In the book THE GOD WHO IS THERE, Francis Schaeffer noted:
In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967). In the same period and in the same direction was Blonde on Blond (1966) by Bob Dylan….No great illustration could be found of the way these concepts were carried to the masses than “pop” music and especially the work of the BEATLES. The Beatles moved through several stages, including the concept of the drug and psychedelic approach. The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND PENNY LANE. This was developed with great expertness in their record SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND in which psychedelic music, with open statements concerning drug-taking, was knowingly presented as a religious answer. The religious form was the same vague pantheism which predominates much of the new mystical thought today. One indeed does not have to understand in a clear way the modern monolithic thought in order to be infiltrated by it. SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND was an ideal example of the manipulating power of the new forms of “total art.” This concept of total art increases the infiltrating power of the message involved.
I love the music of the Beatles, but I realize that they did not have a Christian Worldview and they did very often pointed their audiences to the empty answers the world usually gives. I would hope that both Ringo and Paul would turn to Christ like both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of the rock group KANSAS did. The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.
______________
__________________
The Beatles Penny Lane
___________
Great Album
Paul McCartney- Penny Lane (Live)
Here is an excerpt of a fine article about Schaeffer’s take on the Beatles’ album:
Soli Deo Gloria
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Music and The General Culture’s Shift Away From Absolute Truth
By
Pastor Stephen Feinstein
Two days ago, I wrote about artists plunging below the line of despair soon after the philosophers. By way of reminder, the line of despair, according Francis Schaeffer, is when people abandon the idea of absolutes and instead see reality as being relative to each individual. Relativity makes sense in a godless, accidental universe. Since many philosophers and artists bought into the philosophy of atheism, they gave up absolute truth with it. The end result is everyone can make up their own truth since ultimately everyone is wrong anyway.
Well, after the artists went below the line of despair, music went next, and then the general culture was soon to follow. Thus, today I will talk about the plunge of music and general culture below the line. As I have said before, the things that Schaffer points out are even more relevant for our day than his.
Just as Hegel was the doorway for philosophy and Impressionism was the doorway for art, Debussy (1862-1918) was the doorway for music to drop below the line of despair. He abandoned traditional musical Musique Concrete. Sound was seriously and deliberately distorted. They would take real sounds, but break them up, rearrange the parts, and throw them back together in any chaotic way they chose. Their message was loud and clear. Everything is relative, all things are in change, and nothing (not even sound) is absolute. This seems to be the uniform message of postmodern man. They see us as arising by chance and chaos, and eventually all will return to that state. So in the meantime, they say we must reject all meaning since there is no purpose or plan that unifies all of the particulars in the universe. For those who are interested, Schaffer gives some very interesting examples on page 36 of The God Who is There, of real samples from these types of composers, scales, eschewed tone in unnatural ways, and utilized chromaticism to alter music’s basic diatonic organization. In other words, our ears naturally make sense out of patterned scales and predictable tones, but he decided to jumble these around allowing for nonsensical sounds. This opened the door for music composers to deliberately go below the line of despair, as seen by the first large movement to do so. That movement was, well, it did not stop with music. This progression below the line moved onto a fourth step—general culture. Schaeffer covers the different elements of general culture in this chapter to make his point. He begins with literature and claims that Henry Miller (1891-1980) started to move the general culture below the line. His writings were certainly pornographic, but his purpose was more philosophical than perverse. His goal was to smash everything, including sex. He rejected that there is any meaning, so his goal was to smash all traditional thoughts of meaning, and he even sought to show that sex is meaningless. Without meaning or standards, he can write about whatever he wants, no matter how perverse…
Next Schaeffer moves onto drama and focuses in on John Osborne (1929-1980). As brilliant as a playwright as this man was, he too was part of this movement towards absurdity. In his famous play Martin Luther, he deliberately distorts history to promote his view of truth. Luther was a man that was absolutely committed to truth and he was convinced that he was right in his doctrinal stances against the Roman Catholic Church. Well, in Osborne’s play, the story ends with one of Luther’s old Catholic mentors asking, “Martin, do you know you are right?” And contrary to all history, Osborne has Luther answer, “Let’s hope so.” The curtain rolls, and the audience is left with the mood that nothing is certain. What a moving way to end a play! If someone missed the point in a philosophy textbook, they certainly would have gotten it from the emotional pit in their stomach after watching the play. This is how drama works. It has the unique power, like music, to bypass the intellect and go straight for the emotions.
