Allen Jones was born in Southampton in 1937. Three years later, his family would move to the west of London, in Ealing. Interested in art from an early age, he began actively studying painting and lithography in 1955 at Hornsey College of Art in London, graduating four years later. While still in training, his curiosity led him to Provence, in France, where he discovered the work of Robert Delaunay. Jackson Pollock, seen at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1958, was another huge influence at the time.
In 1959, Jones left Hornsey College for the Royal College of Art. The move would be a bittersweet experience. He was in regular contact with other forward-thinking artists with whom he would form the first generation of British Pop Art: R. B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips, David Hockney and Derek Boshier. There was a palpable appetite for novelty in his circles at the time: ‘I wanted to kick over the traces of what was considered acceptable in art. I wanted to find a new language for representation … to get away from the idea that figurative art was romantic, that it wasn’t tough’. Unfortunately, his new institution did not welcome these artistic changes and Jones would be made an example of by being expelled at the end of the academic year of 1960. He returned to Hornsey, where he graduated in 1961. Putting his frustrations behind him, Jones took part in the Young Contemporaries show as a part of the annual Royal Society of British Artists in 1961. This exhibition, which also featured the likes of David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj, Billy Apple, Derek Boshier, Joe Tilson, Patrick Caulfield and Peter Blake, is widely regarded as the one that launched British Pop Art.
Intrigued by the American incarnation of the style he pioneered in the UK, Jones moved to New York in 1964. During his time in America, alongside friend and artist Peter Phillips, who joined him on a Harkness Fellowship, Jones learned that one must present the intent of one’s art as clearly as possible, and strove to make tangible images going forward.
Perhaps this is why, upon his return to London, he turned his hand to sculpture, the medium for which he is now best known. 1969 in particular marked a turning point, as he created the fibreglass work Chair, which garnered – and continues to garner – much controversy. The work, inspired by BDSM and therefore explicitly sexual and erotic, appears to objectify women by equating them to furniture. The perceived misogyny made Jones a hot topic of discussion and contention in the art world for decades to come. Every time the work is on show, it is the subject of contestation and claims of misogyny. Jones missed several events following repeated incidents.
The 1970s saw a return to canvas painting and more simplified forms, with a clear emphasis on colour, which is used ‘to introduce the notion of movement in the figure, with the alternate arms of yellow and green in diagonally opposing positions’. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool held a large retrospective exhibition of his work in 1979, which later travelled to the Serpentine Gallery in London. Later works of the 21st century re-embraced sculpture in the form of monumental steel pieces based on the motif of intertwining anonymous figures. Welcomed back into the art world following his growth as an artist and man, his works featured in the Pop Art Portraits show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and had a dedicated room of watercolours, drawing and paintings at Tate Britain. In 2008, he was given a dedicated watercolour room at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Allen Jones lives and works in London.
