Brit Art of the Sixties at Mark Barrow Fine Art

Brit Art of the Sixties at Mark Barrow Fine Art

21 July, 2008
by: Katuschka

The art of the Sixties can polarize opinions. The aesthetics are often brash and bold, they scream and project through the canvas in a throbbing, LSD-tinted swirl of geometric shapes and iconic imagery. Some invade your mind, challenge perceptions of reality, and become increasingly hard to look at after a few glasses of free wine. The pieces at Mark Barrow are available to buy, but before you invest, you should consider stumbling in hungover and coming face to face with a five-foot, monochrome illusion that appears to be swaying.

However, the Pop Art, Op Art and Hard-Edged Geometric Abstraction of the Sixties still pervade today's popular culture and account for some of the most enduring imagery of our times. The pieces here are a testament to the decade's exuberant youth culture and mix of superficial concerns and radical idealism: Joe Tilson's Gagarin, Star, Triangle, for example, features images of the Russian cosmonaut taken from a televised screen-shot.

Mark Barrow's is an impressive collection: contrasted against white walls with period music playing in the background, this is an authentic and enthusiastic blast from the past to satisfy the appetites of any retro hipsters. Despite the forty year gap, the pieces could easily stand alone against contemporary art and yet they are the façade of a fascinating and rebellious period when art was still a dynamic force. The pieces stretch out and distort canvases, leap out of the walls or simply peel away, taking the art to new dimensions. Kitsch works like Nicolas Munro's Magician also reflect the decade's sense of fun.

The exhibition's exclusively British focus is also a nostalgic reminder that Pop Art emerged from 'Swinging Sixties' London, despite being wrested stateside by artists such as Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Pop Art embodied a significant era in British history. Free from the enforced staidness of the Second World War, with a legacy of abstract movements to draw from (Cubism, Futurism etc), and a commercial freedom which saw art supplies become abundantly available once again, the pieces represent an economic, social and cultural boom in suitably vivid forms. Silver Coke bottles (Clive Barker's Coke With Two Straws) and paintings of Swan tobacco packets (Derek Boshier's Swan) nod to Commercialism whilst abstract paintings by artists such as Michael Tyzack and Derek Hirst point to the influence of jazz rhythms and the ubiquitous influence of mind-altering psychedelics. Stand-out works included Garth Evan's Pink, a Pepto-Bismol coloured wall sculpture, Michael Kidner's Yellow Green and Blue - a fluid and hypnotic Op Art painting - and John Hoyland's muted, Rothko-inspired 09.09.67 with its military green and Communist red allusions to the Vietnam War.

The lasting impression is an encapsulation of art that attempted to be politically relevant without the bedraggled, kitchen-sink apathy of much British art today. Neither the message nor the colours are muted: these are aesthetically stunning pieces. However, if soft-focus watercolours are more your thing, you might want to bring some sunglasses, because the past has never looked brighter.

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