Poetry also fell below the line. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) wrote a poem called Elegy, which is a depressing verbal expression of total meaningless. They are the words of a tortured soul. He put to poetic form the musings of the philosophers, and in so doing he capture the emotional torment caused by such a worldview. Once again, his poetic form could speak to more people than the philosophers could ever hope to.
Modern Cinema is no different. Good movies are not labeled as good because they are morally right, but instead because they are technically good with good camera shots, artistic flavor, and a philosophical message. It is much the same today. Often the movies that win the awards are the movies that the general public did not care for. The general public often likes to see a good guy overcome a bad guy amidst a two hour roller coaster of action and suspense. But in the opinion of the cultural elites, this is nothing more than bad writing and bad filming meant to appease the masses with romantic illusions of escape. The elites want none of that! Instead, the films that are dubbed as “good” are almost always created by people who agree with the postmodern view of man. Their films have plots that ultimately blur morality, certainty, and truth. They are at their core existentialist.
If you were to explain the drift of modern thought to the average person, they probably would not understand what you are talking about, but as Schaeffer points out, it does not mean they are not influenced by the things they see and hear in movies and on TV, and what they sing along to in pop music. In fact, it is from these areas that the masses have probably been most influenced. It is in these areas that the average “Joe” fell below the line of despair, whether he realized it or not.
For example, the psychedelic music of the Beatles were a deliberate attempt to destroy antithesis, promote relativism, undermined the truths of Christianity, and promote New Age Spirituality and drug use. The musicians that followed them simply brought more of the wickedness. Since the message was set to catchy tunes and directed toward drug-battered minds, an entire generation bought into the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and we are still living in the ramifications of it today. Music has only become more relative and meaningless. It has only promoted more drug use, violence, and sexual promiscuity…
This all stems from the fact that fallen man rejects absolute truth because they reject the God of the Bible. In the past, they clung to idolatry so that they could appeal to some authority other than God in order to account for their absolute standards. But when the chief thinkers rejected any purpose or meaning to things, and instead insisted upon an atheistic existence, absolute standards were rejected. The philosophers wrote and articulated it, the artists painted it on canvas, the musicians promoted it with their new styles, and the general culture (literature, poetry, drama, cinema, TV, and pop music) unwittingly accepted it. Now this is the default mode of thinking for the people of Western Civilization. People reject absolutes even if they don’t know why. Most people would not call themselves atheists, but their entire view of truth and reality stems from an atheist worldview. It is amazing how the absurd ideas of a few philosophers were able to change the way of thought for the entire modern world.
So Christian, what is your view on truth? In a world where antithesis is rejected, we need to push the antithesis again and again until the culture understands they cannot escape it. There are ways to do this, and perhaps they will be shared in later posts. We know that it is impossible to live without absolutes. We know the universe does have meaning. Therefore we are not hypocritical or inconsistent when we live as such. But the culture is hypocritical and inconsistent when it rejects God’s absolutes and yet forms its own, while with the same breath claiming such absolutes do not really exist. We need to confront them with God’s absolute truth, which is the only absolute truth that exists.
Penny Lane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Penny Lane (disambiguation).
Coordinates: 53°23′13″N 2°55′10″W
“Penny Lane”
US picture sleeve
Single by The Beatles
A-side
“Strawberry Fields Forever“
Released
13 February 1967 (US)
17 February 1967 (UK)
Format
7″
Recorded
29 November 1966 –
17 January 1967
EMI Studios, London
Genre
Baroque pop[1]
psychedelic pop[2]
psychedelic rock[3]
Length
3:03
Label
Parlophone (UK)
Capitol (US)
Writer(s)
Lennon–McCartney
Producer(s)
George Martin
Certification
Gold (RIAA)[4]
The Beatles singles chronology
“Yellow Submarine” / “Eleanor Rigby”
(1966)
“Strawberry Fields Forever” / “Penny Lane”
(1967)
“All You Need Is Love”
(1967)
Music sample
“Penny Lane”
MENU
0:00
Magical Mystery Tour track listing
[show]11 tracks
“Penny Lane” is a song by The Beatles.[5] It was written by Paul McCartney but credited to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. The song was created in response to John Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever“, and its lyrics refer to a real street in Liverpool, England.
Recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, “Penny Lane” was released in February 1967 as one side of a double A-sided single, along with “Strawberry Fields Forever”. The single was the result of the record company wanting a new release after several months of no new Beatles releases. Although the song did not top the charts in Britain, it was still a top ten hit across Europe. The song was later included on the band’s US album, Magical Mystery Tour, despite not appearing on the British double EP of the same name.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked “Penny Lane” at number 456 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[6]
12 External links
Background[edit]
‘Penny Lane’ was kind of nostalgic, but it was really a place that John and I knew; it was actually a bus terminus. I’d get a bus to his house and I’d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story.[7]
– Paul McCartney, discussing “Penny Lane” in a 2009 interview with Clashmagazine
The song’s title is derived from the name of a street near Lennon’s childhood home for his first five years (9 Newcastle Road, just off Church Road), in the band’s hometown, Liverpool, England. McCartney and Lennon would meet at Penny Lane junction to catch a bus into the centre of the city. During the 1960s, this was a significant bus terminus for several routes, and buses with “Penny Lane” displayed were common throughout Liverpool. The name Penny Lane is also used for the area that surrounds its junction withSmithdown Road, Smithdown Place (where the terminus was located) and Allerton Road, including a busy shopping area. Penny Lane is believed to be named after James Penny, an 18th-century slave trader.[8]
The street is an important landmark, sought out by many Beatles fans touring Liverpool. In the past, street signs saying “Penny Lane” were constant targets of tourist theft and had to be continually replaced. Eventually, city officials gave up and simply began painting the street name on the sides of buildings. This practice was stopped in 2007 and more theft-resistant “Penny Lane” street signs have since been installed, although some are still stolen.[9]
Recording[edit]
Production began in Studio 2 at Abbey Road on 29 December 1966 with piano as the main instrument.[10] On 17 January 1967, trumpet player David Mason recorded the piccolo trumpet solo.[11] The solo, inspired by a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s second Brandenburg Concerto,[12] is in a mock-Baroque style for which the piccolo trumpet (a small instrument built about one octave higher than the standard instrument) is particularly suited, having a clean and clear sound which penetrates well through thicker midrange textures.[13] According to lead sound engineer Geoff Emerick, David Mason “nailed it” at some point during the recording; Paul McCartney tried to get him to do another take but producer George Martin insisted it wasn’t necessary, sensing Mason’s fatigue. This is known[by whom?] as one of the few times the producer’s decision overruled that of the already superstar Beatles. Emerick also notes in his book that prior to this recording, the high “E” was considered unobtainable by trumpet players and has been expected of them since said performance on the record. Mason was paid 27 pounds and 10 shillings for his performance on the recording. “Penny Lane”‘s production effects include percussion effects and piano through a Vox guitar amplifier with added reverb.[14]
The original US promo single mix of “Penny Lane” had an additional flourish of piccolo trumpet notes at the end of the song. This mix was quickly superseded by one without the last trumpet passage, but not before a handful of copies had been pressed and sent to radio stations. These recordings are among the rarest and most valuable Beatles collectibles. A stereo mix of the song with the additional trumpet added back in was included on the USRarities compilation and the UK album: The Beatles Box in 1980, and is included on an alternate take of the song released on Anthology 2 in 1996.
