Colin Self (British b. 1945)
Colin Self felt a kinship with British Pop artists during the 1960s but is of the opinion that their work was generally a celebration of modern mass culture whereas his own art was much darker in mood. 'Pop artists embraced Materialism', he recalls. I didn't.
As he explained in his statement for the SPaolo biennale in 1971, however, Much of my work has been in connection with the common object, seeing that every object contains as much personality, presence and individuality as a person.
Among the most haunting of his early pictures are those of ordinary armchairs and sofas, sometimes accompanied by figures, drawn with great intensity and often unnerving in their extreme perspectives and spatial distortion. Other series were devoted to the hot dog - that-all-American food which he described in 1965 as being 'as important a 20th century development as (say) a rocker' - to the quintessential modern architecture of cinema interiors, and to the trappings of fashion.
Public collections include
Arts Council of Great Britain, London
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Bibliography
Colin Self's, Colin Self, ICA Gallery, London, 1986; Pop Art: USA-UK, American and British artists of the 60's in the 80's, 1987, exhibition catalogue, p.126.