Catalogue Raisonné. Only One of Them Uses Colgate, CR607
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.
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.
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.
1982 – 2007: Portrait Heads
Gerald Laing's portrait work includes heads and reliefs of Luciano Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, Paul Getty and Sam Wanamaker.
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.
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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Only One of Them Uses Colgate
CR 607
Kinkell, Scotland
2004
Oil on canvas
32 x 36 inches
Citations and Comments
Its title [is] taken from George Bush’s response to what he and Tony Blair have in common (‘We both use Colgate’). It takes as its visual basis another well-known image of the war, in which a grinning American female soldier poses over the body of a dead Iraq captive. Gruesome enough in the original, in Laing’s hands it takes on a particularly sickening resonance. He paints the guard as a super-clean, all-American gal - a Sixties advertising icon. The dead man, contained within his monochrome dot-matrix, seems to have become no more than a piece of dirty household waste; gleefully eradicated by this rubber-gloved domestic goddess. As Laing says, it’s as if his starlets of the Sixties have grown up into the chillingly cute female sadists of the Abu Ghraib prison. This transformation might stand as a metaphor for the lesson which surely underlies all of these new works. For however justified the war, the method of its execution has been an unpalatable revelation of the ruthless political reality of the American empire.
Whatever Blair would like to believe, Laing is simply reflecting the fact that Britain has fallen out of love with the dream of the US. It’s not that we don’t like Americans, it’s just that any remaining illusions have been shattered. The promise of Pop no longer holds true and nowhere is that put more clearly than in Laing’s searing indictment of the inhumanity of war.
- Gerald Laing: From 1963 to the Present, Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh, 2004
- Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Kings College, Cambridge, 2005
- Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Spike Gallery, New York, 2005
- Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Galerie Salvador, Paris, 2005
- Gerald Laing: Iraq War Paintings, Globe Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2007
- Only One Of Them Uses Colgate