Pauline Boty was a British painter and actress. She was the pioneer of the British Pop art movement. Her rebellious art, in combination with her free-spirited style of life, has made Pauline Boty a forerunner of 1970s feminism.
Background
Boty was born in London, United Kingdom, on March 6, 1938. She was the daughter of middle-class parents. Having three brothers, she was the youngest of four children. Pauline Boty's father was quite strict with her whereas her mother, a frustrated artist, was supportive and understanding.
Education
Pauline Boty won a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art (later Wimbledon College of Arts) in 1954, where she studied in spite of her father's objection. There she earned an Intermediate diploma in lithography in 1956 and also a National Diploma in Design in stained glass in 1958. Supported by her teacher Charles Carey, who encouraged her desire to explore collage techniques, Boty's artworks became more experimental. One of her works was shown at the Young Contemporaries exhibition in 1957.
Pauline Boty attended the Royal College of Art between 1958 and 1961. She was one of the leading students in her class. In 1959 three of her paintings were selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition and, in the year 1960, her stained glass work was included in the exhibition of Modern Stained Glass, which was organized by the Arts Council. During her studies she also befriended other emerging Pop artists, including Peter Phillips, David Hockney, Derek Boshier and Peter Blake.
At the Royal College of Art, Pauline Boty led an active life. She managed to combine various activities: singing, dancing, and publishing her poetry in an alternative student magazine. In addition, she joined a film society where her interest in European new wave cinema was developed. Pauline Boty was also an active member of Anti-Ugly Action. It was a group of college students, who were involved in the stained glass, and later architecture, courses, protesting against new British architecture that they considered hideous and low-quality.
Boty became widely known in London during the 1960s, thanks to her good looks and bit parts on TV, as well as for her artworks. She was able to develop a personal Pop style. Her first group show, Blake, Boty, Porter, Reeve, took place in November 1961 at A.I.A. gallery in London, where she presented twenty collages, including Is it a bird, is it a plane? and a rose is a rose is a rose. It was one of the first British Pop art shows. In her works, she incorporated images of celebrities into her paintings and also tried to explore female sexuality.
On March 22, 1962, Ken Russell's BBC Monitor documentary film Pop Goes the Easel was aired, in which Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips were featured. Boty's appearance in the film marked the beginning of her brief acting career. Her other projects included Armchair Theatre play for ITV ("North City Traffic Straight Ahead", 1962) and an episode of the BBC series Maigret ("Peter the Lett", 1963). Pauline Boty also played at theatres, for instance, she appeared in Frank Hilton's comedy Day of the Prince at the Royal Court, and in Riccardo Aragno's (from the novel by Anthony Powell) Afternoon Men at the New Arts Theatre. However, acting distracted her from painting, which was her priority.
Her collages and large canvases were exhibited in a number of group shows, and her first solo exhibition was held at the Grabowski Gallery in 1963, which was a success. Nevertheless, Pauline Boty still took on additional acting jobs. From 1963 to 1964 she was a presenter on the radio programme Public Ear, and the following year she got the role of "the seductive Maria" in a BBC serial.
Over the course of her career, her paintings became more overtly critical. Her work Countdown to Violence depicted a number of sorrowful current events, including the Birmingham riot of 1963, the Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War. Boty's painting Cuba Si (1963) depicted the Cuban revolution. Her last known artwork, BUM, was commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for Oh, Calcutta! and it was completed in 1966.
In June 1963 Pauline Boty married Clive Goodwin, a literary agent, ten days after they first met. He supported Boty to include political content in her artworks. In June 1965 Boty became pregnant. During her pregnancy she was diagnosed with cancer. However, she refused the idea of an abortion and refused to receive chemotherapy treatment that might have harmed her future baby. To relieve the pain of her terminal condition, Pauline Boty smoked marijuana. She finally gave birth to her daughter, Katy (later Boty) Goodwin, in February 1966.