No one remembered Eleanor Rigby enough to come to her funeral. It is sad but Francis Schaeffer points out King Solomon’s words on death from 3000 years ago and they seem similar to the song’s conclusion.
Eleanor Rigby – PAUL McCARTNEY
The Beatles Cartoon – Eleanor Rigby.
Uploaded on Feb 21, 2012
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a
wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps
in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that
no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night
when there’s nobody there
What does he care?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)
Where do they all belong?
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Here the Beatles take on the subject of death and they point out that no one came to the funeral of Eleanor Rigby. It reminds us of the words of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:11):
No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
When we die we return naked back into the earth.
Steve Jobs noted:
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford University’s commencement, June 2005.
Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
(Pictured below: Tolerance Under Fire – Ravi Zacharias at Dartmouth College)
Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture according to Francis Schaeffer. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”
(Francis Schaeffer below)
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Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13 “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”)
The Message (MSG)
Ecclesiastes 9
v 2-3 It’s one fate for everybody—righteous and wicked, good people, bad people, the nice and the nasty, worshipers and non-worshipers, committed and uncommitted. I find this outrageous—the worst thing about living on this earth—that everyone’s lumped together in one fate. Is it any wonder that so many people are obsessed with evil? Is it any wonder that people go crazy right and left? Life leads to death. That’s it.
4-6 Still, anyone selected out for life has hope, for, as they say, “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” The living at least know something, even if it’s only that they’re going to die. But the dead know nothing and get nothing. They’re a minus that no one remembers. Their loves, their hates, yes, even their dreams, are long gone. There’s not a trace of them left in the affairs of this earth.
Ecclesiastes: The Voice of Experience
2003
Solomon then sought pleasure in wine, women and song. He experienced every physical sensation he could: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:10). But pleasure did not bring him happiness either: “Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (verse 11)….Solomon was bitter that, having had every advantage in life, he had no advantage in death. This bitterness increased until he ended up hating even life itself (verse 17).
(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)
Francis Schaeffer comments on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of death:
Ecclesiastes 9:11
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
Chance rules. If a man starts out only from himself and works outward it must eventually if he is consistent seem so that only chance rules and naturally in such a setting you can not expect him to have anything else but finally a hate of life.
Ecclesiastes 2:17-18a
17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun…
That first great cry “So I hated life.” Naturally if you hate life you long for death and you find him saying this in Ecclesiastes 4:2-3:
2 And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. 3 But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.
He lays down an order. It is best never have to been. It is better to be dead, and worse to be alive. But like all men and one could think of the face of Vincent Van Gogh in his final paintings as he came to hate life and you watch something die in his self portraits, the dilemma is double because as one is consistent and one sees life as a game of chance, one must come in a way to hate life. Yet at the same time men never get beyond the fear to die. Solomon didn’t either. So you find him in saying this.
Ecclesiastes 2:14-15
14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.
The Hebrew is stronger than this and it says “it happens EVEN TO ME,” Solomon on the throne, Solomon the universal man. EVEN TO ME, even to Solomon.
Ecclesiastes 3:18-21
18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. 19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.[n] 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?
What he is saying is as far as the eyes are concerned everything grinds to a stop at death.
Ecclesiastes 4:16
16 There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
That is true. There is no place better to feel this than here in Switzerland. You can walk over these hills and men have walked over these hills for at least 4000 years and when do you know when you have passed their graves or who cares? It doesn’t have to be 4000 years ago. Visit a cemetery and look at the tombstones from 40 years ago. Just feel it. IS THIS ALL THERE IS? You can almost see Solomon shrugging his shoulders.
Ecclesiastes 8:8
8 There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. (King James Version)
A remarkable two phrase. THERE IS NO DISCHARGE IN THAT WAR or you can translate it “no casting of weapons in that war.” Some wars they come to the end. Even the THIRTY YEARS WAR (1618-1648) finally finished, but this is a war where there is no casting of weapons and putting down the shield because all men fight this battle and one day lose. But more than this he adds, WICKEDNESS WON’T DELIVER YOU FROM THAT FIGHT. Wickedness delivers men from many things, from tedium in a strange city for example. But wickedness won’t deliver you from this war. It isn’t that kind of war. More than this he finally casts death in the world of chance.
