David Hockney, Man in Shower in Beverly Hills 1964. Tate. © David Hockney.
13 rooms in Modern and Contemporary British Art
Social changes, popular media and a new spirit of optimism inspire artists to embrace vibrant, colour-saturated imagery
In the 1960s, the UK enters a period of relative prosperity, low unemployment and social mobility. Young men are freed from compulsory military service. The contraceptive pill gives women more control over their bodies. The Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalises gay relationships. The 1965 Race Relations Act prohibits discrimination on racial grounds. Britain becomes increasingly multicultural, despite immigration laws that restrict the entry of Commonwealth citizens.
Colour begins to saturate everyday life. New films, music and television, often celebrating North American culture, captivate the nation. This leads to an explosion of popular youth culture led by British pop and rock stars. The hopes and struggles of the time find expression in a new, bold visual culture of glossy magazines, colour televisions and advertising. Pop art celebrates and reflects on this new consumerism.
The colourful abstract paintings from the United States profoundly influence some British artists. However, the richness of 1960s British art is indebted to a broader range of lived experiences and cultural influences. London and its art schools play a crucial role in this development. State support enables working-class artists from outside the capital to study and pursue their careers. Artists also arrive in London from other European countries, British colonies and newly independent nations.
Peter Blake, Self-Portrait with Badges 1961
In traditional portraits, props and clothing often communicate the interests and status of the sitter. Peter Blake plays with this convention in this self-portrait. His jeans, denim jacket (rare in Britain at the time), badges and magazine featuring Elvis Presley all demonstrate his fascination with North American culture. Blake’s work often involves collage and imagery borrowed from popular culture. At this time this connected him with younger painters at the Royal College of Art, where he had studied. This included Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Frank Bowling and David Hockney, all featured in this gallery.
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Sir Anthony Caro, Lock 1962
Anthony Caro developed a new sculptural language which emphasised the physical relationship between sculpture and viewer. The abstract painting and sculpture he saw during a 1959 visit to the USA had a strong influence. When he returned, Caro began welding and bolting industrial steel sheets and bars. He also started applying bold, flat colour finishes to his sculptures. Teaching at St Martin’s School of Art in London, Caro encouraged his students ‘to push sculpture where it never has been.’
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Sandra Blow, Green and White 1969
Sandra Blow made her impactful abstract compositions using both traditional and unusual materials. For Green and White she incorporated blended ash made from burning nuts in her studio stove. While the painting was still unfinished, someone entered Blow’s studio and slashed the canvas with a knife. Determined not to ‘lose the painting’, she sewed the edges together and stuck a strip of canvas on the back and front, then painted over it. ‘Miraculously... it was a perfect conclusion to the whole painting,’ she said.
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Pauline Boty, The Only Blonde in the World 1963
Pauline Boty painted the film star Marilyn Monroe from a photograph. The actor occupies a thin strip of this canvas, squeezed between green sections. Monroe had died a year earlier. Boty spoke about her ‘nostalgia for the things that are now... it’s almost like painting mythology, only a present-day mythology.’ She identified with the challenges Monroe had faced. Boty wanted to be taken seriously intellectually and be free to embody her sexuality at a time when the two were seen as mutually exclusive.
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Joe Tilson, Transparency I: Yuri Gagarin 12 April 1961 1968
A founder of British pop art, Joe Tilson often incorporated images of significant political and cultural figures into his work. Here, Tilson illuminates a televised image of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin from his record-breaking orbit of the Earth in 1961. This achievement catapulted Gagarin to international fame until his sudden death in 1968. Resembling a 35mm photographic slide, Tilson’s work contrasts the grainy image against colourful forms that recall the glossy packaging of mass-produced photo prints.
Gallery label, February 2025
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artworks in In Full Colour
Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA, Mirror 1964–6
Frank Bowling explained that Mirror was ‘about making a painting’. He combined different approaches to figurative and abstract work, from op art to colour field painting. At the centre is the spiral staircase at the painting studios of the Royal College of Art, where he had studied. Bowling appears swinging from the top of the staircase and again at the bottom, painted in a very different way. In between stands his then-wife, writer Paddy Kitchen. In 1966, feeling increasingly pigeon-holed as a Black artist, Bowling left London for New York.
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Anwar Jalal Shemza, Composition in Red and Green, Squares and Circles 1963
Anwar Jalal Shemza began his artistic career in Pakistan and moved to the UK to study. Feeling displaced, he stopped making figurative paintings. Instead, he began studying Islamic art from different periods, in search of what he called his ‘own identity’. His new compositions fused calligraphy and aspects of Mughal architecture with European abstract art. He commented: ‘I am much more aware of my own art heritage now than I ever was in Pakistan. You only become aware of the things you lose.’
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
David Hockney, Man in Shower in Beverly Hills 1964
This is one of a number of works showing men in showers painted around the time of Hockney’s first visit to Los Angeles in 1964. After this visit, athletic male bodies, often shown in or close to water, became a recurrent theme in his work. These paintings were often inspired by images Hockney found in magazines. He said: ‘For an artist the interest in showers is obvious: the whole body is always in view and in movement, usually gracefully, as the bather is caressing his own body. There is also a three hundred year old tradition of the bather as a subject in painting.’
Gallery label, January 2019
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artworks in In Full Colour
Howard Hodgkin, Dinner at West Hill 1964–6
This painting recalls a dinner party in March 1964 hosted by the painter Bernard Cohen and his wife Jeannie. Hodgkin later recalled, 'I had to contend with a nervous and glittering evening in a green and white room full of small B. Cohens on the wall'. Some of the marks in this picture are based on the forms in Cohen's paintings. Hodgkin explained the white line represented the edge of the table, but also emphasised the flatness of the painting’s surface.
Gallery label, April 2019
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artworks in In Full Colour
Derek Boshier, The Identi-Kit Man 1962
The man in this painting seems to be part toothpaste, part jigsaw piece. The figure merges into mass consumer product, reflecting the commodification Derek Boshier thought was transforming society. He was also interested in the effects of Americanisation on British life. The work’s title references police identikits. Invented in the USA, these sets of pre-drawn facial features helped investigators create images of suspects. Boshier said the figure in the painting ‘represents me (us), the spectator, participant, player, or cog in the wheel – the amorphous “us”... being manipulated.’
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Richard Smith, Gift Wrap 1963
The size and the landscape orientation of Gift Wrap suggest a billboard. At the time Richard Smith was fascinated with product packaging and advertising. The inspiration for the work was a popular brand of cigarettes from the USA. Above all, Smith was interested in creating illusions in painting, giving the work a three-dimensional, sculptural quality. The composition combines abstract and pop art elements. Smith made it during a period of time when he was living between the USA and the UK.
Gallery label, September 2023
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artworks in In Full Colour
Bridget Riley, Hesitate 1964
A wave appears to ripple across the flat surface of this painting. To create the illusion of movement, Bridget Riley gradually changed the shape and colour of each grey form. Her work became known as op art – using optical effects to change the viewer’s experience of space. Sometimes op art can have an almost physical effect, destabilising the viewer. The fame of such works showed how art was able to reach a wider audience in the 1960s, influencing fashion and wider visual culture.
Gallery label, January 2025
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artworks in In Full Colour
Art in this room
Peter Blake
Self-Portrait with Badges
1961
Sir Anthony Caro
Lock
1962
Sandra Blow
Green and White
1969
Pauline Boty
The Only Blonde in the World
1963
Joe Tilson
Transparency I: Yuri Gagarin 12 April 1961
1968
Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA
Mirror
1964–6
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