Composition[edit]
The song has a double tonic structure of B major verse (in I-vi-ii-V cycles) and A major chorus connected by formal pivoting dominant chords.[15] In the opening bars in B major, after singing “In Penny Lane” (in an F#-B-C#-D# melody note ascent) McCartney sings the major third of the first chord in the progression (on “Lane”) and major 7th (on “barber”) then switches to a Bm chord, singing the flattened 3rd notes (on “know” with a i7 [Bm7] chord) and flattened 7th notes (on “come and go” [with a ♭VImaj7 [Gmaj7] chord] and “say hello” [with a V7sus4 [F#7sus4] chord]).[16] This has been described as a profound and surprising innovation involving abandoning mid-cycle what initially appears to be a standard I-vi-ii-V Doo Wop pop chord cycle.[17] To get from the verse “In the pouring rain – very strange” McCartney uses an E chord as a pivot, (it is a IV chord in the preceding B key and a V in the looming A key) to take listeners back into the chorus (“Penny Lane is in my ears …”). Likewise to get back from the chorus of “There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit, and meanwhile back … , McCartney uses an F#7 pivot chord (which is a VI in the old A key and a V in the new B key). The lyrics “very strange” and “meanwhile back” can be viewed as hinting at these complex tonal changes.[18]
A feature of the song was the piccolo trumpet solo played by Mason. This is thought to be the first use of this instrument (a distinctive, speciality instrument, pitched an octave higher than the standard B-flat trumpet) in pop music. Martin later wrote, “The result was unique, something which had never been done in rock music before.”[19] McCartney was dissatisfied with the initial attempts at the song’s instrumental fill (one of which, featuring cors anglais, was released on Anthology 2), and was inspired to use the instrument after seeing Mason’s performance on a BBC television broadcast of the second Brandenburg Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach.[20][21]
The song features contrasting verse-chorus form.[22] Lyrically there are several ambiguous and surreal images. The song is seemingly narrated on a fine summer day (“beneath the blue suburban skies”), yet at the same time it is raining (“the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain”) and approaching winter (“selling poppies from a tray” implies Remembrance Day, 11 November). Ian MacDonald has stated: “Seemingly naturalistic, the lyric scene is actually kaleidoscopic. As well as raining and shining at the same time, it is simultaneously summer and winter.”.[23] Macdonald suggests an LSD influence, and that the lyrical imagery points to McCartney first taking LSD in late 1966. However, he also cites a different story, which dates McCartney’s first LSD trip to 21 March 1967. Macdonald finishes with the comment: “Despite its seeming innocence, there are few more LSD-redolent phrases in the Beatles’ output than the line … in which the Nurse ‘feels as if she’s in a play’ … and ‘is anyway’.”
Context[edit]
A Liverpool Penny Lane street sign
The “shelter in the middle of the roundabout” refers to the old bus shelter, later developed into a cafe/restaurant with a Beatles theme, but now derelict and abandoned, despite its popularity as a tourist attraction. This is also Penny Lane Bus Terminus, where the numbers 46 (Penny Lane to Walton) and 99 (Penny Lane to Old Swan) buses terminated and is officially on Smithdown Place.
The mysterious lyrics “Four of fish and finger pies” are British slang. “A four of fish” refers to fourpennyworth of fish and chips, while “finger pie” is sexual slang of the time, apparently referring to intimate fondlings between teenagers in the shelter, which was a familiar meeting place. The combination of “fish and finger” also puns on fish fingers.[24] The lyrics as printed on the compilation album The Beatles: 1967–1970, however, are “Full of fish and finger pies” which are incorrect[citation needed]. In the remastered version, the lyrics read as “For a fish and finger pies”, which is also incorrect[citation needed].
Release[edit]
When a new Beatles single was requested for by manager Brian Epstein, producer George Martin told him that the band had recorded “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”, which Martin considered to be the band’s best songs up to that point.[25] At the suggestion of Epstein, the two songs were released as a double A-side single, in a fashion identical to that of their previous single, “Yellow Submarine” / “Eleanor Rigby“. Released in the US on 13 February 1967 and in the United Kingdom on 17 February 1967, the single failed to top the British charts, making it the first time since “Love Me Do” in 1962 for a Beatles single to peak lower than number one. The song stalled at number two, one place below Engelbert Humperdinck‘s “Release Me“.[26] On the national chart compiled by Melody Maker magazine, however, the combination topped the singles list for three weeks.[27] In the United States, the song became the band’s 13th single to reach number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, doing so for a week before being knocked off by the Turtles‘ song “Happy Together“.
Since the Beatles usually did not include songs released as singles on their British albums, both songs were left off the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, a decision Martin later regretted.[28] Both songs were later included on the US Magical Mystery Tour album in November 1967.
This was also the first single by the Beatles to be sold with a picture sleeve in the UK, a practice rarely used there at that time but common in the US and various other countries (such as Japan).
Penny Lane today[edit]
A view down Penny Lane at the opposite end from the roundabout, approaching the junction with Greenbank Road near to Sefton Park.
