Joe Tilson: British Pop Artist

Joe Tilson - The 1/2 Ziggurat - 1965 - Color screenprint on ivory wove paper - 577 × 839 mm (image); 686 × 997 mm (sheet) - Art Institute of Chicago (click photo for larger image)

British Pop Artist Joe Tilson (born 1928) “became one of the leading figures associated with the British Pop Art movement. Making use of his previous experience as a carpenter and joiner, Tilson produced wooden reliefs and constructions as well as prints and paintings.”

His work is exhibited in major cities all over the world. He is represented by Marlborough Fine Art, London and Alan Cristea Gallery, London. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1985 and a full Royal Academician (RA) in 1991.

Richard Hamilton: Total Immersion

Richard Hamilton - Just what was it that made yesterday's homes so different, so appealing? (upgrade) - Digital print on paper - 260 x 250 mm - Tate Gallery - London (click photo for larger image)British artist Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) introduced the idea of the artist as an active consumer and contributor to mass culture. Up until then (especially in Abstract Expressionist circles) the prevailing view was that art should be separate from commerce. Hamilton gave other artists permission to consider all visual sources, especially those generated by the commercial sector. For him, “Pop art was not just a movement, but a way of life”.

Nearly every artist involved in the first wave of British Pop was shaped meaningfully by Hamilton's vision for the future of the movement. His impact on his British pupils Peter Blake and David Hockney is especially evident, but he also left his mark on the American Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, whom he got to know and occasionally collaborated with when he visited the United States during the 1960s. “His flair for public spectacle, genuine love of kitsch, and irreverent approach to cultural icons lives on in the work of the Young British Artists (YBA) of the 1990s, among them Damien Hirst, who describes Hamilton as the greatest.” 

“The image featured here is among the most famous in British post-war art. It has come to define the rise of consumer society in the mid to late 1950s and is an icon of Pop art…”

It was always very important to Hamilton for people to understand that Pop Art began in Britain.

Eduardo Paolozzi: A Founder of British Pop Art

Eduardo Paolozzi - Jesus colour by numbers, from General Dynamic F.U.N - 1970 - 15 x 10 in. - Photolithograph on paper - Art Institute of Chicago (click photo for larger image)Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was a prolific and inventive British artist most known for his synthesis of Surrealism’s principles and new elements of popular culture, modern machinery and technology. “He was raised in the shadows of World War II in a family deeply affected by the divisive nature of a country involved in conflict, which birthed his lifelong exploration into the many ways humans are influenced by external, uncontrollable forces. This exploration would come to inform a vast and various body of work that vacillated between the darker and lighter consequences of society's advancements and its so-called progress.”

Most people associate Pop Art with American popular culture. Its seeds, however, go back to a group of artists in London (the Independent Group) that began meeting regularly in 1954 to discuss topics such as mass culture's place in fine art, the found object, and science and technology. 

Barbara Hepworth: Relationships to Space

Barbara Hepworth - Rock Form (Porthcurno) - 1964 - Bronze, Edition of 6, Cast No. 3 - 99-3/4 x 42 x 17 in. (253.4 x 106.7 x 43.2 cm) - Norton Simon Museum - Pasadena, CABritish artist Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) distinguished herself as a world-recognized sculptor during a period where female artists were rare. She evolved her ideas and her work as an influential part of an ongoing conversation with many other important artists of her time, working crucially in areas of greater abstraction while creating three dimensional objects. 

Hepworth’s development of sculptural vocabularies and ideas was complex and multi-faceted. It included the use of a wide range of physical materials for sculpting and an unprecedented sensitivity to the particular qualities of those materials in helping decide the ultimate results of her sculptures. The investigation of "absence" in sculpture as much as "presence," and deep considerations of the relationship of her sculptural forms to the larger spaces surrounding it were of keen interest to her.

The work featured here retains the curving planes of much of her work. She produced it at a time when an increased demand for her work led her away from stone sculpture to bronze. Hepworth had a prosperous career within the modernist movement in England.