Patrick Caulfield at Pallant House Gallery
A new exhibition will give visitors a behind-the-scenes peek at the work of Patrick Caulfield, with rarely-seen studies that reveal the ideas and techniques behind his distinctive paintings, prints and other projects.Focussing on his unique working methods and techniques, the exhibition places working drawings alongside Caulfield’s witty paintings of interiors and still life subjects. Together with his bold screenprints and studies for murals, the British Library Tapestry and Portsmouth Cathedral Organ Doors, these works will present a new view of Caulfield’s artistic creativity.
Patrick Caulfield first came to prominence in 1964 when he was included in ‘New Generation’ at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery, the exhibition which was largely seen as heralding the birth of British Pop Art, although the painter and printmaker personally distanced himself from the movement and was outspoken in his insistence that the label was not appropriate for his work.
Despite Caulfield’s rejection of the Pop Art label his working methods allied himself further with the label through his use of non-traditional materials and techniques. He was one of the first artists to work with household paint, not only because of its relative cheapness but also because of its lack of pretension.
“I liked the impersonal surface they produced,” Caulfield said. “I didn’t like misty brushstrokes and atmospheric painting - this was my reaction against the Englishness of English painting.”
Printmaking was equally important to Caulfield. Like the house-paint he had used for his early paintings, printmaking had its roots in commercial processes rather than traditional fine art techniques. It also enabled great precision which suited his simplified compositions with their clean lines and areas of pure colours.
Caulfield’s approach to image making further extended to a range of multimedia projects such as mosaics, murals, stained glass windows and tapestries. Included in the exhibition are his studies for the Wellcome Institute Mural (1991), the British Library Tapestry (1993) - based on a scene from Lawrence Sterne’s novel ‘Tristram Shandy’ - and his maquette for the doors of the Great West Organ in Portsmouth Cathedral (2001). Seen together these present a new view of Caulfield’s creativity, beyond the paintings and prints for which he is so celebrated.
Patrick Caulfield: Between the Lines is at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester from 28th March to 14th June 2009.
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