Ecclesiastes 9:12
12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
Death can come at anytime. Death seen merely by the eye of man between birth and death and UNDER THE SUN. Death too is a thing of chance. Albert Camus speeding in a car with a pretty girl at his side and then Camus dead. Lawrence of Arabia coming up over a crest of a hill 100 miles per hour on his motorcycle and some boys are standing in the road and Lawrence turns aside and dies.
Surely between birth and death these things are chance. Modern man adds something on top of this and that is the understanding that as the individual man will dies by chance so one day the human race will die by chance!!! It is the death of the human race that lands in the hand of chance and that is why men grew sad when they read Nevil Shute’s book ON THE BEACH.
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By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture. I am hoping that Woody Allen will also come to that same conclusion that Solomon came to concerning the meaning of life and man’s proper place in the universe in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil
SONG FACTS:
Paul McCartney wrote most of this song. He got “Rigby” from the name of a store (Rigby and Evens Ltd Wine and Spirit Shippers) and “Eleanor” from actress Eleanor Bron. He liked the name “Eleanor Rigby” because it sounded natural.
McCartney explained at the time that his songs came mostly from his imagination. Regarding this song, he said, “It just came. When I started doing the melody I developed the lyric. It all came from the first line. I wonder if there are girls called Eleanor Rigby?”
McCartney wasn’t sure what the song was going to be about until he came up with the line, “Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.” That’s when he came up with the story an old, lonely woman. The lyrics, “Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” are a reference to the cold-cream she wears in an effort to look younger.
“Father Mackenzie” was originally “Father McCartney.” Paul decided he didn’t want to freak out his dad and picked a name out of the phone book instead.
A string section scored by Beatles producer George Martin consisting of four violins, two violas and two cellos were used in recording. Paul may have been inspired by the classic composer Vivaldi.
The Beatles didn’t play any of the instruments on this. All the music came from the string players, who were hired as session musicians.
Paul McCartney (from Observer Music Monthly November 2008): “When I was a kid I was very lucky to have a real cool dad, a working-class gent, who always encouraged us to give up our seat on the bus for old people. This led me into going round to pensioners’ houses. It sounds a bit goody-goody, so I don’t normally tell too many people. There were a couple of old ladies and I used to go round and say, ‘Do you need any shopping done?’ These lonely old ladies were something I knew about growing up, and that was what ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was about – the fact that she died and nobody really noticed. I knew this went on.”
There is a gravestone for an Eleanor Rigby in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Woolton, England. Woolton is a suburb of Liverpool and Lennon first met McCartney at a fete at St Peter’s Church. The gravestone bearing the name Eleanor Rigby shows that she died in October 1939, aged 44. However Eleanor was not like the lonely people in McCartney’s song, as she was married. Another of the gravestones there has the word “McKenzie” written on it. McCartney has denied that that is the source of the names, though he has agreed that they may have registered subconsciously.
This was originally written as “Miss Daisy Hawkins.” According to Rolling Stone magazine, when McCartney first played the song for his neighbor Donovan Leitch, the words were “Ola Na Tungee, blowing his mind in the dark with a pipe full of clay.” (thanks, Bertrand – Paris, France)
The lyrics were brainstormed among The Beatles. In later years, Lennon and McCartney gave different accounts of who contributed more of the words to this.
Microphones were placed very close to the instruments to create and unusual sound.
Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin both had hits with cover versions of this.
Because of the string section, this was difficult to play live, which The Beatles never did. On his 2002 Back In The US tour, Paul McCartney played this without the strings. Keyboards were used to compensate.
