Patrick Procktor, R.A.

Redfern Gallery, London, where purchased by Mrs Lardner, 11th May 1967

London, Redfern Gallery, Patrick Procktor Paintings, May 1967, cat. no.25

Not examined out of frame. Oil on original canvas. There are some very small flecks of paint loss in the purple pigment in the upper left quadrant of the composition. On close examination there are some fine lines of paint cracking at the extreme edges of the lower corners. Traces of surface dirt are scattered across the painting but subject to the above the work appears to be in very good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals three small spots of florescence; one towards the right of the upper horizontal edge and two more at the centre left of the composition, which appear to be surface matter not retouching. The work is float mounted and presented in a square profile painted frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Dr Ian Massey for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work. Dr Ian Massey will curate a major show of work by Patrick Procktor, opening at The Arts University Bournemouth January 2016. If you would like to loan a painting to the exhibition please contact the department directly.

 

The painting formed part of the artist's third one-person show at The Redfern Gallery, London, in May 1967, and is listed in the catalogue as: "The East is Red" finale. (catalogue no. 25)

Its source is a photograph by the Swiss photographer Emil Schulthess (1913-1996) in his documentary book China, published in 1966. Procktor based a number of paintings in his 1967 show on photographs from Schulthess’s book: their subjects included Red Guards, steel workers, and parading Young Pioneers. In some paintings these figures were depicted rather subversively alongside leather boys and The Rolling Stones in drag; the closest Procktor came to Pop, and his most Warholian moment. 

Reviewing the show for Studio International, the critic Robert Hughes wrote: 'When first seen, Patrick Procktor's new paintings seem to exhale a rank, foxy whiff of documentary. Cunning Mr Procktor, with his contemporary relevance, his hints at sociologizing about the disaffections of youth, his Red Guards and leather boys! [...] But Procktor is less fascinated by the immediacy of documentary images than by their thinness, evanescence and actual blankness: the way in which the grey smear on newsprint or the blue ghost on the telly seems to bring us closer to events we do not understand.' (Robert Hughes, ‘Studio International’, May 1967)