Gender and art

"In the flurry of recent exhibitions of British Pop Art, one name keeps recurring with works of astonishing freshness and warmth. It is Pauline Boty, the only woman among the founding members of the movement, who died tragically young, aged only 28, in 1966.

Ignored for decades after her death – it was nearly 30 years before her first picture was shown – a proper retrospective has had to wait until this year with a show which originated in Wolverhampton and has now opened in the Pallant Gallery in Chichester."

Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, to 9 February 2014

http://www.pallant.org.uk/

The past few decades are full of examples of people who looked good, and died young, becoming a legend and an icon. Unfortunately her tragically-early death did not do this to the artist Pauline Boty, but an exhibition and book are likely to bring her the lasting fame she deserved.

Pauline Boty, Pop Artist and Woman are the title of the exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and the accompanying book by the exhibition's co-curator Sue Tate. Both tell Boty's story but more than that, place her in the 60s world which she seemed to revel in, and also examine her role as a woman artist, and what that meant at the time. Tate's book includes many images but is scholarly in approach, coming firmly from a gender analysis perspective which is refreshing.

The Wolverhampton exhibition is the first public exhibition to explore Boty's career as a whole and try to reinstate her at the forefront of British Pop Art, and includes works which have not been seen for more than 40 years.

The exhibition is on until November 16, and the book is published by Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/events/pauline-boty-pop-artist-and-woman/