London’s New Scene by Lisa Tickner review – seven events that smashed the art world

about 5 years in The guardian

From the pop art of Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and David Hockney to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up … how 60s’ London came to lead the way
In Lisa Tickner’s exploration of seven key events in the art world between 1962 and 1968 we are drawn into experiences that smashed through the old ways of doing things – in the gallery, on TV, in films – with confident flair, irony and cool wit. It is no surprise that London in the 1960s began to be regarded as one of the leading capitals of art in the western world.
In 1952 a magazine photograph of Zsa Zsa Gabor taken in the Tate Gallery, showing her posing with one leg thrown up and resting on a waist-high plinth, had nearly lost John Rothenstein his directorship. The fashion photo on the front cover of this book suggests that, by 1964, things had changed – the playful shot of a leaping model, aided by two students, was taken by Elsbeth Juda in the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s Rauschenberg exhibition. The latest in urban art and fashion were now in alliance. Continue reading...

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