The Major Periods

1962 – 1965: Early Pop Paintings

As one of the original wave of Pop artists Gerald Laing produced some of the most significant works of the British Pop movement. His paintings reproduced images of popular heroes such as starlets, film stars, drag racers, astronauts and skydivers. His 1962 portrait of Brigitte Bardot is an iconic work of the period and regularly features in major Pop retrospectives alongside Lincoln Convertible from 1964, a commemoration of the assassination of JFK.

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1965 – 1970: Utopian Abstract Sculpture

From 1965 Gerald Laing's painting evolved into abstract sculptures using the techniques and materials of car customisation - lacquering, spray-painting and chrome-plating on metal.

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1970 – 1973: Sculpture In The Landscape

A move from New York to the Highlands of Scotland in 1970 saw Gerald Laing's sculpture respond to the beauty, roughness and power of the surrounding landscape.

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1972 – 2010: Public Sculpture

Public sculptures include the the Bank Station Dragons; the Rugby Sculptures at Twickenham Stadium; the Cricketer at Lords; the Highland Clearances Memorial in Helmsdale, Sutherland and Axis Mundi in Edinburgh.

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1973 – 1980: Galina Series

Inspired by the figurative sculpture of the First World War Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, in 1973 Gerald Laing began to model in clay and cast in bronze. The Galina Series and associated sculptures were his first works from this period.

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1982 – 2007: Portrait Heads

Gerald Laing's portrait work includes heads and reliefs of Luciano Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, Paul Getty and Sam Wanamaker.

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2002 – 2005: War Paintings

The Iraq war and the publication of images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison drew Gerald Laing back to painting for the first time in over three decades. The War Paintings series sees the starlets and all-American heroes of his early paintings take on new, more sinister roles.

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2004 – 2011: New Paintings

Returning to the style and subject matter of his early pop art paintings, Gerald Laing's latest paintings feature media images of contemporary celebrities including Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss.

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Search the Catalogue

New Paintings 2004–2011

These new paintings for modern times treat the canvas as a flat plain on which colours and forms are clearly arranged. little attempt is made to create atmospheric space by moduation of the paint colour and tone, and accident is kept to a minimum.

Within the paintings there are games for the eye and the mind; visual paradoxes, puns and metaphors, deeply layered. This strengthens and indeed sustains them.

As in my earliest paintings of the 1960s, the chief compositional opportunity lies in the dichotomy between the monochrome drawing of halftone and the hard edge flatness of the coloured areas.

I can get more detail, more information, more drama and more mystery in the black and white passages which are literally paintings of newspaper photographs, and I tend to use them to convey emotionally charged ideas. They depend on optical effects, such as the persistence of the visual image on the retina, and our ability to understand certain visual conventions that are part of the shorthand of image transmission which we have learned in the modern environment. If you look closely at the cnvas, the surface disintegrates and becomes abstract, displaying its digital system of transmission; from further away, it resolves into an image. Both qualities are part of the painting; combined, they are unique to our age.

On the other hand, the coloured areas are stark, clear and sharp. They reiterate the fact that the paintings are flat, decorated surfaces, relating to what used to be called, but are no longer, the Italian primitives. in other words they are more like Cimabue and Uccello than Turner or Rothko. They are objects, not windows; icons, not landscapes. These qualities are abstract. They sustain the paintings and give them stamina.

To Discuss the content of these paintings is to enter another arena. |It is the role of the artist to reiterate humanist concerns by pushing aside the veil of history which, cobweb-like, obscures the living past, and comment on them for his generation. The paintings show us the dance of our own modern times, in a modern manner. The events are essentially commonplace, ordinary joys and sins, though their effect is often devastating.

Gerald Laing, 2008





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Badge - Brooch

CR

1969 · London

Chrome on brass with inset sections of variously coloured champlevé enamel, pin fastening verso

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Souvenir (of the Cuban Missile Crisis Oct 16–28 1962)

CR 0

1962 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on wood and oil on canvas laid over board, in the artist’s painted frame · 25 x 15

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Lolita Through the Keyhole

CR 001

1962 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on canvas · 42 x 48

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Cléo from 5 to 7

CR 002

1962 · London

Oil on canvas · 25 x 48

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Bedroom BB

CR 003

1962 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on canvas · 41 x 33

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Roger & Annette Take Coffee

CR 004

1962 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on canvases joined by aluminium · 32 x 26

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Brigitte Bardot

CR 005

1963 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on canvas · 72 x 45

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Anna Karina

CR 006

1963 · Saint Martin's School of Art, London

Oil on canvas · 84 x 144

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noimage

Three Incidents from the Shock Film of the Year

CR 007

1963 · London (St. Martins)

Oil on canvas

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Navy Pilot

CR 008

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 30 x 36

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Dragster I

CR 009

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 50 x 60

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Starlet I

CR 010

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 20 x 50

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Starlet II

CR 011

1963 · New York

Oil on canvas · 20 x 50

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Starlet 1a (Head)

CR 012

1963 · New York

Oil on canvas · 16 x 20

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Head

CR 013

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 14 x 18

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Ursula of Coenties Slip

CR 014

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 60 x 50 (ledger) or 60 x 40 (Aspen notebook)

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Skydiver II

CR 015

1963 · New York

Oil on canvas · 70 x 60

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Skydiver I

CR 016

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 40 x 36

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Four Events in the Experience of an Astronaut

CR 017

1963 · New York

Oil on canvas · 48 x 40

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Portrait of Robert Indiana

CR 018

1963 · New York City

Oil on canvas · 16 x 24

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Countdown

CR 019

1963 · London (St. Martins)

Oil on canvas · 12 x 20

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Welcome Back to Earth

CR 020

1963 · London

Acrylic and oil on canvas, in a 'diamond' orientation · 60 x 60

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G Force

CR 021

1963 · London

Oil on canvas · 36 x 56

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Astronaut I

CR 022

1963 · London

Oil and silver spray paint on canvas · 72 x 64

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