Pop Art Couture

This week I stumbled across a really cool tumblr called Ubicouture. This blog posts amazing fashion/art collages

Jamie Hawkesworth and Tom Wesselmann

Prada and Frank Stella

Prada and David Hockney

Comme des Garcons and Japanese Origami Instructions

Alexander Mc Queen and Damien Hurst

Miu Miu and Roy Lichtenstein

Acne and Jan Schoonhoven

Roe Ethridge and Patrick Caulfield

Prada and Salvador Dali

Christian Dior, Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol

Walter Van Beirendonck and Wayne Thiebaud

SS 13 and Patrick Caulfield

Superstar

I went to see Andy Warhol's retrospective at the Mac in Belfast last week :) 

The exhibition mainly displayed his movie posters and eighties work (which is a tad disappointing tbh) but they did however have a Jackie Kennedy and a Mick Jagger so I was literally in awe. I spent most of the time in two little rooms that were connected to the main hall. One room had Andy's cow wallpaper and his self portrait polaroids. The second room had Warhol's silver balloons and a little tv that displayed some footage from the factory. Downstairs they had a small room with a projector which showed a documentary from the nineties called Superstar. In the evenings they were showing Eat, Sleep, Empire and Beauty no. 2 but sadly I couldn't stay :( As you can see from my picture I literally bought the entire gift shop...oops My favourite is the butterflies print, its going to look so cool in my room. The Marilyn is box canvas so I need to try and figure out how I'm going to hang it. I took some pictures of the museum guide to show you guys...

I wore this skirt to the exhibition. I think the mini sunflower print looks very pop :P (I'm such a geek) 

You weren't really allowed to take pictures inside the museum but I sneaked a few (rebel) I came across this drawing of little James Dean when I was flicking through some of the books. I never seen it before and I really love it

A Rebel Without A Cause sketch

Silver Balloons

Pauline Boty

photo by lewis morley

Lately I've been inspired by a pop artist called Pauline Boty. She was heavily involved in the sixties British pop art movement and was known for being one of the first proto-feminist icons of the sixties. She often made collages of pop culture icons but her most famous works deal with feminism and female sexuality. 

I noticed Pauline Boty in a documentary on British pop art called Pop Goes the Easel which followed four young pop artists (Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips) around London. The documentary is a pretty good insight into sixties London. I absolutely loved the dance scene at the end of  the film of mods and beatniks twisting at a London club. Pauline Boty was a great socialite and free spirit. Her home in Shepherds Bush was the meeting place for students, artists and eccentrics. She was known for having the Monroe-esque quality of being both alluring and vulnerable. It was often thought that she was a Brigitte Bardot look-alike but I think she looks more like a blonde Anna Karina. She was described by the writer Joe Massot as having "marvellous strawberry ice cream and leonine hair" 

In the years before the feminist art movement she struggled to get her work taken seriously "women painters like myself felt very alienated, the full feminist movement hadn't come in and we worked in isolated pools, mostly of depression" Boty was a self-assured women and was admired by her fellow artist Peter Blake as being the first woman in London to wear men's 501s. She also described herself as being the secretary of the Anti-Ugly Action in which she and her fellow activists scattered rose petals over the new Barclay's Bank as a protest against unattractive architecture. Unfortunately her life came to a tragically short end. She died from leukaemia in 1966 (aged 28) leaving behind her baby daughter and a small but inspiring body of work.

Screencap from Ken Russell's Pop Goes The Easel