Catalogue Raisonné. Deceleration I, CR044
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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Deceleration I
CR 044
New York City
1964
Oil on irregular, shaped canvas
74 x 71 inches
Nagaoka Museum, Japan
Citations and Comments
The dichotomy between the dotted volumetric areas and the flat coloured areas seemed to require that a strong formal division should be made between them. In certain paintings I let literal requirements decide which areas should be painted in which technique; but on the whole this appeared to be an unsatisfactory method of approach, resulting as it did in apertures being opened in the flat coloured areas in what were, from a strictly formal point of view, arbitrary positions. So in general a strong boundary was made, often reinforced by a division in the stretcher. In the painting illustrated here, the boundary follows one of the panels of the parachute. Drag racers, film starlets and skydivers were subjects I found very useful at this time, because they are all excellent examples of individuals formalised and rendered, in a sense, heroic, by their accoutrements.
, 1971: Gerald Laing, exh cat., Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1971Catalogue Raisonné Information
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- First Jump Course (One Man Show), Richard Feigen Gallery, New York, 1964
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka, 1965
- A New York Collector Selects ..., San Francisco Museum of Art, 1965
- 1971: Gerald Laing, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1971
- Deceleration I