Artists Pauline Boty

Pauline Boty

British Painter, Collagist, Actress, and Dancer

Movements and Styles: British Pop Art, Pop Art, Proto-Feminist Artists

Born: March 6, 1938 - Croydon, England

Died: July 1, 1966 - London

Table of contents

> Summary
> Key Ideas
> Artworks
> Biography & Legacy
Influences and Connections
Resources

"A revolution is on the way, and it's partly because we no longer take our standards from the tweedy top. All over the country young girls are starting, shouting and shaking, and if they terrify you, they mean to and they are beginning to impress the world."

Summary of Pauline Boty

Often dismissively referred to as an 'It-Girl' of 1960s London, Pauline Boty hung out with counterculture celebrities and rock stars, posed for magazines and famous photographers, and was in many ways a figure whose beauty and free-spirited nature exemplified the changing social conventions of the era. But this was only part of who Boty was, and her own artistic practice was innovative, engaging and essential to the development of British Pop Art. Due at least in part to the engrained sexism of the art world and prejudice against a woman who unashamedly celebrated her own sexuality, full historical recognition for Boty came late, after her tragic death at the age of only 28.

After long being championed by a small number of critics and contemporaries, and since the literal rediscovery of much of her work in an old barn, curators and academics have revaluated the impact of Boty's vibrant use of colour, shape and pop-cultural collage to reflect Britain in the 1960s, particularly in relation to the role of women.

Key Ideas

Boty's rediscovery disrupts the canonical narrative that British Pop Art was entirely defined by its three 'main' figures of Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and Peter Blake. Boty's work engages in very similar operations and techniques, as well as mining similar conceptual ground. But whilst a contemporary of all three, even studying and exhibiting with Blake, Boty was rapidly forgotten after her early death, revealing the way in which the art historical canon systematically minimises the contribution of female artists.

Unlike some other female Pop Artists, Boty refused to create work that hid her vivacity or sense of fun. Her use of bright colours, humorous and/or glamorous imagery and foregrounding of her own desires and sexuality led to dismissals of her work as "girlish" or "slight", despite the success of male artists who approached their work in the same way. Since her rediscovery, this work is now seen as an important reclamation of female agency.

Boty's work is inherently subjective and tied to her own personality - like many Pop Artists, her personality and social life provides important context to her work. Her personal experiences of the society around her provide the subject matter for her paintings, foregrounding an individual perspective on the changing cultural conventions of 1960s Britain often overlooked.

Like many other Pop Artists, Boty was influenced by and participated in several other art forms alongside her painting. Working as a model, actor and dancer, Boty's social circle and its impact on her work reflects the intermingling of artistic forms common in the early 1960s, where musicians, filmmakers, painters and photographers were acutely aware of developments in each other's fields.

Like many of the important cultural figures of the sixties, Pauline Boty was raised in an exceedingly ordinary household. Born in 1938 in the South London suburb of Croydon, her family were middle class, reserved and strictly Catholic. Her mother Veronica stayed at home as a housewife whilst her father, Albert, went out to work as an accountant.

Pauline Boty's childhood, life, career, and various anecdotes

Read Pauline Boty's Biography

And, the artists and movements that built upon Pauline Boty's art

Read Pauline Boty's Artistic Legacy

Important Art by Pauline Boty The below artworks are the most important by Pauline Boty - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist.
Artwork Images	Gershwin (1961) Artwork description & Analysis: This 1961 work is an early example of Boty's forays into "collage painting", consisting of a series of geometric panels and abstract shapes rendered in vibrant blues, oranges and yellows. It was produced in the year that she graduated from the Royal College of Art. Whereas in her studies she had been constrained by the disciplinary limits of her stained glass course, having moved on from the restrictive space of the institution she was now able to pursue her real interests in paint. Gershwin however still demonstrates the way in which Boty was inspired by stained glass techniques, with the artist splitting the space of the canvas into different sections and geometric shapes to make up the whole picture. The geometric panels which make up the piece are reminiscent of historical stained glass or mosaic techniques. Despite these echoes of historical forms, the shapes rendered are also very contemporary, suggestive of early 1960s advertising and packaging. The bright, primary colours are also similar to the colour schemes that began to appear in youth-orientated media in this time, such as magazines, clothes advertising and album covers. Boty, as an artist deeply invested in this youth media combined this sensibility with the skills that she learned in art school. Similar colour palettes and collage effects can be seen in the work of the other artists that were her contemporaries, such as Peter Blake. The title Gershwin is likely a reference to George Gershwin, the extremely popular American jazz composer. This allusion is demonstrative of the way in which Boty took her inspirations from the other media around her. She was not afraid to reference "low media" such as jazz music, even in this early stage of her work and when not working in a figurative style. Early pieces such as this established the background and framed geometric style that Boty then continued to develop through her experimentation with "collaged" figuration. oil on board - Private Collection
Artwork Images	The Only Blonde in the World (1963) Artwork description & Analysis: This painting utilises the same vibrant colour palette and abstract shapes as Boty's earlier work, but includes a painted likeness of Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood celebrity. This image appears in a panel, again showing the influence of stained glass work and collage. Monroe herself takes up a slim panel of the canvas, strutting along in a glamorous white dress, heels and fur, with swept up blonde locks. Like many of Boty's image references, this is likely copied directly from a press shot, perhaps at the movie premiere for The Seven Year Itch in 1955. On both sides of the canvas, the image of Monroe is squeezed by abstract green, red and purple shapes, almost threatening to overwhelm her. Throughout her career, Boty was fascinated with the figure of Marilyn Monroe. She felt an affinity with this most modern of starlets, the ultimate blonde bombshell, who simultaneously represented an era of more open female sexuality and the confinements of this sexualisation. Monroe was both powerful and oppressed due to her beauty, and Boty felt sympathetic to this situation. She, too, struggled throughout her career to express her female sexuality while also navigating the ways in which she was objectified as a beautiful woman by critics, friends and the media. "The fact that Boty was a woman dealing with representations of female sexuality at that time makes her interesting," says curator Chris Stephens, "Many male artists of the period explored popular images of female glamour, like the pin-up, but it was a boy's game. As a woman, she looked at representations of sex and sexuality in a very different way". Boty was all too often typecast as a blonde bimbo in her own acting roles, and often not taken seriously as a painter due to this. As Scene magazine proclaimed in 1962, "Actresses often have tiny brains. Painters often have large beards. Imagine a brainy actress who is also a painter and a blonde and you have PAULINE BOTY". This press clipping reveals the characteristation of Boty as a novelty, and as an aestheticized and fantastic figure. In The Only Blonde in the World, Monroe is a figure who is at a distance from herself. Rather than a real person, with thoughts, opinions, flaws and desires, Monroe is presented simply as an abstract fantasy, the epitome of femininity and sexual attractiveness. The title, "The Only Blonde in the World", suggests that Monroe is the standard by which all other (blonde) women are judged. Boty's ironic title mocks its own ludicrousness, exposing the way in which so many beautiful women are positioned as similar fantasies by the profoundly misogynist and heteronormative society of the early 1960s. oil paint on canvas - The Tate St Ives

