Pauline Boty (1938-1966), 1962, Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give [detail], oil on board (estimate: £500,000-800,000). Christie’s Images Ltd. 2024.
Pauline Boty’s tribute to Marilyn Monroe, Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give was exhibited at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery in August 1962, and gifted by the artist to a close friend two years later. It has remained in the same collection ever since.
Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art specialist Angus Granlund says the gift marked a key moment in Boty’s career: “A trailblazing pioneer and true polymath, Boty painted, acted, danced and engaged in political activism. However, at this key period she refocused her energy on painting, turning down acting roles to do so.” Granlund further describes the work as “a hugely important picture, and Boty’s only Marilyn painting still in a private collection. It unites two women who were synonymous with one another in the 1960s.”
Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give (1962, estimate: £500,000-800,000), is a leading highlight of the Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale on 20 March.
Ali Smith inspecting Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give in the short film accompanying the lot essay. Christie’s Images Ltd. 2024.
The essay and short film with Ali Smith are available here: [link]
Lot detail Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give, 1962 Oil on hardboard 106.5 x 127 cm
Estimate GBP 500,000-800,000
Auction details Modern British and Irish Art Evening Sale 20 March 6:30PM GMT | Live Auction 22673
Viewing New York: from 9–21 February London: from 13–20 March
Further information on the auction is here: [link]
The talk will take place at Gazelli Art House on February 22nd, 6:00 – 8:00 pm (GMT) to accompany the “Oh, Marilyn!” exhibition currently being held at the gallery.
The panel discussion will draw on the history of art during the 60s wave of female emancipation in the UK and US and its impact on the arts, specifically the legacy of exhibiting artist Pauline Boty. Panellists include Ali Smith (CBE FRSL award-winning author, whose work Autumn features Boty as a central figure) and Dr Sue Tate (author of the biography Pauline Boty: Pop artist and Woman and co-curator of the associated retrospective which ran at both Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Pallant House Gallery in the UK).
You can join either at the gallery or online (audio only) Click here to join at the gallery [limited places]: [link] Click here to hear the talk live online: [link]
Further information about the exhibition is available here [link]
Gazelli Art House 39 Dover Street London W1S 4NN +44 207 491 8816
Presented by art historian and curator, Katy Hessel, The Great Women Artists Podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them.
Episode 64: Ali Smith on Barbara Hepworth, Pauline Boty, Tacita Dean, and Lorenza Mazzetti
The current and final episode of the series features Katy Hessel speaking to author Ali Smith about the artists who act as the ‘spine’ for her recently-completed series of four stand-alone novels, grouped as the Seasonal Quartet:
“PAULINE BOTY – AUTUMN One of the most important artists to change the face of British Pop Art (as well as being an Actress, TV star, radio commentator, who read Proust) Pauline Boty EPITOMISED the possibilities of the modern Pop woman. She captured the glamour and vivacity of the 1960s, including those of music stars to film icons, think Marylin to Elvis, Boty worshipped the proliferation of imagery available in the post-War era.
BARBARA HEPWORTH – WINTER The Titan of British sculpture, Hepworth set up a studio in St Ives during World War II, and is hailed for her small-to-colossal hand-carved wooden sculptures. Cast in stone and bronze, sometimes embedded with strings or flashes of colour, and fluctuating between hard and soft, light and dark, round and straight, solid and hollow, the spirit of Hepworth’s work is at the spine of Spring and through Ali’s incredible writing makes us SEE differently.
TACITA DEAN – SPRING Filmmaker and artist, Dean, seven-metre-wide work The Montafon Letter is a vast chalk drawing on nine blackboards joined together, looms in Spring (and is also an exhibition visited by the protagonist Richard at the Royal Academy). Dean says in some ways the work about Brexit and about hope; “hope that the last avalanche will uncover us”. Much like Smith’s post-Brexit novels.
LORENZA MAZZETTI – SUMMER A new artist for me, this story of the Italian-born filmmaker who came of age in the 1960s is one of the most profound in the history of art. I am not going to tell you anything else other than listen to Ali tell her story.” [From The Great Women Artists Podcast website]
“One of the most important artists to change the face of British Pop Art (as well as being an Actress, TV star, radio commentator, a blonde who read Proust) Boty EPITOMISED the possibilities of the modern Pop woman. Known for capturing the glamour and vivacity of the 1960s, including those of music stars to film icons, think Marylin to Elvis, Boty worshipped the proliferation of imagery available in the post-War era.
“It’s almost like painting mythology, a present-day mythology – film stars, etc. The 20th-century gods and goddesses. People need them, and the myths that surround them, because their own lives are enriched by them. Pop art colours those myths.”
Dr Sue Tate is THE leading expert in Boty’s life and work. Without Sue’s work, conducting important primary research starting in the early 90s when Boty was barely known, in 1998 co-curating, for two London Galleries, the first solo show of Boty’s work in the UK for 35 years, In 2013 curating a major retrospective of Boty’s work at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, that toured to Pallant House Chichester and to Lodz, Poland, and authored the brilliant accompanying book Pauline Boty Pop Artist and Woman, we would not know about this brilliant, important and formative artist.” [From The Great Women Artists Podcast website]
Pauline Boty 