Hatstand, Table and Chair are a group of three erotic sculptures by British pop artist Allen Jones, created in 1969 and first exhibited in 1970. They have been described in retrospect as "emblematic of the spirit of the 1960s" [1] and an "international sensation." [2] At the time they were met with angry protests, particularly from feminists who saw them as an objectification of women.
Hatstand, Table and Chair are three fibreglass sculptures of women transformed into items of furniture. They are each dressed with wigs, and are naked apart from their corsets, gloves and leather boots. [2] Each is slightly larger than life-size. [3] For Chair the woman lies curled on her back, a seat cushion on her thighs and her legs acting as a back rest. Table is a woman on all fours, with a sheet of glass supported on her back. For Hat Stand the woman is standing, 1.85 metres (73 in) tall, [4] her hands upturned as hooks.
Each fibreglass figure was produced from drawings by Jones. He oversaw a professional sculptor, Dick Beech, who produced the figures in clay. The three female figures were then cast by a model company, Gems Wax Models Ltd, who specialised in producing shop mannequins. Each figure was produced in an edition of six. [3]
Jones explained that they weren't illustrations of scenes, but rather that "the figure is a device for a painting or a sculpture. It’s not a portrayal of someone – it’s a psychological construction." [5]
Allen Jones was one of the first of the 1960s British Pop artists, and produced paintings and prints. A 1968 set of prints, In Life Class, has been cited as an immediate predecessor of his chair, table and hatstand. [2] Each print is made of two halves, the bottom being a pair of women's legs in tights, the upper halves drawn in a 1940s fetishist graphic style, representing "the secret face of British male desire in the gloomy post-war years". [2] Jones enjoyed combining different visual languages to expose the historical constructions underlying them. He examined the cultural representations of the female body. [2]
At the time of his 70th birthday Jones gave an explanation of his motives for creating the sculptures:
"I was living in Chelsea and I had an interest in the female figure and the sexual charge that comes from it. Every Saturday on the King's Road you went out and skirts were shorter, the body was being displayed in some new way. And you knew that the following week somebody would up the ante... I was reflecting on and commenting on exactly the same situation that was the source of the feminist movement. It was unfortunate for me that I produced the perfect image for them to show how women were being objectified." [1]
The sculptures were exhibited in 1970 and met with an outcry from feminists, who objected to women being made into items of furniture. The Guardian newspaper suggested the works should be banned from exhibition. Spare Rib magazine suggested the sculptures showed that Jones was terrified of women.[ citation needed ]
Jones was contacted by film director Stanley Kubrick with a view to creating similar sculptures for his new film, A Clockwork Orange . Jones turned down the request because no payment was offered. [1] However, he gave Kubrick permission to use the idea and sculptures reminiscent of his work in the film's Korova Milk Bar scene. [1]
According to art historian and curator, Marco Livingstone, writing in 2004:
"More than three decades later, these works still carry a powerful emotive charge, ensnaring every viewer's psychology and sexual outlook regardless of age, gender or experience. But a few moments of reflection should make it obvious that these works are manifestations of fantasy and the imagination, and that they poke fun at male expectations." [4]
The 2008 music video for "No Can Do" by Sugababes was inspired by Jones' 1970 Chair sculpture, and features the group using men as objects such as cars, motorcycles and bridges. [6] [7]
A set of the sculptures was purchased by German playboy, Gunter Sachs, at the time of their release. His set was sold in 2012 at a Sotheby's auction for £2.6 million.[ citation needed ] In the wake of this, another set came to market in February 2013, selling at Christie's [8] for £2.2 million. [9]
In 2014 a reinterpretation of Jones's Chair by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, using a mannequin of a black woman, created fresh controversy. Images of the chair on the fashion website Buro 24/7 were met with accusations of racism, when they showed a white woman, Dasha Zhukova, sitting on the seat. [10] Melgaard's Chair was part of a collection of sculptures exhibited under the name Allen Jones Remake at the Venus Over Manhattan gallery, New York in 2013. [11]
Allen Jones is a British pop artist best known for his paintings, sculptures, and lithography. He was awarded the Prix des Jeunes Artistes at the 1963 Paris Biennale. He is a Senior Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2017 he returned to his home town to receive the award Honorary Doctor of Arts from Southampton Solent University
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures.
