Pauline Boty

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Pauline Boty (born March 6, 1938 in London ; † July 1, 1966 there ) was one of the founders of British Pop Art and was the only female painter in the British part of this movement. Boty's paintings and collages often show a joy in self-confident femininity and female sexuality, and openly or implicitly criticize the “man's world” in which she lived. Her rebellious art and free-spirited lifestyle made Boty a harbinger of feminism in the 1970s.

life and work

childhood and education

Pauline Veronica Boty was born in 1938 on the outskirts of South London into a middle-class Catholic family. She had three older brothers and a strict father who made her place as a girl very clear to her. In 1954, she received a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art , which she attended despite her father's disapproval. Boty received support from her mother, who was an artist herself and whose parents had not allowed her to attend the Slade School of Fine Art . Boty completed an intermediate diploma in lithography (1956) and earned a national diploma in design in stained glass . Her classmates called her "The Bardot of Wimbledon" because of her resemblance to the French film star Brigitte Bardot . Encouraged by her tutor Charley Carey to try out collage techniques , her painting became increasingly experimental. Her work showed her interest in pop culture early on . In 1957, one of her pictures was shown in the Young Contemporaries exhibition, along with works by Robyn Denny , Richard Smith and Bridget Riley .

At the Royal College of Art (RCA) she studied glass painting (1958–1961). She had wanted to attend the painting class, but was put off applying because the admission rate for women in this field was significantly lower. Despite the institutional sexism at her college, Boty was one of the stronger students in her class. One of her stained glass paintings became part of the traveling exhibition Modern Stained Glass in 1960 , organized by the Arts Council. In her student apartment in West London, Boty continued to paint on her own. In 1959 three more of her works were selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition . During this time, she also made friends with other emerging pop art artists such as David Hockney , Derek Boshier , Peter Phillips and Peter Blake .

During her time at the Royal College of Art , Boty engaged in a variety of activities outside of class. She sang, danced, and acted in somewhat daring college productions, published poetry in an alternative student magazine, and was a knowledgeable participant in the Film Club, where she developed a particular interest in Nouvelle Vague cinema . She also took part in the Anti-Ugly Action , a group of RCA students in the stained glass and later architecture classes, which protested against new British architecture that they found obnoxious and poor quality.

Career

Pauline Boty reached her most productive phase two years after completing her studies. The pop style and iconography she developed were distinctive. Her first group show Blake , Boty, Porter, Reeve in November 1961 at the AIA gallery in London was hailed as one of the first British pop art shows. She exhibited 20 collages, including Is it a bird, is it a plane? and a rose is a rose is a rose , which show Boty's interest in using both high culture and popular culture as sources for her art (the first title refers to the comic Superman , the second quotes the American exiled writer Gertrude Stein ) .

The following spring, Boty, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips were featured in Ken Russell's BBC documentary Pop Goes the Easel , which aired March 22, 1962. Although the documentary put Boty at the center of the emerging British pop art movement, unlike her male colleagues, the film did not give her the opportunity to speak directly and intelligently about her work.

Boty's appearance in Pop Goes the Easel marked the beginning of her short acting career. She received roles in an Armchair Theater production for ITV ( North City Traffic Straight Ahead , 1962) and an episode of the BBC series Maigret ( Peter the Lett , 1963). She has also appeared on stage in Frank Hiltons comedy Day of the Prince at the Royal Court Theater and in Riccardo Aragno's Afternoon Men (based on Anthony Powell's novel) at the New Arts Theater. (As a regular on the London club scene, she was also seen as a dancer on the program Ready Steady Go! )

While acting was lucrative, it distracted Boty from painting, which remained her main priority. However, the men in her life encouraged her to devote herself to acting, a more conventional career choice for women in the early 1960s. The tabloids took up Boty's glamorous role as an actress, often undermining her legitimacy as an artist by taking off her physical charms. In Scene , a cover story appeared in November 1962 that contained the following passage: “Actresses often have tiny brains. Painters often have long beards. Imagine a smart actress who is also a painter and also a blonde, and you have Pauline Boty. "

Her unique role as the UK's only female pop artist enabled Boty to fight sexism in her life as well as in her art. Her early paintings were sensual and erotic, celebrating feminine sexuality from a woman's perspective. Her pictures were set against vivid, colorful backgrounds and often included close-up shots of red flowers, presumably symbolizing the female gender.