Tony Slavin (the white building on the corner) now occupies the location of the original Bioletti’s barbershop mentioned in the song as “barber showing photographs / of every head he’s had the pleasure to know”.
Prior to securing international fame, Penny Lane’s chief renown was as the terminus for the No 46 and No 99 bus routes to Walton, Old Swan and the city centre. The terminus included a purpose-built bus shelter, with waiting room and toilets for waiting passengers. The shelter is located on its own “island” which is the mentioned “shelter on the roundabout” in the Beatles song. In the 1980s, the shelter was bought privately and converted to the Sergeant Pepper’s Bistro, though it has since closed and now stands in the middle of its roundabout looking in a very sorry state. The shelter is actually situated in Smithdown Place, though the terminus was named Penny Lane because of its proximity to Penny Lane.
Towards the end of the 1970s, businesses in Penny Lane included Penny Lane Records and a wine bar known in the early years as Harper’s Bizarre, now called Penny Lane Wine Bar (this was actually a doctors’ surgery, previously Drs Walton, Endbinder and Partners); the practice moved to Smithdown Place in the 1980s. Following privatisation, the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive bus depot, slightly up the hill past Bioletti’s, was demolished and replaced with a shopping precinct complete with a supermarket and a public house.
Since then, the general Penny Lane area has acquired a distinct trendiness and desirability.[citation needed] The “alternative” businesses (wholefood outlets, charity shops), the now expanded array of cafés, bars, bistros, and takeaway food emporiums, as well as handily located traditional businesses (WHSmiths and Clarke’s cake shop), make the neighbourhood the most sought-after among Liverpool’s large student population.[citation needed] Though the song refers to Penny Lane junction on Smithdown Road, the street itself also leads down at the other end to the University of Liverpool‘s student halls of residence, near Sefton Park.
In July 2006, a Liverpool Councillor proposed renaming certain streets because their names were linked to the slave trade. It was soon discovered that Penny Lane, named after James Penny, a wealthy 18th-century slave ship owner and strong opponent of abolitionism, was one of these streets. Ultimately, city officials decided to forgo the name change and re-evaluate the entire renaming process. On 10 July 2006, it was revealed that Liverpool officials said they would modify the proposal to exclude Penny Lane.[29]
According to Barry Miles, the fireman and fire engine referred to in the lyrics are based upon the fire station at Mather Avenue, which is “about half a mile down the road” from Penny Lane.[30] The station is still in use today.
Promotional film[edit]
This is the “shelter in the middle of the roundabout.” As of March 2008, it is in a state of disrepair.
The promotional film for “Penny Lane” was, together with the video for “Strawberry Fields Forever“, one of the first examples of what later became known as a music video.[31] The music video for the song was not filmed at Penny Lane, as the Beatles were reluctant to travel to Liverpool. Street scenes were filmed in and around Angel Lane in London’s East End. The broken sequence of Lennon walking alone was filmed on the King’s Road (at Markham Square) in Chelsea. The outdoor scenes were filmed at Knole Park in Sevenoaks on 30 January 1967. The promotional film for “Strawberry Fields Forever” was also shot at the same location, during the same visit.[32] Both films – directed by the Swede Peter Goldmann – were selected by New York‘s MoMA to be among the most influential promotional music films of the late 1960s. Film of “Penny Lane” was included – with some scenes of green Liverpool buses and a brief overhead view of the bus shelter – but none of the Beatles attended.
Song ownership[edit]
Northern Songs, the publishing company that owned all but four of the Beatles songs, was acquired by ATV – a media company owned by Lew Grade in 1969. By 1985 the company was being run by serial Australian entrepreneur Robert Holmes à Court, who decided to sell the catalogue to Michael Jackson.
Before the sale, he offered his 16-year-old daughter Catherine the chance to keep any song “in her name” from the catalogue. She chose “Penny Lane” as it was her favourite – despite her father’s urging to choose “Yesterday”, which was by far the biggest royalty-earning song on the books (and is in the top four global royalty earning songs of all time).
Catherine Holmes à Court-Mather is still the owner of “Penny Lane”‘s copyright today, one of only five Beatles songs not owned by Sony/ATV Music Publishing.[33]
______
CLIVE BAKER IS FEATURED ARTIST TODAY!!!
