Marisol’s Love + David Parkinson’s image of Mona Solomons with SEX ankle boot
//Left: Love, 1962, Marisol. Plaster and glass (Coca-Cola bottle), 6 1/4 x 4 1/8 x 8 1/8″, MoMA. Right: From I Get A Kick Out Of You, David Parkinson, Club International, 1975//
A disturbing David Parkinson image from a mid-70s fashion shoot for British porn magazine Club International puts me in mind of the early 60s sculpture Love by the artist Marisol.
Love was foregrounded by Alistair Sooke in his recent BBC documentary Pop Go The Women in support of his argument that however powerful the work of female pop artists, they continue to suffer lack of recognition in the male-dominated narrative of the movement.
As Sooke stressed, Marisol Escobar’s brutal piece of satire, made from a plaster cast of her face and a Coca-Cola bottle, points to the truth that capitalist abundance is almost literally forced down our throats.
//Sooke contemplates Love at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art//
//Page proof, Club International 1975//
One likes to think that the art-savvy Parkinson was riffing on this when he posed model Mona Solomons with the heel of a calf-skin laced ankle boot from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Sex a decade or so later.
//pp56 + 57, Club International, Vol 4, No 2//
//pp58 + 59, Club International, Vol 4, No 2//
Read a rare and revealing interview with Marisol from a 1975 issue of People magazine here.
My feature on David Parkinson’s life and work is in the current issue of GQ UK.