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Lot Essay
In Teddy Boy and Girl, Lynn Chadwick celebrates the popular icon of the modern working-class rebel, prompting Michael Bird to describe the work as ‘probably the first sculptural celebration of contemporary youth culture’ (Lynn Chadwick, Farnham, 2014, p. 12). A hybrid between Edwardian dandy and American Rockabilly, the ‘Teddy Boy’ style that took hold in London in the 1950s represented a deliberate revolt against the prevailing mood of austerity and authoritarian gloom in post-war Britain. Often to be found loitering on street corners or gathered in cafés and dancehalls, they were known for their voluminous quaffed hairstyle and distinctive fashions, which typically included drainpipe trousers and long, Drape jackets, with exaggerated trims and detailing. Though there were a large number of Teddy Girls (also known as Judies), their style of dress was less defined than their male counterparts, veering between pencil skirts and boxy suit jackets, and a more androgynous look that married rolled-up jeans with feminine accessories such as silk scarves and cameo broaches. Together, the Teds cultivated an attitude of proud defiance and bold non-conformism, marking the beginnings of the street fashion and youth culture that would soon dominate the landscape of the 1960s.
While Chadwick may have encountered the Teds during his sporadic trips to London, extensive coverage in the contemporary media focusing on their apparently unruly behaviour and the supposed threat they posed to society ensured the artist was well versed in their idiosyncratic style and trends. Covered in coarsely finished finery with linear patterns, the forms of Chadwick’s Teddy Boy and Girl appear to be wearing armour-like garments that allude to their extravagant street-wear. Here, the two anthropomorphic figures assert themselves as monument-like entities reaching upwards in an excited dance, their forms filled by a palpable sense of energy and fervour. As the art critic Robert Melville wrote of the Teddy Boy and Girl sculptures in 1956: ‘Chadwick is sensitive to the atmosphere of celebration, responsive to jazz and jive and rock-and-roll… And just as it is said of certain painters that nothing is too humble to find a place in their pictures, it can be said of Chadwick that his sense of human aspiration takes account of all its levels, even its least edifying ones, and in Teddy Boy and Girl he has raised a monument to semi-delinquent youth in formal terms reminiscent of English ecclesiastical architecture’ (‘Lynn Chadwick’ in Quadrum, Brussels, November 1956, p. 108). Fusing an abstract sense of geometry with boldly experimental construction methods, the sculpture presents a compelling, modern vision of humanity.
Among the artist’s best-known works, Teddy Boy and Girl is among the sequence of paired-figure sculptures that, in the 1950s, were responsible for establishing Chadwick’s reputation on the international stage as one of the leading sculptors of his generation. Shortly after its completion, the iron and composite Teddy Boy and Girl was included in Chadwick’s solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1956, where he was the surprising victor of the Prize for Sculpture, an event which catapulted him to the forefront of the post-war avant-garde in Europe. Apparently the Organising Committee for the British Pavilion suggested Chadwick change the title of the work, as they feared the specifically British term would not be understood by international audiences, a request the artist ignored. He sold this working model of Teddy Boy and Girl to Nelson A. Rockefeller later that year, and in the 1970s secured an agreement from Rockefeller to create a bronze edition of the work.
While Chadwick may have encountered the Teds during his sporadic trips to London, extensive coverage in the contemporary media focusing on their apparently unruly behaviour and the supposed threat they posed to society ensured the artist was well versed in their idiosyncratic style and trends. Covered in coarsely finished finery with linear patterns, the forms of Chadwick’s Teddy Boy and Girl appear to be wearing armour-like garments that allude to their extravagant street-wear. Here, the two anthropomorphic figures assert themselves as monument-like entities reaching upwards in an excited dance, their forms filled by a palpable sense of energy and fervour. As the art critic Robert Melville wrote of the Teddy Boy and Girl sculptures in 1956: ‘Chadwick is sensitive to the atmosphere of celebration, responsive to jazz and jive and rock-and-roll… And just as it is said of certain painters that nothing is too humble to find a place in their pictures, it can be said of Chadwick that his sense of human aspiration takes account of all its levels, even its least edifying ones, and in Teddy Boy and Girl he has raised a monument to semi-delinquent youth in formal terms reminiscent of English ecclesiastical architecture’ (‘Lynn Chadwick’ in Quadrum, Brussels, November 1956, p. 108). Fusing an abstract sense of geometry with boldly experimental construction methods, the sculpture presents a compelling, modern vision of humanity.
Among the artist’s best-known works, Teddy Boy and Girl is among the sequence of paired-figure sculptures that, in the 1950s, were responsible for establishing Chadwick’s reputation on the international stage as one of the leading sculptors of his generation. Shortly after its completion, the iron and composite Teddy Boy and Girl was included in Chadwick’s solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1956, where he was the surprising victor of the Prize for Sculpture, an event which catapulted him to the forefront of the post-war avant-garde in Europe. Apparently the Organising Committee for the British Pavilion suggested Chadwick change the title of the work, as they feared the specifically British term would not be understood by international audiences, a request the artist ignored. He sold this working model of Teddy Boy and Girl to Nelson A. Rockefeller later that year, and in the 1970s secured an agreement from Rockefeller to create a bronze edition of the work.