“He has never lost his wonder at the world” David Hockney’s preface to the Derek Boshier monograph

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//David Hockney 22 Times, Derek Boshier, 2014. 31 x 42 inches. Ink on Archer’s paper//

I’m delighted to announce that David Hockney has written the preface to Rethink/Re-Entry, the Derek Boshier monograph I am editing.

In the piece, Hockney points out that they have known each other since 1957, and that Boshier “like me, is an artist, and one who has never lost his wonder at the world”.

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//Derek Boshier and I at the opening of his 2012 exhibition David Bowie + The Clash at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Sussex//

Continue reading “He has never lost his wonder at the world” David Hockney’s preface to the Derek Boshier monograph

The Clash: Rare sketches by Derek Boshier in the Flowers Gallery archive

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//Sketch for songbook cover, 13 x 9″. Derek Boshier 1979 courtesy Flowers Gallery//

While interrogating materials for Rethink/Re-Entry – the monograph of artist Derek Boshier I am editing – I’ve come across many delights, including these sketches in the Flowers Gallery archive for one of the most visually striking documents of the post-punk era, CLASH 2nd Songbook.

Continue reading The Clash: Rare sketches by Derek Boshier in the Flowers Gallery archive

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.

Last days of Derek Boshier’s Change at Tanya Leighton Berlin

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//Derek Boshier, Reel, 1973. Still from 16mm film transferred to video, colour, sound, 6:00 minutes//
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//Best Foot Forward, 2014. Still from HD video, color, sound, 5:00 minutes//

Today and tomorrow are the closing days of Change, the Derek Boshier exhibition at Berlin’s Tanya Leighton Gallery.

On art-agenda, Ana Teixeira Pinto writes: “Providing a comprehensive view of his unfairly under-appreciated oeuvre, this extremely well-curated exhibition pairs the artist’s historical films with more recent work such as Best Foot Forward and Did You See… That? (both 2014).”

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Continue reading Last days of Derek Boshier’s Change at Tanya Leighton Berlin

Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-Entry – assembling the materials for long overdue monograph

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//Exhibition cards and private view invitations, 1973 to date//

I’m assembling materials for Rethink/Re-Entry, the long-overdue monograph of the great British artist Derek Boshier I am currently editing.

The book takes its title from the early Boshier painting which inspired rock’s ultimate art-directed star Bryan Ferry to choose the name Remake/Remodel for the first track on Roxy Music’s game-changing debut LP.

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//Rethink/Re-entry, oil on canvas, 1962//

Continue reading Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-Entry – assembling the materials for long overdue monograph

Derek Boshier’s diary fit to burst: Imaginary Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, A Survey Of Work at Boston’s Gallery 360, films at Brooklyn’s Light Industry and inclusion in the Barbican’s huge Pop Art retrospective

//David Bowie As The Elephant Man by Derek Boshier, 1980 © Derek Boshier c/o Flowers Gallery//

Today the National Portrait Gallery unveiled Imaginary Portraits, a selection of works by artist Derek Boshier, who is the subject of a monograph I am editing.

Prominent are two studies of David Bowie; an oil-on-canvas painting executed in New York in 1980 while Bowie was rehearsing for his role in Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man at the city’s Booth Theatre and a 1981 ink-on-paper drawing which resulted from Boshier’s design for the sleeve for the album Lodger a couple of years earlier.

//Outer gatefold sleeve, Lodger, David Bowie, RCA, 1979. Design Derek Boshier, photography Brian Duffy//

Continue reading Derek Boshier’s diary fit to burst: Imaginary Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, A Survey Of Work at Boston’s Gallery 360, films at Brooklyn’s Light Industry and inclusion in the Barbican’s huge Pop Art retrospective