She painted her male idols - Elvis , the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo , the British writer Derek Marlowe - as sex symbols as she did with the actresses Monica Vitti and Marilyn Monroe . Like Andy Warhol , she recycled celebrity advertising and press photos for her art. Her 1963 portrait of friend Celia Birtwell , Celina and Her Heroes , shows the textile designer surrounded by a painting by Peter Blake, a portrait of David Hockney and a picture by Elvis Presley. She took part in several other group exhibitions before holding her first solo exhibition in the Grabowski Gallery in the fall of 1963 . The show was a critical success. However, Boty took on other acting roles. She hosted the radio program Public Ear in 1963-64 and was cast again in the following year in the typical role of "seductive Maria" in a BBC series.

In June 1963 she married the literary agent Clive Goodwin (1932–1978) after a ten-day romance. Their marriage disappointed many, including Peter Blake and Boty's married lover, television director Philip Saville , whom she had met and worked for at the end of her student days. ( Frederic Raphael's script for the film Darling (1965) is said to be based on this affair .)

Boty's and Goodwin's apartment on Cromwell Road became a hub for many artists, musicians and writers, including Bob Dylan (whom Boty brought to England), David Hockney, Peter Blake, Michael White , Kenneth Tynan , Troy Kennedy Martin , John McGrath , Dennis Potter and Roger McGough . Goodwin, who later was a founding editor of the radical newspaper The Black Dwarf , is said to have encouraged Boty to include political content in her paintings.

Her pictures became more obviously critical over time. Countdown to Violence reveals a number of harrowing current events including the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama race riots , the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War . Cuba Si (1963) refers to the Cuban Revolution . The collage It's a Man's World I (1964) juxtaposes images of patriarchal icons such as the Beatles , Albert Einstein , Lenin , Muhammad Ali , Marcel Proust and other men. In It's a Man's World II (1965–1966) she again shows female nudes from sources in the fine arts and softcore pornography to symbolize a newly liberated “female eroticism”. Her last known picture, BUM , was done by Kenneth Tynan for Oh! Calcutta! commissioned and completed in 1966.

death

In June 1965, Boty unexpectedly became pregnant. During a prenatal examination, a tumor was discovered and diagnosed as cancer (malignant thymoma ). Boty refused an abortion and also refused chemotherapy , which could have harmed the fetus. Instead , she smoked marijuana to ease the terminal pain. She continued to receive her friends and draw the Rolling Stones during her illness. Their daughter Katy (later Boty) Goodwin was born on February 12, 1966. Pauline Boty died on July 1 of the same year at the Royal Marsden Hospital at the age of 28. Her daughter Boty Goodwin died of a drug overdose on November 12, 1995 at the age of 29.

legacy

After her death, Pauline Boty's works were stored in a barn on her brother's farm and they were largely forgotten for almost 30 years. Her work was rediscovered in the 1990s, which led to renewed interest in her contribution to Pop Art and her inclusion in several group exhibitions and a large individual retrospective. The location of several of her most sought-after paintings is unknown.

In December 2013 Adrian Hamilton wrote in the Independent on Sunday : “Decades after her death - it was almost 30 years before her first picture was shown - a real retrospective had to wait until this year with an exhibition that, starting from Wolverhampton, is now in the Pallant Gallery opened in Chichester. If you look at her pictures today, it is simply hard to believe that it took so long [...] It's not a huge exhibition. In view of the scarcity of her traditional work, it could not be otherwise. But it makes you want more, more of the pictures she has painted and of those for which she has not lived long enough. "

Boty's life and work are also an important theme in Ali Smith's novel Autumn (2016) .

Exhibitions

A major retrospective of her work opened at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery on January 1, 2013 and was subsequently held at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex from November 30, 2013 to February 9, 2014 .