This song was not written in a normal chord, it is in the dorian mode – the scale you get when you play one octave up from the second note of a major scale. This is usually found in old songs such as “Scarborough Fair.” (thanks, Rachel – Bath, England)
Vanilla Fudge covered this in a slowed-down, emotional style. They’ve done this with many songs, including hits by *NSYNC, and The Backstreet Boys. Their version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” was a #6 US hit in 1968. Says Fudge drummer Carmine Appice: “Most of the songs we did, we tried to take out of the realm they were in and try to put them where they were supposed to be in our eyes. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was always a great song by The Beatles. It was done with the orchestra, but the way we did it, we put it into an eerie graveyard setting and made it spooky, the way the lyrics read. Songs like Ticket To Ride, that’s a hurtin’ song, so we slowed it down so it wouldn’t be so happy. We would look at lyrics and the lyrics would dictate if it was feasible to do something with it or not.” (Thanks to Carmine for speaking with us about this song. His website iscarmineappice.net.)
Former US President Bill Clinton has stated that this is his favorite Beatles song. (thanks, Adrian – Wilmington, DE)
In 1966, this song took home the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Performance, Male. It was awarded to Paul McCartney. (thanks, Tommy – Flower Mound, TX)
In August 1966, the long-defunct British music magazine Disc And Music Echo asked Kinks frontman Ray Davies to review the then newly released Revolver album. This is how he reacted to this song: “I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It’s all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: ‘I’m going to write this for my old schoolmistress’. Still it’s very commercial.”
See the statue of Eleanor Rigby in Song Images
The chorus of this song was sampled as part of Sinead O’Connor’s 1994 song “Famine,” which is based on the story of the potato famine in Ireland. (thanks, Annabelle – Eugene, OR)
In 2008 a document came to light that showed that McCartney may have had an alternative source for the Eleanor Rigby name. In the early 1990s a lady named Annie Mawson had a job teaching music to children with learning difficulties. Annie managed to teach a severely autistic boy to play “Yellow Submarine,” on the piano, which won him a Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. She wrote to the former Beatle telling him what joy he’d brought. Months later, Annie received a brown envelope bearing a ‘Paul McCartney World Tour’ stamp. Inside was enclosed a page from an accounts log kept by the Corporation of Liverpool, which records the wages paid in 1911 to a scullery maid working for the Liverpool City Hospital, who signed her name “E. Rigby.” There was no accompanying letter of explanation. Annie said in an interview that when she saw the name Rigby, “I realized why I’d been sent it. I feel that when you’re holding it you’re holding a bit of history.”
When the slip went up for auction later that year, McCartney told the Associated Press: “Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictitious character that I made up. If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that’s fine with me.”
This was released simultaneously on August 5, 1966 on both the album Revolver and as a double A-side with “Yellow Submarine.”
The thrash band Realm covered this song on their 1988 album Endless War. It is a speed metal version of the song that got them signed to Roadrunner Records. (thanks, Ben – Phoenix, AZ)
McCartney told Q magazine June 2010 that after recording the song, he felt he could have done better. He recalled: “I remember not liking the vocal on Eleanor Rigby, thinking, I hadn’t nailed. I listen to it now and it’s… very good. It’s a bit annoying when you do Eleanor Rigby and you’re not happy with it.”
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422. Beatles – ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (1966)
“Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in the jar by the door
Who is it for?”
Taken from the album Revolver
UK #1, US #11
‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a very important part of the Beatles’ shift from pop group to pioneers. It was one of the first Beatles songs to not deal at all with love, and was in fact a move in the opposite direction. I put ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is the same league as some of my favourite pop songs to ever deal with loneliness and solidarity. ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’, Darren Hayes’ ‘Darkness’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Who Is It?’ – all of these songs are associated in my mind. Each one has a perfect marriage of music and lyrics to evoke a feeling of complete isolation.
The song tells the story of two characters, Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie, who simultaneously live lives of loneliness, connected by a church where they both work, together but alone. Father McKenzie is preaching to an empty church, and Eleanor spends her time cleaning up after weddings, a constant reminder that she never got to experience a wedding of her own. She dies in the church, and the only person to attend her funeral is Father McKenzie. In between all this is the chorus: “All the lonely people/Where do they all come from?”. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ isn’t just about the title character, it’s about everybody.