Human furniture is furniture in which a person's body is used as a tray, foot stool, chair, table, cabinet or other item. In some cases a sculpture of a human body is used instead. Examples of human furniture have appeared in modern art. Forniphilia is the practice of creating human furniture in fetish photography and bondage pornography.
Marisol Escobar, otherwise known simply as Marisol, was a Venezuelan-American sculptor born in Paris, who lived and worked in New York City. She became world-famous in the mid-1960s, but lapsed into relative obscurity within a decade. She continued to create her artworks and returned to the limelight in the early 21st century, capped by a 2014 major retrospective show organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Womanhouse was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program and was the first public exhibition of Art centered upon female empowerment. Chicago, Schapiro, their students, and women artists from the local community, including Faith Wilding, participated. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to use consciousness-raising techniques to generate the content of the exhibition. Together, the students and professors worked to build an environment where women's conventional social roles could be shown, exaggerated, and subverted.
The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago. Widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in civilization. There are 39 elaborate place settings on a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe are among the symbolic guests.
Events from the year 1969 in art.
"Red Dress" is a song by British girl group Sugababes from their fourth studio album, Taller in More Ways (2005). The group's members wrote the song in collaboration with its producers, the British songwriting and production team Xenomania, based on the perception that women must expose their body to be noticed. "Red Dress" was released in the United Kingdom on 6 March 2006 as the album's third single, and is the first to feature vocals by Amelle Berrabah, following the departure of Mutya Buena in December 2005. The Sugababes performed a cover of the Arctic Monkeys' song "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" as the single's B-side.
Bjarne Melgaard is a Norwegian artist based in New York City. He has been described as "one of Norway's most important artists" and, following the 2014 publicity about his sculpture Chair, "the most famous Norwegian artist since Edvard Munch."
Lynda Serene Jones is the President and Johnston Family Professor for Religion and Democracy at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She was formerly the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and chair of gender, woman, and sexuality studies at Yale University.
Darya "Dasha" Alexandrovna Zhukova is a Russian-American art collector, businesswoman, magazine editor, and socialite. She is the founder of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Garage Magazine.
"No Can Do" is a song by British girl group Sugababes from their sixth studio album, Catfights and Spotlights (2008). It was written by Jason Pebworth and George Astasio of The Invisible Men, Jon Shave and VV Brown, and produced by The Invisible Men in collaboration with Si Hulbert. The song was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 29 December 2008 as the album's second and final single. "No Can Do" is a pop song with influences of R&B and soul. It contains a sample of Sweet Charles Sherrell's "Yes It's You", and contains influences of Motown music and songs performed by The Jackson 5.
Jemima Stehli is a British feminist artist, who is especially known for her naked self-portrait photographs. Stehli lives and works in London.
Narcissister is an American, Brooklyn-based, feminist performance artist, born of Moroccan Jewish and African-American descent. Narcissister's work tends to focus on race, gender, and sexuality, using her slight anonymity to explore such topics controversially. In February 2013, she headlined her first solo gallery. She was a contestant on America's Got Talent. The Huffington Post declared her the "topless feminist superhero of New York". She prefers her identity remain secret.
Alexander (Sasha) Kargaltsev is a Russian-born American artist, writer, photographer, actor and film director.
Susan Williams was an American artist. In 1938 she was born Susan Lewis in Chicago, Illinois. She married architect Frank Williams in the 1960s and had her son David in 1969. She was a fraternal twin. Williams got her MFA at New York University, where she initially studied painting, but then moved into three dimensional work. Her time was divided between San Miguel Allende in Mexico where she maintained a home and studio and Craryville, in upstate New York. In 2015, she died of cancer at home in Craryville with her son at her side; her husband, son, and three grandchildren survived her.
A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft is a public sculpture commemorating the 18th-century feminist writer and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, London. A work of the British artist Maggi Hambling, it was unveiled on 10 November 2020.
Julie Roberts is a Welsh painter who works in acrylics, oils and watercolours. Taught at the Wrexham School of Art, Saint Martin's School of Art and the Glasgow School of Art, she used medical equipment and furniture in her early works before moving on to include deceased humans, dolls and mannequins in her paintings. Roberts has done group or solo exhibitions in several major American and European cities and her works are held in the public or private collections of various museums.
Antony Donaldson is a British painter and sculptor, working in London from the beginning of the 1960s. Notable for his development of visual interplay between abstract and popular imagery, his work is associated with the Pop Art movement and known for his paintings of fast cars and women.