Artwork Images	My Colouring Book (1963) Artwork description & Analysis: My Colouring Book (1963) again reproduces the distinct framing of collage and stained glass, deploying imagery familiar from 1960s media alongside bright blocks of colour and snatches of text. The painting is a line by line visualisation of the popular song 'My Colouring Book', as sung by Barbara Streisand in 1963 and Dusty Springfield in 1964. The canvas is split into six sections, partially mimicking a girl's comic magazine. Each segment represents a different idea expressed in the lyrics of the song. The line "These are the eyes that watched him as he walked away, color them grey", is illustrated by a pair of round grey and then-fashionable sunglasses shielding a ghostly face, subtly suggesting the denizens of 'Swinging London'. A blue love heart, rendered in an almost childlike form is captioned "This is the heart that thought He would always be true, Color it blue". "These are the arms that held him, and touched him, then lost him, somehow, color them empty, now" is accompanied by a picture of an anonymous blonde grasping an empty, white silhouette. In the bottom right, a chunky green beaded necklace; "These are the beads I wore, until she came between, color them green". Then a detailed image of a stylish but uninhabited bedroom, as if in an advert, "This is the room I sleep in, walk in and weep in, hiding, that nobody sees, color it lonely, please". Then finally, a stereotypical movie "Bad boy", smoking in a leather jacket; "This is the boy, the one I depended upon, Colour him gone." This careful visualisation of the song's lyrics reflected the fact that Boty was actually engaged with, and referenced, the media that women were confronted with at the time. She "did not adopt the cool detachment expected of Pop artists and... gave form to the emotional experience of the female fan." This idea is exemplified by the manner in which the painting essentially follows the instructions of the song, Boty following along with the disembodied female narrator, who begins by asking the listener if they have "crayons ready? Very well, begin to color me..." In doing so, Boty is sympathetic with the plight of the heartbroken woman and the difficulties of the female experience. But at the same time, she is demonstrating the way in which women's media of the time reduces these experiences to a melancholic array of stock images and colours, which they are then invited to childishly depict in crayon. My Colouring Book identifies with the daily experience of teenage girls in the 1960s, and the loss and heartbreak they may feel when mistreated by men, but simultaneously highlights the way in which this experience was infantilised and made melodramatic in "girls" magazines, romance movies, and popular songs. oil on canvas - Muzeum Sztuki, Poland

More Pauline Boty Artwork and Analysis:

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Influenced by Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Interactive chart with Pauline Boty's main influences, and the people and ideas that the artist influenced in turn.

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Show influences

Artists

	Charles Carey
	Clive Goodwin
	Derek Marlowe
	Peter Blake

Personal Contacts

	Geoffrey Reeve
	Christine Porter
	David Hockney

Movements

	Pop Art
	Collage/Stained Glass
	1960s Counterculture

Influences on Artist

Pauline Boty

Years Worked: 1958 - 1966

Influenced by Artist

Artists

	Bob Dylan
	Clive Goodwin
	John McGrath
	Dennis Potter
	Kennedy Martins

Personal Contacts

	Ali Smith
	Tracey Emin
	Judy Chicago
	Helen Shapiro
	David Alan Mellor

Movements

	Pop Art
	Feminist Art

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Cite this page

Content compiled and written by Eve MacNeill

Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Lewis Church

" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Eve MacNeill
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Lewis Church
Available from:
First published on 08 Jul 2019. Updated and modified regularly.
[Accessed ]

Pauline Boty

Summary of Pauline Boty

Key Ideas

Important Art by Pauline Boty

Gershwin (1961)

The Only Blonde in the World (1963)

My Colouring Book (1963)

More Pauline Boty Artwork and Analysis:

Influences and Connections