And all of it is contained in just over two minutes. Before you know it, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is over. But it is an experience even in that small time frame. I don’t think I knew of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ before I bought the staggering hits album 1, and I was transfixed by immediately. On that album, it is track 16 out of 27, and it is a tremendous leap forward. It sounds almost nothing like any of the songs that come before it – it is the moment in which they became a new band, the incarnation of the Beatles that made them the most respected band in the world. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a turning point, a landmark for the band, and a true classic.
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Joe Tilson is the featured artist today!!!
Art dealer John Kasmin with artists Joe Tilson and David Hockney
Joe Tilson
Joe Tilson, LOOK!, 1964, oil, acrylic on plywood 73-1/2 x 76-3/4 x 3 in. unframed Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1966, © Joe Tilson, 2010.
Pop Art Legend Joe Tilson to Exhibit at the Bohun Gallery
Posted JAN 23 2014 by EDITOR in ART, ENTERTAINMENT AND LEISURE, EVENTS
Over its 40 Year history, Bohun Gallery has had the opportunity to work with some of Britain’s greatest printmakers and we are delighted to introduce the work of Joe Tilson RA and to celebrate his achievements in this long-overdue solo show between 1-22 February 2014.
One of the founding figures of British Pop art in the early 1960s, Joe Tilson was famous long before the Beatles and David Hockney. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art. In 1955 he won the much coveted Rome Prize, which took him to live in Italy where the octogenarian continues to live and work today. He is a Royal Academician and his artistic career was celebrated at the Royal Academy in a retrospective exhibition in 2002. Despite his success and perhaps due to his relocation to Italy, his work remains one of the most affordable artists of his generation.
A lifelong dedicated printmaker, Joe Tilson has gained a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost artists producing prints, multiples, constructions, paintings and reliefs. His enduring appeal relies on his consistent refusal to recognise the artificial divisions between the unique and the editioned artwork. Many of his prints are largely hand-painted and his ‘paintings’ are based around print-making techniques. His early work embraced the hedonism and optimism of the 1960s and he became a natural exponent of the ‘Pop Art’ era.
The 1970s saw a shift in his work when he moved to Italy as he began to reflect on the five elements and Greek and Roman mythology. Italy remains a strong focus in his work and some of his most recent imagery is inspired by the churches of Venice. All periods of the artist’s career will be represented in Bohun Gallery’s show with a wide selection of prints, multiples and constructions.
Bohun Gallery, 15 Reading Road, Henley on Thames, Oxon RG9 1AB
Tel: 01491 576 228 www.bohungallery.co.uk
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BRITISH POP ART PIONEERS
This entry was posted on August 20, 2013 by admin.
This autumn Christie’s auction house will be showcasing the Pioneers of British Pop Art in the first UK exhibition devoted to these international innovators since a touring show from Germany visited York in 1976. We’re taking the opportunity to introduce some of the fantastic early British pop artists, whose achievements have often been overlooked.
Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art Frances Outred has said that early British pop art is crying out for serious appraisal, “What’s really interesting here is that it’s not like the British were second – they were the first. Britain invented the term Pop Art and it is now a global phenomenon which is known principally as an American phenomenon.”
The Christie’s exhibition, titled ‘Britain Went Pop!’, will show how British artists went on to influence the big American pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, “As the Americans became more and more popular and strong it seems the Brits became a bit more shy and went more esoteric”, Outred explained.
Christie’s have been working with living artists such as Peter Blake and Allen Jones and the families of other artists to showcase over 70 works, many of which have not been since the 1960s, if at all. One of the earliest works will be a 1948 proto-pop art collage by Eduardo Paolozzi. Whilst the British pop artists were mostly men, the exhibition will also feature the work of two women artists, Jann Haworth and Pauline Boty, who were both innovators of the international movement.
