From subject to object: unpublished drawings by Allen Jones and his relationship with Spanish art

Abstract

The pop movement changed the course of recent art history. Its frivolous take on things
triggered what would end up being referred to as postmodernism. Allen Jones (Southampton, 1937)
was in part responsible for this, he was one of the great exponents of British art during the second half
of the 20th century. Formed at the Royal College of Art of London, from where he was expelled due to
his rebel behavior.
In this article we will develop part of the interests that emerge in his work when focusing on some
drawings made during the 60´s in different diaries and notebooks. These drawings, rescue from eleven
diaries from the Tate Britain archive, have never been published before. Many of them are preparatory
sketches for works that were then known worldwide and now, for the first time, we have the opportunity
to know them. Through these unpublished drawings we will contextualize the special importance of
the relationship between object and subject in Allen Jones´s work. For this, we will rely on some
drawings that Jones makes on a painting of Margarita of Austria by Velázquez. Finally, we will stress
the importance of Jones´s figure for the member of the New Spanish Figuration in the 70´s.