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//
The cover depicted Bowie in the pose of the ‘falling man’, a recurrent motif in Boshier’s work of the 60s.
//Remake/Re-entry, 1962//
//Desert Fallout, 1962//
//Fall, 1962//
The Bowie pieces are among the earliest works on display at the NPG. From the same period stems a painting of Malcolm Morley when both artists – who had been at the Royal College of Art at the same time – were living in New York. On a visit to Morley’s studio, Boshier made a drawing of him on the back of an envelope which formed the basis of the painting that was completed from memory.
“It’s very important to me to paint someone when they are not there, to use my imagination, otherwise you paint only physiological likeness,” says Boshier, who points out the split image refers to comments made by others to Boshier about Morley’s divided character: one part polite, the other confrontational.
// Malcolm Morley by Derek Boshier, 1980 © Derek Boshier/National Portrait Gallery//
The later works on display include a series of drawings in which Boshier depicts himself in a variety of different roles and contexts, including Self Portrait As A Texan, Self Portrait As A Sportsman and Self Portrait With A Future President (all 1988) and Black Dog (2009), in which a fragmented figure represents “a symbol of self-identification”, according to Boshier.
//Bromide print of photo of Boshier taken by Lord Snowdon in London on October 21, 1963 c/o National Portrait Gallery//
“Derek Boshier is celebrated as one of the founders of Pop Art but his contribution to portraiture, combining observation and fantasy, is less well known,” says NPG 20th Century curator Paul Moorhouse. “This display explores the role of imagination in making portraits and illuminates Boshier’s innovatory approach to a traditional genre.’
The NPG show is one of a series of events and activities in which this energetic 76-year-old is engaging this autumn. It also comes at a time of increasing and overdue recognition of his distinctive contribution to post-war and contemporary art, marked as it is by humour, political engagement and an interest in the everyday, as well as restless inquiry into many forms of expression, including printmaking, film and installation.
Boshier is currently the subject of a show at Boston’s Gallery 360 and will be talking about his films at Brooklyn’s Light Industry in October. Meanwhile his work is to be included in the Barbican’s forthcoming Pop Art retrospective.
So Boshier’s diary is fit to burst with activity, as this artwork/agenda he sent me recently attests.
//Boshier and I at Pallant House Gallery last summer//
Imaginary Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery until May 2014. See here.
Boshier will be in conversation with Paul Moorhouse on October 10 – details here.
Light Industry’s screening of Derek Boshier’s filmworks will be followed by an in conversation with Alex Kitnick. Details here.
Pop Art Design is at the Barbican Gallery from October 22 to February 9, 2014. Read more about it here.