Here’s an introduction to some of the renowned and lesser known British artists who led the way in the cutting-edge exploration of the paradoxical imagery of popular culture. Meet the forgotten women, the father, the godfather and the king of Pop Art…
RICHARD HAMILTON
Richard Hamilton is regarded by many as the father of Pop Art. His best known work was his 1956 collage ‘Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing?’, considered by some historians to mark the birth of the pop art movement.
Hamilton is credited with coining the phrase ‘pop art’ itself. In words dating from 1957, that are seen as prescient of the likes of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst, he wrote, “Pop art is popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short term solution), expandable (easily forgotten), low cost, mass produced, young (aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business.”
Hamilton hung out with the musicians of the Sixties; his silkscreen ‘Swingeing London’ shows Mick Jagger in the back of a police car and Paul McCartney asked him to design The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ sleeve. René Magritte andMarcel Duchamp were among his close friends and David Hockney and Peter Blake were among those he taught and influenced.
Exhibition highlight – ‘L is for Elle’ which echoes Warhol’s parody of advertising motifs
PETER BLAKE
During the late 1950s, Peter Blake became one of the best known pioneers of British pop art. Studying at the Royal College of Art (1953-7), he was placed in the centre of Swinging London and came into contact with the leading figures of popular culture.
He came to wider public attention when, along with Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier and Peter Philips, he featured in Ken Russell’s ‘Monitor’ film on pop art, ‘Pop Goes the Easel’ (broadcast on the BBC in 1962). Blake’s art captured the effervescent and optimistic ethos of the sixties and reflected his fascination with icons and the ephemera of popular culture.
The ‘Godfather of Pop Art’ is best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatle’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ with fellow pop art pioneer Jan Howarth. Still creating exceptional artwork today, he continues to explore the beauty to be found in everyday objects.
GERALD LAING
Gerald Laing loomed large in the British pop art movement, helping to define the 1960s with huge canvases based on newspaper photographs of famous models, astronauts and film stars. His portrait of Brigitte Bardot is one of his most famous works.
Laing’s earliest pop art pieces presented young starlets or bikini-clad beauties bursting with sex appeal, capturing the excitement and exuberance of the 1960s. His work frequently commented on current events, such as the painting ‘Souvenir’ (1962), a response to the Cuban missile crisis which used a 3D effect allowing the viewer to see Khruschev from one side and Kennedy from the other.
At the end of his third year at St Martin’s (1963) he spent the summer in New York, having been given introductions to Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Robert Indiana, all of whom were still on the brink of fame. Indiana employed him as a studio assistant and Andy Warhol became a friend and lifelong influence.
Exhibition highlight – ‘Conception’, a bronze sculpture from a series of works modelled by his second wife Galina Golikova.
ALLEN JONES
Allen Jones is one of the most renowned British pop sculptors. While living in New York (1964-5) he discovered a rich fund of imagery in the sexually motivated popular illustrations of the 1940s and 1950s. Henceforth, in paintings such as ‘Perfect Match’, he made explicit previously subdued eroticism. The full extent of his Pop sensibility emerged in sexually provocative fibreglass sculptures such as ‘Chair’ (1969), life-size images of women as furniture with fetishist and sado-masochist overtones.
In the late 1950s Jones studied at the Royal College of Art with David Hockney and R.B.Kitaj. He credits Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and the writer Lawrence Alloway for introducing him to new ways of thinking about representation. Living on the Kings Road in the 60s and 70s he witnessed the liberation of the body and socio-political situation that followed the austerity of the post war years. These things fed into his artwork and with the passage of time his sculptures now encapsulate the spirit of swinging London.
Exhibition highlight – ‘Interesting Journey’, a rare and early self-portrait and ‘Artistic Foot(wear)’ the last of his ‘shelf’ paintings.
PAULINE BOTY
Pauline Boty was a founder of British pop art and the only female painter in the British wing of the movement. She has been described by the Independent as “the heartbreaker of the Sixties art scene.” In 1959, she entered the Royal College of Art (a year ahead of Boshier, David Hockney and Allen Jones).
