Providing a thematic overview of the multifarious work produced by Derek Boshier (1937-2024) from the post-war period to the digital age, this fascinating publication reveals how Boshiers deceptively playful imagery offers analytical commentaries on societal issues and the fragility and fragmentation of human identity.
Among contemporaries such as Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Peter Phillips, Boshier was a central figure in the British Pop Art movement. Embracing Pop sensibilities, his early work juxtaposed figurative painting and imagery to call attention to nuclear anxieties and the growing consumerism of 1960s Britain. Yet this is just one aspect of Boshier's remarkable artistic journey, which has drawn in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, graphic design and printmaking. The book's broad sweep includes recent paintings and drawings created in America at the height of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, and features commentaries by artists, academics, curators and writers who explore how Boshier's ground-breaking activity interrogates truth and logic, fantasy and reality in the modern age.
With contributions by James Cahill, Philip Colbert, Eddie Chambers, Susan Compo, Rachele Dini, Inga Fraser, Jann Haworth, Leslie Jones, Emily Langridge, Gregory Salter, Penny Slinger and John Stezaker.
Preface, M. Livingstone; Introduction, H. Little; 1 'Cold War
Consumerism in Derek Boshier's Pop Period', R. Dini; 2 'Encounters: Derek
Boshier and Film', I. Fraser Plate section: The Identikit Man, G. Salter;
Plaza, J. Haworth; The Depressed Cosmetic Salesman, J. Stezaker; KKK, E.
Chambers; Los Angeles Times, J. Cahill; Les Messieurs dAvignon, P. Slinger;
David Bowie and Teresa Cornelys, S. Compo; America America, L. Jones; The
King of K Pop, P. Colbert; Interview: Derek Boshier and Hans Ulrich Obrist;
Chronology, E. Langridge; Index
Helen Little is an independent curator, researcher and writer with a special interest in twentieth-century and contemporary British art. Recent publications include Alan Davie and David Hockney: Early Works (Lund Humphries, 2019).
Marco Livingstone is an art historian and independent curator who has written extensively on Pop Art and more widely on contemporary painting, sculpture and photography. He is the author of the acclaimed Pop Art: A Continuing History and of major monographs including Patrick Caulfield, Peter Kinley and Adrian Berg, all published by Lund Humphries.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director of the Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He has curated more than 350 exhibitions, most recently Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano (2020).
