“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Banksy
Before we unveiled the theme for this year, the Beach House team got together to research and explore some examples of “Going Rogue.” With all the soul-searching we did for our previous themes, we felt mentally and spiritually prepared to take on this new adventurous and refreshing approach to life.
We knew we wanted to do something out of the ordinary for 2020 – something that really pushed our boundaries, questioned the status quo and encouraged us to go beyond our comfort zone. We had a blast brainstorming ideas and exchanging our thoughts and inspirations on what compelled us to be brave, curious and take a stand.
Every month, we will be sharing with you some of the artwork, poems, music and books that inspired us to Go Rogue. Read on for more!
Never stop asking yourself – are you ready to exist on your own terms? Unleash your inner rebel. Live life according to your own light.
We loved learning about Pauline Boty, the founder of the British Pop Art movement. Boty’s paintings and collages often demonstrates a joy in self-assured femininity and expresses implicit criticism of the “man’s world” in which she lived. Her rebellious art, combined with a free-spirited lifestyle, has made Boty a herald of 1970s feminism.
The writer, curator and art historian David Alan Mellor described Boty as: “An apparition, a very wonderful apparition of how wonderful and expansive life could be. Rather like Oscar Wilde, creating Dorian Gray, puts it: every age has its own incarnation, and no pressure, Dorian – you’re IT. Well, she was IT. She was its incarnation.”
In first years of the 1960s the shining, intelligent and strikingly beautiful Boty had already outgrown the usual possibilities for a girl from suburban south London. Television and stage actor; theatre designer; early leftist activist; loud and witty protester at postwar self-same architecture; energetic, proto-feminist, acerbic commentator on culture, modernity and gender and even an early interviewer of the Beatles on the BBC’s radio programme The Public Ear; accredited dancer on TV’s Ready Steady Go!; and also, it’s believed, the model for the free-spirited character of Liz (played by Julie Christie) in John Schlesinger’s 1963 film Billy Liar.
But over and above all this whirlwind energy – over and above the short life, the too-early death, the legends, the rumours, the vibrant and groundbreaking brand new 60s spirit which she didn’t just embody but seems literally to have helped create, Boty was – is, always will be – the first and only British Pop artist who happened to be a woman.
We hope Pauline Boty’s artwork and story helps inspire you to ignite your own personal rebellion!
Sources:
https://peoplepill.com/people/pauline-boty/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2013/apr/27/pauline-boty-pictures
