Pauline Boty with “Scandal ’63” by Michael Ward on display at the National Portrait Gallery

Pauline Boty by Michael Ward, 13 January 1964, C-type colour print

The portrait of Pauline Boty with her presumed lost work “Scandal ’63” is on display in “The UK 1960–Today” in Room 32 at the National Portrait Gallery.

“The display includes groups of portraits by particular artists, inviting the viewer to consider the range of contrasting approaches. While the challenge of depicting an observed sitter remained, a rich stylistic diversity characterises portraiture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

From the early 1960s the pace of social, political and artistic change in Britain gathered momentum. Food rationing ended only in 1954 and a growing affluence and a new mood of prosperity gave rise to increasing consumerism. Television, cinema, radio, advertising and magazines fuelled these changes by swiftly communicating the latest developments in fashion, design, music, science and the arts. But the optimism of the early 1960s was, by the end of the decade, replaced by a sense that the dream of progress had somehow slipped away. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s inequality in material wealth increasingly created new hierarchies and social tension.” [from the National Portrait Gallery website]

With thanks to Terence Pepper for the notification. More information on the portraits on display can be found here: [link]

New “Sources” section now available online

This new section lists some of the sources for titles of Pauline Boty’s paintings such as “Monica Vitti with Heart” shown below. In future the intention is to expand it further and also add information on the content she included, such as the names of individuals featured in the works. Access the new section here [link]

Monica Vitti with Heart, 1963, oil on canvas

New interview with Derek Boshier at paulineboty.org – extracts below:

Paulineboty.org: What were your first impressions when you met Pauline Boty?
Derek Boshier: My first impressions on meeting Pauline were the same as almost everybody. She was a very vivacious, glamorous intellectual. You know. And a lot of fun –the fact that she should have died so early aged 28… I mean, she loved life, you know – and she knew how to live it. She was just good to be around really. And that aspect of her, knowing how to live life, really fed her paintings too.

PBO: Did Pauline express her frustration at having to study stained glass instead of art as she’d originally wanted to?
DB: No. Mainly because she wasn’t a complainer. Politics though – Yes – but not her personal life. The Anti-Ugly March she organised for example, which I went on. She was the figurehead for that. The point about her is that she said her mind – not only in paintings with sensuality and sexuality, but she said it with architecture. I mean she was very direct.

PBO: And your painting “Pauline Boty Goes Digital [for Pauline Boty]”. How did that come about?
DB: Well it’s a very large painting that I made in 2011. You know, I always think of Pauline and what she did and I’m often reminded of her when people write to me and ask me about her or “Pop Goes the Easel” and I remember my friendship with her. I was about to start a new series of paintings about smartphones and I just thought before I do that I’d like to do a homage to Pauline as it were, just to help keep her in people’s memory really.

Full interview here: [link]

Evelyne Axell exhibition in Namur references influence of Pauline Boty on collage work

*Exhibition poster, Service de la Culture de la Province de Namur*

From 21 September 2019 to 26 January 2020, “Evelyne Axell: Pop Methods”: a major exhibition of the work of Evelyne Axell (Namur, 1935 – Zwijnaerde 1972) is to open the artistic season at the new renovated and extended Delta (previously the Maison de la Culture de Namur – Cultural and Art centre of Namur).
This large-scale event will include paintings, collages, sketches, preparatory drawings, and documents bearing witness to the artist’s working methods and providing opportunities to explore her specific methods, including her use of numerous photographic self-portraits.
At the peak of her time, Evelyne Axell succeeded in mastering the new materials that became available (plexiglass, fur, etc.) to break out of the confines of canvas and experiment, for example, with opaline plexiglass transparencies. Her work reveals her own view of a world gathering pace, where eroticism goes hand in hand with a feminist discourse. The exceptional discovery of 17 of her first works, never exhibited before, provides an opportunity to explore the early stages of her plastic work. These are mainly collages dating from 1964 – which show in particular the influence of English Pop artists (Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips particularly).
This exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with her son, Philippe Antoine, is set to travel through several European countries.

Service de la Culture de la Province de Namur Le Delta / Arts Plastiques / Expositions, Avenue Reine Astrid, 22 B B – 5000 Namur, Belgium

Early Pauline Boty painting discovered!

Untitled by Pauline Boty, 1959, oil on card laid on canvas. 69 x 51 cm — Untitled, 1959, oil on card laid on canvas. 69 x 51 cm

Dating from Boty’s time at the RCA [Royal College of Art] this untitled work has hints of the sensuality she would develop further with some of her key Pop art paintings, but with a palette of autumnal hues she rarely used again. The work is of oil on card laid on canvas and at 69 x 51 cm is large compared to most other surviving works from the period. Excitingly and very unusually it is also prominently signed and dated “Boty.59” on the front.

For further details please enquire using the Contact form or via info@paulineboty.org

Detail of signature and date on recently discovered painting by Pauline Boty. — A rare example of a work by Boty signed and dated on the painting itself.

60 Years rehang at Tate Britain

60 Years continues the Walk through British Art with work by women artists from the 1960s to the present day and includes Boty’s Portrait of Derek Marlowe with Unknown Ladies, recently acquired for Tate Britain.

Portrait of Derek Marlowe with Unknown Ladies, on display at Tate Britain.

“This new display is organised into three sections – Structures, Portraits, and Humour and Strangeness. Together the works represent key ideas in recent British art and celebrate its diversity. All works are by women artists.

Women artists have been under-represented in comparison to their male counterparts. This is an opportunity to question the historical bias, with selected pieces from Tate’s collection showing that the story of art can be told by women artists alone. Artists include Tracey Emin, Mona Hatoum, Rachel Whiteread and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

60 Years reflects Tate’s ongoing commitment to increasing representation of women artists across its galleries.

This display has been curated by Sofia Karamani”

From the Tate website [link]