Boty, who died in 1966 aged just 28, was a key player in the frenetic Swinging London social scene; she was reportedly loved by countless men including Peter Blake, she escorted Bob Dylan around London on his first visit to Britain, and was a dancer on ‘Ready Steady Go!’. Her work was, in the pop art manner, uncompromising, sensational, gaudy, and frequently explicitly sexual. Her rebellious art, combined with her free-spirited lifestyle, made her a herald of 1970s feminism.
JANN HAWORTH
Although Jann Haworth is an American born artist she spent many years living in England, moving to London in 1961 to study art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and studio art at the Slade. She experimented with sewn and stuffed soft sculptures which often contained specific references to American culture, for examples her dummies of Mae West and Shirley Temple. Her use of soft materials was unprecedented at the time and she soon became an innovative leading figure of the British pop art movement.
Haworth married Peter Blake, with whom she created the iconic album cover design of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The original concept was to have The Beatles dressed in their new “Northern brass band” uniforms appearing at an official ceremony in a park. For the great crowd gathered at this imaginary event, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, as well as Haworth and Blake all submitted a list of characters they wanted to see in attendance. Blake and Haworth then pasted life-size, black-and-white photographs of all the approved characters onto hardboard, which Haworth subsequently hand-tinted. Haworth also added several cloth dummies to the assembly, including one of her “Old Lady” figures and a Shirley Temple doll who wears a ‘Welcome The Rolling Stones’ sweater. Inspired by the municipal flower-clock in Hammersmith, West London, Haworth came up with the idea of writing out the name of the band in civic flower-bed lettering.
JOE TILSON
The Telegraph has declared Joe Tilson “the forgotten king of British pop art” He was one of the first in the group of young art stars to have a highly successful show in the Swinging Sixties (1961). “I was famous before the Beatles and Hockney,” Tilson says.
Following national service, he studied alongside Frank Auerback, Leon Kossoff and Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art. Part of the gilded circle, he made lasting friendships with Blake and David Hockney. He responded quickly to the emergence of pop art, adapting his earlier, highly formalised abstract language to the creation of objects reminiscent of children’s toys in their construction, bold colours and schematised imagery.
Exhibition highlight – ‘Gagarin, Star, Triangle’ which depicts the first man in space as both a figurehead of interstellar Pop iconography and Cold War power in its puzzle-like composition.
‘Britain Went Pop!’ will also be showcasing work by David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield, R.B. Kitaj, Colin Self, Clive Barker, Derek Boshier, Antony Donaldson, Jann Haworth, Nicholas Monro, Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Phillips and Richard Smith.
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December 16, 2015 – 4:56 am
In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 5 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part D, A LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)
December 9, 2015 – 4:41 am
In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 4 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part C, IS THE ANSWER TO FINDING SATISFACTION FOUND IN WINE, WOMEN AND SONG?)
December 2, 2015 – 4:50 am
Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald left the prohibitionist America for wet Paris in the 1920’s and they both drank a lot. WINE, WOMEN AND SONG was their motto and I am afraid ultimately wine got the best of Fitzgerald and shortened his career. Woody Allen pictures this culture in the first few clips in the […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 3 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part B, THE SURREALISTS Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel try to break out of cycle!!!)
November 25, 2015 – 4:32 am
In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen the best scene of the movie is when Gil Pender encounters the SURREALISTS!!! This series deals with the Book of Ecclesiastes and Woody Allen films. The first post dealt with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and it dealt with the fact that in the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon does contend […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 2 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part A, When was the greatest time to live in Paris? 1920’s or La Belle Époque [1873-1914] )
November 18, 2015 – 5:36 am
In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen is really looking at one main question through the pursuits of his main character GIL PENDER. That question is WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT? This is the second post I have […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 1 MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT)
November 11, 2015 – 12:02 am
I am starting a series of posts called ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” The quote from the title is actually taken from the film MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT where Stanley derides the belief that life has meaning, saying it’s instead “nasty, brutish, and short. Is that Hobbes? I would have […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Woody Allen | Edit | Comments (0)
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