The Major Periods

1962 – 1965: Early Pop Paintings

As one of the original wave of Pop artists Gerald Laing produced some of the most significant works of the British Pop movement. His paintings reproduced images of popular heroes such as starlets, film stars, drag racers, astronauts and skydivers. His 1962 portrait of Brigitte Bardot is an iconic work of the period and regularly features in major Pop retrospectives alongside Lincoln Convertible from 1964, a commemoration of the assassination of JFK.

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1965 – 1970: Utopian Abstract Sculpture

From 1965 Gerald Laing's painting evolved into abstract sculptures using the techniques and materials of car customisation - lacquering, spray-painting and chrome-plating on metal.

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1970 – 1973: Sculpture In The Landscape

A move from New York to the Highlands of Scotland in 1970 saw Gerald Laing's sculpture respond to the beauty, roughness and power of the surrounding landscape.

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1972 – 2010: Public Sculpture

Public sculptures include the the Bank Station Dragons; the Rugby Sculptures at Twickenham Stadium; the Cricketer at Lords; the Highland Clearances Memorial in Helmsdale, Sutherland and Axis Mundi in Edinburgh.

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1973 – 1980: Galina Series

Inspired by the figurative sculpture of the First World War Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, in 1973 Gerald Laing began to model in clay and cast in bronze. The Galina Series and associated sculptures were his first works from this period.

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1982 – 2007: Portrait Heads

Gerald Laing's portrait work includes heads and reliefs of Luciano Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, Paul Getty and Sam Wanamaker.

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2002 – 2005: War Paintings

The Iraq war and the publication of images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison drew Gerald Laing back to painting for the first time in over three decades. The War Paintings series sees the starlets and all-American heroes of his early paintings take on new, more sinister roles.

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2004 – 2011: New Paintings

Returning to the style and subject matter of his early pop art paintings, Gerald Laing's latest paintings feature media images of contemporary celebrities including Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss.

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Search the Catalogue

Cr493 sherlockholmes conandoyle mtr

Sherlock Holmes - A Memorial to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Catalogue No. 531

Artist's CR 493

1989

Kinkell

Bronze on sandstone plinth

90 inches / 229 cm , height

Collection: Commissioned by the Federation of Master Builders (Scotland)

The Conan Doyle Memorial consists of a 7’ 6” bronze sculpture of Sherlock Holmes on a 6’ high sandstone plinth. The sculpture weighs about 750 lbs and it was cast in my own bronze foundry in the north of Scotland. It is sited at the birthplace of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, and it was commissioned by the Edinburgh chapter of the Federation of Master Builders to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Federation. It is also an important feature in the scheme for the rehabilitation of the Picardy Place roundabout and its adjacent landscaped areas.
Holmes is shown meditating on the death of his author which, to a fictional character, is tantamount to the death of God. His pipe has the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ inscribed around its bowl as a homage to Magritte and in recognition of the surreal quality of this commission. On the base of the sculpture is the enormous footprint of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
The image of Sherlock Holmes has been altered and embellished by the input of all those who have interpreted him in the years since Conan Doyle first described him. We find it rather surprising that nowhere in Conan Doyle’s original text is Holmes described as smoking anything other than ‘a straight briar pipe’. He most often wears a ‘long grey hooded travelling coat’ with his deerstalker hat. Very occasionally in the contemporary illustrations by Sydney Paget for the Strand Magazine, he is shown wearing an Inverness cape, invariably topped by a bowler hat rather than a deerstalker.
Watson describes Holmes as ‘... rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seems to be considerably taller. His face was a narrow one, his forehead large, his hair black, his brows dark and heavy, his nose thin and firm. His eyes were grey and particularly sharp and piercing, taking on a faraway and introspective look when he exerted his whole powers’...
Basil Rathbone, whose Holmes is probably the most familiar to us, seems to have based his character on Gillette’s interpretation as much as on the original text.
In any interpretation of a mythical figure, one is obliged to select and indeed create the details which make up the whole. My own version of this most famous figure in all of literature has been composed in this manner. Sherlock Holmes is by no means the only icon which has evolved, and indeed continues to evolve, to suit the conceptions and requirements of different times.

Gerald Laing: A Retrospective 1963–1993, Gerald Laing, exhibition catalogue, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1993