*This title is on pre-sale. Ships summer 2024.
Hardcover, cloth-bound, 128 pages
7.25 in. x 10 in. | 18.415 cm. x 25.4 cm
Edited by Leslie Jones
“It was drummed into our heads that we had to take a drawing book everywhere,” recounts Derek Boshier about his early art school days. Six decades later, drawing continues to be at the core of the artist’s practice, which includes painting, printmaking, film and video, as well as graphic design and mail art. For Boshier, drawing is not simply a means to an end (like a preparatory sketch); it is a process through which he engages with and responds to life and media culture in particular. Using pencil, pen and ink, and black acrylic (sometimes with collage) Boshier reconfigures found imagery in a manner uniquely his own—rooted in the expressive power of line—to address the social and political issues of the day. The book Derek Boshier Drawings will trace Boshier’s lifetime of drawing, from his involvement with British Pop in the 1960s to the inky satirical depictions of the 80s to the recent graphite pastiches that integrate imagery from art history and mainstream media. His use of recurring imagery—such as the falling man, jigsaw figure, and profile head—will also be explored in their varying contexts. Attention will also be given to Boshier’s drawings for album art, songbooks, and mail art that points to his expansive approach to the medium, as well as the populist spirit that characterizes his work overall. The book will be the first since 1982 devoted to Boshier’s drawings and will include a comprehensive essay by Leslie Jones, independent art historian and former Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Design by Ella Gold
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The practice of Los Angeles-based English artist Derek Boshier (b. 1937, Portsmouth, UK) is characterized by astute and wry observations of popular culture. Among the first exponents of British Pop Art, Boshier is distinguished from contemporaries (including Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, and Pauline Boty) by his trademark brand of satirical social commentary.
Together with fellow Royal College of Art students David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, and RB Kitaj, he participated in the landmark 1962 Young Contemporaries exhibition that brought Pop Art to the attention of the wider public. The artist works in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture. In the 1970s, Boshier expanded from painting to photography, film, video, assemblage, and installation, yet he returned to painting by decade's end. Over the years, he has also embraced collaboration, working extensively with David Bowie and the Clash, among others.
Boshier’s work was the subject of the 2023 retrospective Derek Boshier: Reinventor at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the 2015 monograph Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry, published by Thames & Hudson. It has also been featured in many museum exhibitions, including at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Britain and British Museum, London; Brooklyn Museum, New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Boshier was the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship of the RCA in 2016, as well as receiving the Guggenheim fellowship and NEA award for the arts. He is also an accomplished teacher and lecturer.
