When Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, British artist Pauline Boty did what she always did when an event in the world affected her. She returned to her easel to paint.
The resulting pop art painting captures a happy and carefree Marilyn against a background of red roses, while gray abstract panels appear to surround her on either side.
Art historian Dr. who has been researching Boty’s life and works for more than 20 years. “It’s brilliant, sad but full of joy,” says Sue Tate.
“Pauline loved Marilyn Monroe and identified very closely with her; “Just like the system broke her down, like when you’re blonde and beautiful you can’t be smart and successful at the same time.”
This was Boty’s experience too. On a London stage full of men in the 1960s (the Royal College of Art, where Boty studied, didn’t even have women’s toilets), the young British artist stood out not just for being a “gorgeous, sensual, charismatic woman”, says the Tate: but for subverting the conventions of the day. for.
“Her work was so bold, so outrageous, so unconventional, so shattering of gender expectations, that people couldn’t cope,” she says.
Art historians now generally agree that Boty’s works stand alongside the best pop art of the period; and had he not died at just 28, many believe he would have been one of the greatest artists of his generation.
After his death in 1966, Boty’s work was ignored or even forgotten for decades. The business survived – thanks largely to Boty’s sister-in-law, Bridget Boty, a dairy farmer in Kent – who hid like a squirrel in one of the farm’s barns.
The Tate says making Boty visible again has been a “long endeavor”, but a solo exhibition opening this week at the Gazelli House of Art in London will allow visitors to see some of his most revered work. Paintings and collages filled with the faces and images of the day, from Elvis to Marilyn, from American gangsters to scandalous British politicians, from race riots in America to the missile crisis in Cuba, will be exhibited.
Boty’s distinctive style was linked to the way he portrayed women. “No one at the time celebrated women’s sexual pleasure more than Boty,” says Tate. For example, his painting dated 1963, 54321 – reference to the TV cultural program of the time, Ready Go! – “Oh for a fu…” banner shines.
“The use of the F-word at the time was very shocking, but it was funny and tongue-in-cheek to him,” Tate says.
Another painting in the exhibition is as follows: With Love to Jean-Paul BelmondoIt sold for £1.2 million at Sotheby’s last year, a record for a Boty work and a price tag that is testament to how the art world now perceives his work.
The exhibition aims to tell Boty’s story through his paintings, collages and stained glass works, as well as photographs, film footage, letters and posters. “She’s a very important political feminist artist, but she was also immersed in the swinging ’60s in many different ways beyond painting,” says Gazelli’s George Barker, one of the exhibition’s curators.
It’s true that Boty packed a lot into his short life. When Bob Dylan arrived in the country in the winter of 1962 at the invitation of Boty’s then-boyfriend, film director Peter Saville, he was one of the first people in Britain to spend time with her. She starred alongside Michael Caine in the 1966 film. Alfieand hosted a radio show People’s Ear. He even interviewed the Beatles.
Tate says that although he was extremely popular on social media, people were afraid of him because he “challenged the stereotypes of the time”.
Boty married political activist and then literary agent Clive Goodwin in June 1963 (who, according to her, was one of the few men who appreciated her as “an intelligent person”) and became pregnant in 1965. At a routine prenatal appointment, Boty learned she had cancer.
Doctors offered her an abortion so she could receive potentially life-saving radiotherapy, but Boty refused. A few months after the birth of his daughter, in July 1966, Boty died.
This is the moment where he can truly contribute to the culture in a way that he couldn’t in the ’60s; it was too much
Doctor Sue Tate
Relating to: Ali Smith tops pop artist Pauline Boty
There is tragedy in Boty’s story; Her husband later died of a brain haemorrhage in an American prison cell where he was being held on suspicion of drunkenness. His daughter, Boty Goodwin, also died of a drug overdose at a party celebrating the completion of her arts degree. At 29, she only outlived her mother by a year.
The Tate hopes visitors to the exhibition will focus less on the tragedy and more on how Boty enriches pop art by combining both celebration and criticism in a way no one has done before.
“This is the moment where he was able to make his voice heard and really contribute to the culture in a way that he couldn’t in the ’60s,” Tate said. it was too much,” he says.
• Pauline Boty: A Portrait is at Gazelli Art House, London, from 1 December to 24 February