Catalogue Raisonné. Stab One, CR073
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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Stab One
CR 073
New York City
1965
Acrylic and chrome on aluminium
27 x 94 inches
Powers, NJ
Citations and Comments
I began to prune away the painted background and let instead the real environment of the piece begin to play this role. I had always thought of paintings as objects in the environment rather than as framed windows into another world, and to stress this point usually the edges of the canvas were painted as well as the front. But at this point the dynamism of the shape of the canvas began to supersede the dynamism of the image it bore and, indeed, in many cases this outline shape implied far greater volume than did the painted surface. More flat space too, is drawn into, and becomes part of, the painting than the mere painted acreage. The stretcher shape I needed gradually became more and more complicated and, after vainly trying to make a canvas stretcher for the piece shown here, I gave up and cut the shape I required out of aluminium sheet instead. So, initially for this somewhat mundane and practical reason, I moved from canvas to metal. At the same time, wishing to draw the viewer into the piece, I used a reflecting chrome-plated piece at the bottom. Thus the viewer, when he looks into the chromium mirror, becomes himself part of the painting - the skydiver, in fact. Though the painting is extremely formal, it still has a quite literal subject matter - that of a parachute rippling out behind a falling man. I found that chrome plate created a similar space to the dotted areas, and the balance between it and the flat coloured areas remained the same. So from this point on it was substituted for the painted dots.
, 1971: Gerald Laing, exh. cat., Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2971, pp.13–4Catalogue Raisonné Information
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- Selections from the John G. Powers Collection, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, 1966