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Desire Me

Watercolour
1969 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Allen Jones is one of a group of artists who attended the Royal College of Art in the late 1950s and early 1960s who became associated with Pop art. He has consistently represented the female figure in highly sexualised poses. Often his female figures are dressed, as we see here, in PVC or rubber clothing and wear exaggeratedly high stiletto-heel shoes. Jones was inspired by popular illustration of the 1940s and 1950s, especially those with a sexual content, such as airbrushed pictures of pin-up girls. The woman shown here is represented as an object, an embodiment of conventional male erotic fantasy.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleDesire Me (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Upper part pencil on card, with lower part watercolour, mainly airbrushed, over a photograph mounted on card
Brief description
Watercolour by Allen Jones entitled 'Desire Me'. Great Britain, 1969.
Physical description
Full length airbrushed portrait of a partially naked woman wearing tight black leggings or PVC trousers and high stiletto shoes. In a brass frame designed by the artist.
Dimensions
  • Upper part height: 38.1cm
  • Upper part width: 22.3cm
  • Lower part height: 47.8cm
  • Lower part width: 35.4cm
  • Brass frame height: 970mm
  • Brass frame width: 398mm
  • Brass frame depth: 32mm
Style
Subjects depicted
Summary
Allen Jones is one of a group of artists who attended the Royal College of Art in the late 1950s and early 1960s who became associated with Pop art. He has consistently represented the female figure in highly sexualised poses. Often his female figures are dressed, as we see here, in PVC or rubber clothing and wear exaggeratedly high stiletto-heel shoes. Jones was inspired by popular illustration of the 1940s and 1950s, especially those with a sexual content, such as airbrushed pictures of pin-up girls. The woman shown here is represented as an object, an embodiment of conventional male erotic fantasy.
Bibliographic reference
p. 65 Allen Jones. London : Royal Academy of Arts, 2014. ISBN: 9781907533938
Collection
Accession number
P.5-1976

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Record createdJanuary 21, 2003
Record URL
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