House looking at Pop Art in Britain and how artists responded to rapid social change.   This was a nicely curated show drawing on the gallery’s significant collection of work from this period but I’ve done a number of exhibitions about the individual artists recently   (Blake, Paolozzi, Caulfield and Hamilton) and I didn’t feel it added to those. I was predicting at the start which pictures would appear and was right.   It did find the section on the 1961 Young Contemporaries show interesting as it showed you this group of people at the start of their careers not as the Grand Dames of the art world they have become. It was also a nice touch to start the show with lovely photographs of the artists by Snowdon.   There was a good section at the end looking at the importance of prints in this period as a way of popularising art including a lovely set by Paolozzi.   Closed on 7 May 2018   Reviews Times Telegr...

Nice exhibition at the Fine Art Society of the work of the pop artist Gerald Laing. The work didn’t quite work in this rather elegant, refined space. The hang in the downstairs, white modern space, worked better than that upstairs with the art nouveaux fireplaces. I liked the bronzes as you came in which were quite Art Deco in style but were made in the mid-1970s. I particularly like “An American Girl” a figure leaning forwards, the style suggesting she had a cloche hat on. The polka dot pictures reminded me of the Polke exhibition I saw in the summer. It was good to have included some of his later work including the large bold pictures of Amy Winehouse. Closed on 13 October 2016 Reviews Evening Standard    

Disappointing exhibition at Tate Modern looking at how the world outside of Britain and North America took us and used Pop Art. I’d not realised this wasn’t a generic Pop Art show and that the emphasis was on the word ‘world’. I felt you needed some knowledge of the genre to understand properly what this about and that the show lacked an introduction. However with hindsight I’d recommend you pop up a floor to a good temporary display with one item from each of the big names from Britain and America!   There were some interesting pieces but it wasn’t the light hearted show I’d expected! Most of the rest of the World seems to have used the genre to highlight oppression and political issues so I felt quite bludgeoned by the end rather than uplifted. Pieces that have staying in my memory include Nicola L’s “Red Coat”, a leather coat built for 11 people.   It was originally designed to keep a performance group together at a festival but since has been used as an a...

Entertaining exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery looking at the legacy of pop art in China, the Former Soviet Union, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. I went along to this show expecting it to be quite dry and worthy but it was really colourful, engaging and funny. I laughed out loud at a number of works. I must admit generally I seemed to be drawn to the British and American works more such as Jeff Koons skit on Damian Hurst “Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank” with three basketballs some of which had the brand name Shaq Attaq. Also Marc Quinn’s skeleton’s having sex called “The Selfish Gene”. I was also drawn to works by Alexander Kosolapov from his take on the Malevich “Black Square” as a cigarette pack to the statue in the photo I’ve used “Hero, Leader and God”, you decide which is which! Also fun was Leonid Sokov’s “Light from a Window”, pieces of wood cut to represent light from window falling at angel on the wall. Gu Wenda’s United Nations: Man and Space” took up a whol...

Fascinating exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery looking at the Pop Art movement and particularly how it influenced design. Certain sections were like walking round my childhood and therefore I didn’t see it as cutting edge but as a bit old fashioned! The downstairs section looked at the social and visual foundations and upstairs focused on different motifs and techniques. There were some wonderful objects including Jan Hawarth’s cloth cowboy which I’d last seen in a Peter Blake exhibition at Pallant House. His stance is so relaxed and real. I also liked a sofa called Marshmallow by George Nelson and Ass Inc from 1956 (see photo). I’d also like to restart the movement to get Claes Oldenburg’s “Knees” erected on the river Thames. It s wonderful sculpture of a pair of knees looks cased on classical sculpture. The exhibition had a small model and the full scale version was never built, but how about it?! Reviews Times Evening Standard    

Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits from the pop art school. I must admit this exhibition mainly made me use on the subject of what is a portrait. I feel it is a representation of a real person in a realistic or abstract form not people used in a picture to express something else. I therefore felt the Eduardo Paolozzi’s at the start of the exhibition were not portraits. I did however like the Marilyn Monroe theme running through the show culminating in a room devoted to her. The Marilyn pictures mainly focused on the effects of fame on a person and an image. It was great to see a Lichtenstein close up again. We are so used to seeing them in prints that the images are familiar but it is good to be reminded of the sheer precision of the original. I think my favourite picture was Mel Ramoes “Hunt for the Best” a picture of his wife with a ketchup bottle. I also liked the dialogue it unconsciously set up with previous exhibitions such as last year Hockney portraits and...