Friday, April 06, 2012

The illustrated Friends: Allen Jones

Allen Jones wasn't just one of Adam And The Ants "Friends", but a huge influence on Adam during his art school years, and beyond. The exhaustive adamandtheants.org has an early interview in which Adam explains the role the sculptor played in shaping his style:

The S&M thing stems from [when] I was at College Art School, with John Ellis (of the Vibrators), and all the time I was at Art College I was very influenced by Allen Jones the artist. All my college work is pretty much like this, this is just a musical equivalent of what I was visually doing at college. I’m not personally into S&M, I mean I never smacked the arse of anybody. It's the power and the imagery. There's a certain imagery involved with that which I find magnetic. It's not done viciously, if you read S&M mags and spank mags or anything like that, it's done with an essence of humour... war dress and stuff, that just appeals to my imagination.
You can see how that would feed into something like this:

Jones was invited to design the Korova Milk Bar set for A Clockwork Orange, an offer he turned down sharpish when Kubrick suggested he might like to do it, Big Society style, for nothing. Instead, then, Alex and his Droogs drink surrounded by Jones-ish sculptures, rather than the real deal:

Here's Jones talking about his actual work:

Apparently at some point during the Live At Pompeii movie, Dave Gilmour holds up a photo of one of Jones' sculptures announcing "the Allen Jones project" - I've had no luck finding this online, though...

[Buy: Women and Men: Allen Jones]
[Part of the Illustrated Friends]


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