Allen Jones, R.A. (b. 1937)
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Allen Jones, R.A. (b. 1937)

The General and his girl

Details
Allen Jones, R.A. (b. 1937)
The General and his girl
acrylic on canvas
48 x 36 in. (122 x 91.5 cm.)
Painted in 1961
Exhibited
London, ICA, Allen Jones and Howard Hodgkin, February-March 1962 (no catalogue published).
London, Arts Council, Pop Art in England, 1976, no. 37; this exhibition toured to Hamburg, Munich and York.
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

'The profile head and shoulders of a girl rises from the bottom edge of the canvas. The small prominent rectangle contains her 'ear ring', the constellation of 'the plough'. Her cooked arm is raised towards a group of three patterned rectangles as if she is playing cards. A series of bubbles float from her head towards a large enclosed circular area containing cloud like marks. The sequence froms a disguised comic strip thought balloon.

'This balloon can be read as the head of a Paul Klee like figure 'The General' whose narrow neck and uniform tunic is formed by the large spreading khaki area across the bottom third of the canvas. 'His girl' is playing with his medals. Elements in this picture are repeated in two other works from 1961 The artist thinks and City. The artist was involved with 'stream of consciousness' as a method of developing the images in the paintings of this period' (Allen Jones, private correspondence with the artist, 2003).

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