  • 2014: Pauline Boty and pop art , Muzeum Sztuki , Łódź , Poland (in collaboration with Wolverhampton Art Gallery)
  • 2013–2014: Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman , Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Great Britain
  • 2013: Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman , Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Great Britain
  • 2010: Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968 , University of the Arts, Philadelphia, USA (traveling exhibition)
  • 2009: Awkward Objects: Alina Szapocznikow and Maria Bartuszova, Pauline Boty, Louise Bourgeois , Eva Hesse and Paulina Ołowska , Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie , Warsaw, Poland
  • 2004: Art and the 60s: This Was Tomorrow , Tate Britain , London, Great Britain
  • 2002: Pin-up: Glamor and Celebrity , Tate Liverpool , UK
  • 1998: Pauline Boty-The Only Blonde in the World , The Mayor Gallery & Whitford Fine Art, London, Great Britain
  • 1997: The Pop '60s: Transatlantic Crossing , Centro Cultural de Belém , Lisbon, Portugal
  • 1996: Les Sixties: Great Britain and France 1962-1973 , Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine , Paris, France and Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton, Great Britain
  • 1995: Post War to Pop , Whitford Fine Art, London, Great Britain
  • 1993: Pauline Boty , Mayor Gallery, London, Great Britain
  • 1993: The Sixties Art Scene In London , Barbican Art Gallery , London, Great Britain
  • 1982: Pop-Art Galeria, Koszalin, Poland
  • 1982: Miedzy Hiperrealizmem a Pop Artem , Muzeum Regionalne , Radomsko, Poland
  • 1981: Realizm Spoleczny Pop-Artu , Muzeum Sztuki , Łódź , Poland
  • 1976–1977 Traveling exhibition, Poland
  • 1965–1966: Spring Exhibition , Cartwright Memorial Hall, Bradford, Great Britain
  • 1965: Contemporary Art , Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain
  • 1963: Pauline Boty , Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain
  • 1963: Pop Art , Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham, Great Britain
  • 1962: New Approaches to the Figure , Arthur Jeffress Gallery, London, Great Britain
  • 1962: New Art Festival of Labor, Congress House, London, Great Britain
  • 1961: Blake, Boty, Porter, Reeve , AIA Gallery, London, Great Britain
  • 1960–1961: Modern Stained Glass , Tour des Arts Council
  • 1957–1959: Young Contemporaries , RBA Galleries, London, Great Britain

Filmography

Movie

TV

  • 1965: The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theater (episode: Strangler's Web)… Nell Pretty
  • 1965: BBC TV, The Londoners - A Day Out for Lucy … Patsy
  • 1965: Contract to Kill (BBC TV mini-series)… the seductive Maria Galen
  • 1965: The Day of Ragnarok
  • 1964: Ken Russell's Béla Bartók (BBC series Monitor )…. prostitute
  • 1964: BBC, Short Circuit-The Park ... Pauline
  • 1964: Espionage (episode: The Frantick Rebel)… Mistress Fleay
  • 1963: Ready, Steady, Go! ... dancer
  • 1963: Don't Say a Word (Gameshow) ... yourself
  • 1963: BBC, Maigret: Peter the Lett ... Josie
  • 1962: BBC, The Face They See ... Rona
  • 1962: ITV Armchair Theater (episode: North City Traffic Straight Ahead )… Anna
  • 1962: Ken Russell's Pop Goes the Easel (BBC series Monitor ) ... herself

literature

  • Sue Tate: Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman (life and works). Wolverhampton Art Gallery with the Paul Mellon Foundation, 2013.
  • Sue Watling, David Alan Mellor: The Only Blonde in the World: Pauline Boty (1938–1966). Exhibition catalog. Whitford Fine Art & The Mayor Gallery AM Publications, London 1998.
  • Kalliopi Minioudaki: Pop's Ladies and Bad Girls: Axell, Pauline Boty and Rosalyn Drexler. in: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 30, Issue 3 (2007), pp. 402-430.
  • Adam Smith: Now You See Her: Pauline Boty, First Lady of British Pop. 2002 (archive version)
  • Sue Tate: 'Re-occupying the Erotic Body: The Paintings and “Performance” of Pauline Boty, British Pop Artist (1938-66). In: Nick Rumens, Alejandro Cervantes-Carson (eds.): Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging. Rodopi, Amsterdam / New York 2007.
  • Sue Tate: "Forward Via a Female Past": Pauline Boty and the Historiographical Promise of the Woman Pop Artist. In: AM Kokoli (Ed.): Feminism Reframed, Reflections on Art and Difference. Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle 2008, pp. 177-205.
  • Sue Tate: A Transgression Too Far: Women artists and the British Pop Art Movement. In: S. Sachs, K. Minioudaki (Eds.): Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958–68. University of the Arts, Philadelphia and Abbeville Press, New York / London 2010.
  • Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki (Eds.). Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968. Exhibition catalog. University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Abbeville Press, New York / London 2010.
  • Bill Smith: The Only Blonde in the World. In: Latest Art , Issue 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 10–15.
  • Lawrence van Gelder: Eye-Catchers. In: The New York Times , March 26, 2002.

