Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

‘Pop Art Portraits’ at the National Portrait Gallery (Wolfson & Ground Floor Galleries)
11th October 2007 to – 20th January 2008

Starting in October 2007 British and American artists of the Pop Art era will have their work on display side by side at ‘Pop Art Portraits’ at the National Portrait Gallery in London. This is sure to be an exciting and well attended display, with works including UK artists David Hockney, Peter Blake & Richard Hamilton and from the USA: Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson & Richard Hamilton and art portraits featuring Elvis, John F Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe to name but a few.

In the first in a series of exhibitions on Pop portraits -The National Portrait Gallery will see a lay ‘chapel’ in honour of Marilyn Monroe, created. This will bring comparisons to a 1960’s New York art exhibition that took place a few years after her death, where she was celebrated as the patron saint of celebrity culture.

Infact the exhibition will contain 16 pieces which were actually part of a 1967 display in New York where UK and US artists jointly showed their works in honour of the Hollywood Idol.

Sandy Nairne, the NPG director, said that this era was significant in the history of portraiture, blazing a trail for the cutting edge artists of today, such as Sam Taylor.

The NPG curator, Paul Moorhouse, has spent almost 5 years gathering pieces for the exhibition. But with work such as Richard Hamilton’s: a portrait of John F Kennedy as an astronaut with the quote “together let us touch the stars” from his famous speech, nearby to his portrait of Hugh Gaitskell, showing Hamilton’s anger at his commitment of the Labour party to nuclear weapons, Paul Moorhouse states:

“It will be a double-edged exhibition….Nobody could say that pop art was just one long party.”

Further reading:
‘Pop Art Portraits’ at the National Portrait Gallery

thank you

Russell