At the Galleria d'Arte Maggiore in Bologna, the exhibition "Forever Icon" is currently on display, dedicated to the British pop master Allen Jones (Southampton, 1937). The exhibition offers a significant opportunity to grasp and understand what has been one of the historical matrices of pop art, already defined in 1957 by one of its creators, Richard Hamilton, as "popular, ephemeral, witty, sexy, young, mass-produced, capable of creating business...". The gallery had previously collaborated with the artist in 1999 and 2002, achieving critical acclaim and successful sales. Now, for this occasion, 13 works are on display, including paintings, sculptures, and photographs from various periods and therefore different experiments, such as the works of female figures 'Ovation' (2010), 'Backdrop' (2016-17), and 'Changing room', which contrast with their male counterparts 'Man losing his head and hat' (1988) and 'Untitled man' (1989). The common thread of the exhibition is the female figure, which has been at the center of the artist's universe since the 1960s, evoked through bold colors and simplified forms.
These figures of men and women surrounded by masks, curtains, and mirrors allude to the world of theater: the figures merge, and man and woman blur. Observing his works, the viewer captures the artist's focus on the relationship between man and woman and the theme of hermaphroditism that has always inspired him. The focal point of the exhibition is the work dedicated to Kate Moss, previously exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 2014. The iconic photograph, taken in 2013 on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to the model organized by Christie's, immortalizes Kate wearing an armour created in 1974 by the artist for a film that was never made. This shot epitomizes his art: the woman is represented as a sterile object, like a mannequin. The thought of an artist capable of influencing fashion, trends, cinema, music, and artists of the caliber of Elton John and Kubrick, who will consecrate him as a genius. But who is Allen Jones? Why is he considered a precursor to some of the major themes characterizing our century? To fully understand the exhibition, let's retrace the artistic history of one of the leading figures of British Pop Art. Allen Jones studied at the Hornsey College of Art (1958-59) and later at the Royal College of Art (1959-60) alongside important artists like Peter Philipps. After completing his studies, he embarked on a road trip across the Americas, which allowed him to delve into the new pop aesthetic and assimilate the emerging consumerist universe. This journey, particularly the stop in Las Vegas where he saw slot machines with pin-up shapes, would be the driving force behind his entire artistic research. The artist then decided to create a new language to represent the new sexual freedoms with cynicism: drawing from pornographic magazines, advertisements, or posters. He recreated a new figurative art, no longer romantic but 'tough', capable of representing a society that was evolving.
According to the artist, figurative art still had a central role to play in the landscape; it should not be exhausted but create a new language. Jones experimented both in painting, drawing inspiration from Delaunay and Matisse, and in sculpture with a series of objects like mannequins of female figures that became furnishing objects. The contorting mannequins, assuming different positions, transformed into glass shelves for tables, armchairs, and even coat racks. These are works that combine sculpture and furniture, where the central figure is the female Pin-up, emblematic of the pop image. His sexualized object-woman (represented with exposed breasts, etc.) and commodified (depicted as a table, a chair) become a consumer product. He echoed the typical thinking of the consumerism of the 1960s: the woman's body as a lure to attract consumers. His object women, made with mannequin materials and often dressed in real clothes and wigs, trigger fetishism and voyeurism in the observer. Allen Jones portrays a society sick with sex, where the woman becomes a commodity, depersonalized. Jones's art is an explicit denunciation: proposing the woman as a consumer object to show the new image given to her by the media, aware that the public accepts everything that is proposed to them. Painting and sculpture merge, and the female body is idealized according to the aesthetic standards of the media and advertising. The woman is evoked with obsessive coldness. The artist traces new aesthetic mechanisms of the pop era and the theme of consumerism in an ironic and 'demystifying' way. His pin-ups are icons of fetishism, crystallized desire but at the same time 'disposable', becoming a symbol of the ephemeral and precariousness typical of consumer products. Allen Jones has an innate irony that is found in his works and allows him to address issues of human existence in a non-explicit manner.
