Paul Gorman

1950s

I Knew Jim Knew: Jim Walrod knows a thing or two…

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//Jacket photograph Terry Richardson with shots from Walrod’s Instagram feed//

Design authority Jim Walrod wears a deep and wide-ranging understanding of his subject – specifically that pertaining to modernism in furniture, interiors, product design and architecture  – lightly.

This is refreshing in a field populated by bloodless experts and humourless know-alls. The founder of important 90s/00s store Form & Function, Walrod –  described as “the ultimate design raconteur” by André Balazs and “the furniture pimp” by the Beastie Boys – is above all an enthusiast.

Continue reading I Knew Jim Knew: Jim Walrod knows a thing or two…

Guest post: Peter Knock pays tribute to Robyn Denny (1930-2014)

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//Robyn Denny, early 60s. Photo: Bernard Jacobson Gallery//

Artist/illustrator Peter Knock pays tribute to the British ‘Situation’ painter Robyn Denny, who has died:

Sad to learn of the death of abstract painter Robyn Denny last Tuesday (May 20).  It surprised me that he was, in fact, 83; my image of him is locked into the 60s when he was one of the hip and talented artists to have emerged from the Royal College of Art (where he studied in the 50s).

Great Big Biggest Wide London, Denny’s mural for Austin Reed’s Regent Street store, conveyed classic 1960s new age optimism, and received the ultimate seal of approval as a piece defining of its era when The Beatles asked to be photographed standing in front of it in 1963.

Continue reading Guest post: Peter Knock pays tribute to Robyn Denny (1930-2014)

Derek Boshier in Pop Go The Women: The Other Story Of Pop Art

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//”She was an instigator and an enabler.” Boshier discusses Pauline Boty in Pop Go The Women//

Catch if you can Alistair Sooke’s excellent BBC documentary Pop Go The Women: The Other Story Of Pop Art. Derek Boshier – subject of my next book – is among the interviewees, talking about his contemporary Pauline Boty.

Her work, like the other subjects of the programme, has been neglected in the circumscribed narrative of Pop. In Boshier’s words, Boty is important, not least because she was “an instigator and an enabler” to the male artists who hog the story on both sides of the Atlantic.

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//Boshier and Boty captured twisting in Ken Russell’s 1962 BBC documentary Pop Goes The Easel//
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//Rosalyn Drexler. In the background her 1967 painting Marilyn Pursued by Death//

The film’s revelation for me is the American Rosalyn Drexler, whose art is identified convincingly by Sooke as “scathing, critical, strong and stern”. Pop Go The Women is available to view on BBC iPlayer for the next five days here.

Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-Entry is published by Thames & Hudson next spring.

Jim French BC: Before Colt (+ before the SEX shop Naked Cowboys)

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//Johnny Cash by Jim French//

Prior to Jim French launching his homoerotic imprint Colt Studios, the venerable American illustrator and photographer made his bones on Madison Avenue in the 1950s and 60s producing work for such clients as Columbia Records and scarf and handkerchief designer Tammis Keefe.

Now a selection of French’s artworks from this period are going on display in an exhibition at Palm Springs gallery Nat Reed.

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//Frank Sinatra for Columbia Record Club, Jim French//
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//Textile design for Tammis Keefe, Jim French//

Continue reading Jim French BC: Before Colt (+ before the SEX shop Naked Cowboys)