________________
THE COCA-COLA® CONTOUR BOTTLE CELEBRATES 100 YEARS OF HAPPINESS
February 27, 2015
The Coca-Cola Company will this year be celebrating 100 years of its iconic glass bottle packaging – the Coca-Cola contour bottle – with a global art traveling exhibition to be staged at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town from 26th to 1st March and at the Constitution Hill, Johannesburg on 11th to 13th March 2015.
Titled ‘The Coca-Cola Bottle Art Tour: Inspiring Pop Culture For 100 Years’ the art tour celebrates and showcases the Coca-Cola contour bottle’s role in art, design and popular culture. Coca-Cola® Bottle Art Tour will feature an amazing array of Coca-Cola® themed art, actual historical artefacts and artwork by world renowned artists such as Burton Morris, Clive Barker and Norman Rockwell, including South Africa’s Mbongeni Buthelezi among many others.
“The Coca-Cola contour bottle continues to be at the center of the happiest moments shared by our consumers everywhere in the world today, as it were in 1915 when it was first patented. The Coca-Cola Art Tour serves as a reminder of the specialness of drinking a Coca-Cola from an ice-cold bottle and reinforce what we strive to achieve every day at Coca-Cola® which is to make happiness happen,” said Sharon Keith, Marketing Director of Coca-Cola® Southern Africa.
The Coca-Cola® contour bottle is the ultimate blend of form and function. Its beautiful contoured fluid curves have evolved over the years but remained the same so distinctive that it could be recognized by touch alone and so unique it could identified when shattered on the ground.
“For many of our consumers, every Coca-Cola® bottle has a story, it is the most famous consumer packaging in the world and creator of billions of moments of happiness inspiring everyone from a man in the street to artists,” concluded Keith.
The Coca-Cola contour bottle, an enduring classic icon in the history of packaging design, remains a canvas for innovation today, including the development of the Coca-Cola aluminum contour bottle and varying package sizes. The contour bottle was granted its trademark status after appearing on the cover of Time Magazine, it was the first commercial product to appear on the cover – cementing it as an American symbol and a global icon of popular culture. It has over time inspired many moments of happiness in film, social history, design and fine arts.
From Andy Warhol to Keith Haring and Matthew Williamson and Uniqlo, the contour bottle has gained global status and recogniton as a muse to artists and designers around the world for 100 years.
South Africans will be the first to view these artworks, a selection from Coca-Cola’s 33 000 art piece collection which the company has amassed since 1928. From Cape Town, the art tour will travel to Johannesburg and then 14 other countries with a final stop in Australia at the end of 2015. The Coca-Cola Bottle Art Tour was curated by Ted Ryan, Director of Heritage Communications of The Coca-Cola Company.
Clive Barker (Liverpool, 1940) Polished bronze. H 27 x W 70.5 x D 17.5 cm. Unique piece.
Clive Barker (artist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clive Barker
Born
Clive Barker
1940
Luton, Bedfordshire
Nationality
British
Known for
Sculpture
Notable work
Splash,[1] 1967
Sir Peter Thomas Blake,[2]1983
Movement
Pop art
Clive Barker (born 1940, Luton, Bedfordshire) is a British pop artist. He has been exhibited in galleries around the world during his career and has works in permanent collections including the Tatecollection and the National Portrait Gallery.
Contents
[hide]
1 Career
2 Work
3 Personal life
4 References
5 External links
Career[edit]
Clive was a student at Luton College of Technology and Art from 1957. However, he left the course in 1959 and went to work on the assembly-line of the Vauxhall Motors car factory in Luton for 18 months. Doing so he was following a number of his relatives including his father, his uncle who was a Director at Vauxhall Motors, two of his older brothers and his two brothers in law. Whilst at Vauxhall Motors Clive realised the potential of sculptural qualities of industrially finished objects, particularly in leather and chrome plated metal. Many of his works are in chrome or bronze.[3]
As well as being an artist, Clive is the subject of two photographic portraits in the National Portrait Gallery collection.[4]
Work[edit]
He made sculpture from everyday objects which he bought and had covered in chrome. Instead of taking real objects as they were he either commissioned fabricators to make replicas to his specifications or had the original objects recast or resurfaced so that the sculptures became non-functional replications of them. His early work included sculptural representations of <a class="mw-redir