Allen Jones
L'Almanach 26 : Allen Jones
Photo : Rebecca Fanuele © Consortium Museum.
Photo : Rebecca Fanuele © Consortium Museum.
Photo : Rebecca Fanuele © Consortium Museum.
Photo : Rebecca Fanuele © Consortium Museum.
Allen Jones (1937, Southampton, United-Kingdom)
Born in 1937 in Southampton, England, Allen Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work explores the human figure, sexuality, and eroticism. He began studying painting and lithography in 1955 at the Hornsey College of Art in London, where he received his degree in 1961. The unique style and provocative subjects of his compositions distinguish him from his peers, and his vocabulary drawn from popular imagery forged his reputation, from 1960 onward, as a pioneering figure of British Pop Art.
He gained recognition notably for his sculptures of “women-objects” (the series Table, Chair and Hatstand, 1969), featuring hyperrealist and sexualized mannequins turned into furnishings. Envisioned as everyday furniture, these pieces sparked controversy. In them, Jones offers a critique of consumer society at the time, challenging gender perceptions in society and the objectification of the female body in art.
The four pieces in this exhibition fall within the scope of his exploration of erotic imagery and the female body while developing new hybrid works, in which Jones increasingly references his own artistic practice.
His talent as a leading British colorist finds expression in Your Move (2015-2017), a composition combining a vividly colored abstract canvas and a hyperrealist mannequin akin to the ones in his well-known series in 1969.
In Camera (2020) features this iconic figure, which reappears as a creature with robotic movements in an animated video on the left panel. The right panel depicts the staircase leading to Sigmund Freud’s office at Berggasse 19 (Vienna), painted after a photograph taken by the artist. Evoking a space of secrets and intimacy, this staircase leads directly to the fantasized being on the landing, like a visual revelation of fantasies and hidden thoughts.
In his triptychs Moving Picture (2021) and Hymn to Her (2022), created on rigid supports, Allen Jones revisits principles he developed in the 1960s in compositions combining posters, printed photographs, and sculpted volumes.