06 Jun 2012

Kunsthalle Tübingen: Allen Jones. The Retrospective on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday

Allen Jones
The Retrospective on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday
June 16–September 16, 2012


The leading British Pop artist Allen Jones caused an international furor in 1969 with his provocative furniture sculptures. In 1979, the first large-scale retrospective was devoted to the artist, forty-one at the time, in Liverpool, London, Baden-Baden, and Bielefeld. His 70th birthday was celebrated in 2007 at the Tate Britain in London with an exhibition of current works as well as several early pieces. In time for his 75th birthday, the Kunsthalle Tübingen is extending an invitation to rediscover the oeuvre of the internationally influential artist in the most comprehensive retrospective to date.

The notorious sculptures from 1969, which depict women transformed into pieces of furniture, will also be shown in the most comprehensive Allen Jones retrospective to date: one with outstretched hands that serves as a hat stand, a table consisting of a woman posing as an obedient dog would do, a woman lying on her back with the back of her thighs pressed against her body and her lower legs aloft serves as a chair—they are all buxom, bare-breasted, have long legs, and are armored with stilettos and leather accessories. The sculptures seem realistic despite the erotic exaggeration; apparently so much so that they are still, as they were then, in a position not only to bring sworn enemies of pornography onto the scene but also the heralds of sexual self-expression.

'Nothing is as it seems'—this is now Allen Jones once described the guiding principle behind his creative work, and thus it would be a fatal error to confuse the depicted content with the message of the work of art. It is fiberglass and steel forced into the shape of furniture—and not people! For the artist, it is not about contempt for women but questioning restrictions on free thought and moral barriers. In his choice of the colloquial expression 'off the wall' for the title of the exhibition catalogue, which means eccentric or unconventional, Jones transports trivial themes such as sexual allusions from advertising and show business into the visual arts in order to stylize and satirize them. Yet 'off the wall' is also to be understood in a literal sense: away from two-dimensional representation, off the wall and out into the world!

He departed from the panel picture for the first time with the formed canvases of his bus paintings from 1962. With his sadomasochistic sculptures from 1969 he crossed the threshold from the visual to the haptic in order to again approach the painting, for example with a female figure he has step out of an abstract composition in 1991/92, or sculptures resembling cut-out and folded pictorial motifs. Jones uses this spatial-pictorial ambivalence to interpret the grand theme of Pop Art: the transgression of the barrier between art and everyday life. Yet in the process, he never succumbs to the false conclusion of being able to tear down the boundaries between these two spheres. Rather, he defends the autonomy of the aesthetic by, for example, having figuration encounter abstraction, by symbolically overdrawing body forms or by, two years before Georg Baselitz, placing motifs upside down. Thus, his oeuvre points beyond the democraticizing Pop Art impulse and seduces us with sensual physicalness into the spheres of art-theoretical reflection.

In 1979, the first large-scale retrospective was devoted to the artist, forty-one at the time, in Liverpool, London, Baden-Baden, and Bielefeld. His 70th birthday was celebrated in 2007 at the Tate Britain in London with an exhibition of current works as well as several early pieces. Just in time for his 75th birthday, the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Tübingen is joining a large selection of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper created between 1957 to 2009 for the first time. This most comprehensive retrospective to date, developed in collaboration with Tübingen's Institute for Cultural Exchange, invites viewers to rediscover the oeuvre of the internationally influential English artist. The Kunsthalle Tübingen has a tradition of presenting large-scale exhibitions of Pop Art, having mounted solo shows of works by George Segal, Richard Hamilton, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Duane Hanson, Tom Wesselmann, and Mel Ramos. With Allen Jones, another pearl is being added to the string.



Special Events

Saturday, June 15, 2012, 3:00 p.m.
Artist's Talk. Discussion with Allen Jones
You will experience more about his life and oeuvre firsthand in this English discussion with the artist.
€9.50 / €7.50 € including admission

Sunday, July 1, 2012, 4:00 p.m.
Porno, PorNO, and Pop Art
A Lecture by Claudia Gehrke
The Tübingen-based Konkursbuch publisher is a specialist for the range of topics between sensuality and morality. In her lecture, she will put Allen Jones and the pornographic tendencies in Pop Art up for discussion from a feminist point of view.
€9.50 / €7.50 € including admission



Guided Tours for the Public
Saturdays at 3:00 pm, Tuesdays at 5:30 pm
Fee per person: €2.50

Guided Tours with Advance Notice
Tuesday–Friday: €50.00
Saturday, Sunday, and holidays: €60.00

Guided Tours for School Classes
45 minutes: €38.00, with practical art experience, 90 minutes: €55.00 plus admission and material costs

Exhibition Catalogue
Allen Jones—Off the Wall, with texts by Otto Letze, Marco Livingstone, Sir Norman Rosenthal, and a foreword by Daniel J. Schreiber, edited by Otto Letze, 236 pages, 200 illustrations, of which 186 are in color, hardcover, special price for visitors to the exhibition €24.80