Web links
Videos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sue Watling: Pauline Boty: Pop Painter. In: Sue Watling, David Alan Mellor: The Only Blonde in the World: Pauline Boty (1938-1966). Exhibition catalog. Whitford Fine Art & The Mayor Gallery, AM Publications, London 1998, p. 1.
  2. ↑ a b Watling, pp. 1-2.
  3. ^ Watling, pp. 2-3
  4. ↑ a b Watling, p. 4
  5. ↑ Boty told the Daily Express newspaper , “I think the Aviation Department building is a real stinker, followed by the Farmers' Union headquarters, the Bank of England [the large curved block of Victor Heal along New Change] and the Financial Times . “Quoted from Gavin Stamp: Anti-ugly: campaigning against ugly buildings may seem admirable, but a recent call for demolitions is based on philistinism. In: Apollo, January 2005.
  6. ^ Watling, p. 5
  7. ↑ Michael Brooke: Pop Goes the Easel (1962) . In: BFI Screenonline . Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  8. ^ Watling, p. 6.
  9. ^ Getty Images / Hulton Archive. . Photographer: Chris Ware.
  10. ^ Getty Images / Hulton Archive. Photograph: Jim Gray.
  11. ^ Watling, p. 7.
  12. ^ Scene , No. 9, November 8, 1962, quoted from Watling and Mellor.
  13. ^ David Alan Mellor: The Only Blonde in the World. In: Watling, Mellor, p. 21.
  14. ↑ Alastair Sooke: Pauline Boty: The UK's forgotten pop artist . In: The Telegraph . June 12, 2013. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  15. ↑ Stephen Farthing (Ed.): 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die . Cassell Illustrated / Quintessence, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84403-563-2 .
  16. ↑ a b Watling (1998), p. 16.
  17. ↑ a b Sabine Durrant The Darling of Her Generation. In: The Independent on Sunday , March 7, 1993.
  18. ↑ Boty auditioned for the role that went to Julie Christie . See Bill Smith: The Only Blonde in the World. In: Latest Art , February 2006, p. 1.
  19. ↑ Boty and Philip Saville took Dylan to England and picked him up from London Airport. Dylan lived in Boty's apartment. See Smith, p. 10.
  20. ^ Smith, p. 14.
  21. Jump up ↑ Art and feminism , Reckitt, Helena., Phelan, Peggy., Phaidon, London 2001, ISBN 9780714847023 , OCLC 48098625 .
  22. ↑ Bum - Pauline Boty - WikiArt.org.
  23. ^ Watling, p. 18. See also Smith, p. 14.
  24. ↑ a b c Robin Stummer: Mystery of missing art of Pauline Boty . In: The Observer . April 27, 2013. Retrieved May 5, 2013.
  25. ^ Watling, p. 17.
  26. ↑ [1] The Mirror, October 23, 2004.
  27. ^ Adam Curtis Dream On. in: The Medium and the Message (blog), BBC website, October 30, 2011.
  28. ^ A b Ali Smith : Ali Smith on the prime of pop artist Pauline Boty . In: The Guardian . October 22, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  29. ↑ Alice Rawsthorn Tomorrow's Girl. In: The Guardian , June 19, 2004.
  30. ^ A b Adrian Hamilton: Pauline Boty: The marginalized artist of British Pop Art is enjoying a revival . In: The Independent on Sunday , December 22, 2013. Retrieved September 17, 2017. 
  31. ↑ Joanna Kavenna: Autumn by Ali Smith review - a beautiful, transient symphony . In: The Guardian , October 12, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2017. 
  32. ↑ press release: Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman: November 30, 2013 - February 9, 2014 . Pallant House Gallery. September 11, 2013 .: “Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, is pleased to present the first public exhibition that provides an overview of the work and career of Pauline Boty (1938–1966), the pioneering pop artist who is known for her glamorous, free spirited life. "
  33. ↑ http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/events/pauline-boty-pop-artist-and-woman/
  34. ↑ Margaret Drabble : 'Friendly, glowing, bronzed, curious, eager, impulsive: the world what all before her, and she knew It widget The one that got away: . In: The Guardian . August 23, 2014. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Boty, Pauline
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1966
Place of death London