LONDON.- On Friday 11th January 2019,
Gazelli Art House London is opening the Robert Fraser's Groovy Arts Club Band exhibition celebrating Pop Art.
Inspired by the esteemed London art dealer, the group show brings together Clive Barker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, Brian Clarke, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Richard Hamilton, Keith Haring, Jann Haworth, Bridget Riley, Ed Ruscha and Colin Self thirteen pop artists Fraser championed.
Great exhibitions continue to star major pop artists nationally and internationally. The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is currently celebrating Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pioneering prodigy of the 1980s downtown New York art scene. An Andy Warhol retrospective opened at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in November 2018. Warhol can also be found alongside the godfather of Pop Art, Eduardo Paolozzi, at the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art in the exhibition I want to be a machine. From 14th February 2019, Paolozzi, alongside Richard Hamilton, will be included in Whitechapel Gallerys exhibition Is This Tomorrow. Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Pick of the Pops, launching February 2019 at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, will showcase famous pop artists from their renowned collection. In summer 2019, Tate Liverpool will hold the UKs first retrospective of Keith Haring, the artist and political activist whose iconic imagery is synonymous with the legendary New York art scene of the early 1980s taking inspiration from Street and Pop Art. This list is non-exhaustive.
Half a century has passed yet we are still fascinated by pop artists and Pop Art, perhaps more than any other art movement. Why?
We are celebrating Frasers legacy with an exhibition dedicated to Pop Art and the artists he championed. Bringing the rock n roll glamour to the gallery space, these works on display, along with the special edition vinyl album, will transport the viewer back to the Swinging Sixties, full of charisma and excitement explained Mila Askarova, founder of Gazelli Art House and co-curator of the exhibition.
A fourteen songs one for each artist in the show and one for Fraser eponym album has been written by David Stephenson to accompany Gazelli Art House exhibition. Altogether they emphasise the relationship between art and music and how Robert Fraser, a.k.a Groovy Bob, was a flamboyant bridge between the worlds of contemporary art and rock music. Robert Fraser's Groovy Arts Club Band is an ode to Pop Art and the Swinging Sixties...
Could it be that we are nostalgic of this age of new modernity and fun-loving hedonism flourishing in art and music? That we keep admiring the ones who embodied this period because we are dreaming of their lives of "rock n roll glamour, charisma and excitement"?