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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Cr027 astronautiv 35tr clean

Astronaut IV

CR 027

London

1963

Oil on irregular, shaped canvas

42 x 57 (irregular) inches

Citations and Comments

Re: Astronaut IV 1963, my CR no. 27: 1. Ground. Primer is most probably white household emulsion paint; 2. Silver background. I was at that time continually on the lookout for metallic silver to use in some of my paintings. There was at that time not much available. On occasion I used a metallic coated fabric, but I do not think that I did so in the case of Astronaut IV. If the back of the painting shows canvas, then the silver area is almost certainly aluminium paint with an oil based medium. It could possibly be spray paint such as Krylon; 3. Half tone area. Always painted with artist’s quality ivory black oil paint diluted with pure turpentine. I intended that the work methods, such as the ruled diagonal lines and sketch drawing, should remain apparent; 4. Flat coloured areas. I introduced flat colour to my paintings after working during the summer of 1963 with Robert Indiana in his loft on Coenties Slip in Manhattan. I invariably used artist’s quality oil paint with pure turps. The techniques of application (several thin coats using a chisel head squirrel hair brush, no texture or modulation, great care with the edges) owe a lot to Bob’s methods but are not so intensely perfect. In my works they are intended to refer to silkscreen or other similar commercial printing processes. Since Astronaut IV I never varnished or coated my paintings though perhaps I should have done!

Gerald Laing, Letter to Bradford A Epley, The Menil Collection, Houston, 2001

Laing’s primary images were often small grainy photographs cut from daily newspapers, rather than slick magazine photography. As with many of the other British Pop artists, this scrutiny of photographic sources brought a growing awareness of American-derived media imagery, and Laing used many such images, including NASA photos of astronauts… as in this work.

Laing’s astronaut paintings were done during early American and Russian manned space programs. Although Derek Boshier, Richard Hamilton, and Joe Tilson also used astronaut imagery, no major American artist produced as many images of early space endeavors as Laing, with the single exception of Robert Rauschenberg. Space flight held a far greater fascination for the British artists.

Laing’s painting shows American astronaut Alan Shepard during his historic sub-orbital mission. The upper curve of the canvas suggests the curvature of the earth, and space is signaled by the blue background. The lower panels contain flamelike forms signifying those extruded from the rocket at liftoff. The fusion of photograph-derived imagery, the hand-painted dots, and the flat, almost Art Nouveau-like stylization of the flames makes this one of the major works on the subject.

Jim Edwards, David Brauer, Christopher Finch and Walter Hopps, Pop Art: U.S./U.K. Connections, exh. cat., The Menil Collection, Houston, 2001, p.162

A growing awareness of Pop Art generally, plus the presence of Richard Smith, Peter Blake, and Joe Tilson on the teaching staff of St. Martin’s School of Art in London where Laing was a student, led him toward contemporary imagery, and by 1962 he had developed his signature technique of hand-painting dots in varying sizes to imitate the effect of halftone photographic reproduction. Laing has described this evolution: “When I began using photographs as a starting point, I was interested in being able to make figurative paintings with a simple and unequivocal content which were at the same time ‘un-loaded’ from the point of view of previous figurative paintings. This was followed by a series of black-and-white literal representations of newspaper photographs… I used a grid of a predetermined interval and painted black dots of various sizes, thus making a halftone area which described form. This process amounted to drawing with tone, but from my point of view the feeling of ‘possession by recreation’ was the most important facet of this activity’.”

Jim Edwards, David Brauer, Christopher Finch and Walter Hopps, Pop Art: U.S./U.K. Connections, exh. cat., The Menil Collection, Houston, 2001, p.162

During the 1960’s, technological advances and the ‘space race’ between the USA and the Soviet Union were the focus of widespread public interest generating the common belief that the future would be transformed by science and exploration in space. Laing’s painting includes a scaled-up newspaper photograph of the American astronaut, Alan Shepard. The flames evoke rocket propulsion, presenting entry into space as a brave adventure, with the astronaut a modern-day knight in armour.

Gerald Laing, 'Leaflet for Pop Art Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery', unpublished manuscript, 2007

Catalogue Raisonné Information

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