Allen Jones: Off the Wall

One of the pioneers in the sixties and seventies, with his unconventional, provocative works Allen Jones (*1937 in Southampton) had a major influence on the radical change that took place in modern art. His famous Furniture Sculptures―realistic-looking female figures made of fiberglass and steel―continue to mark the artist’s sensational, spirited rejection of intellectually overburdened abstract art in favor of triviality and the reality of everyday life. The female form, especially the legs, became Jones’s favorite leitmotif, imprinted on the contemporary collective memory and declaring the passion and eroticism between man and woman as an aesthetic principle. Jones succeeded in overcoming the two-dimensional, something his entire oeuvre strives for, through the human body. This publication demonstrates that his work also always questions the lifestyle of today’s society and its penchant for mass consumption. Exhibition schedule: Kunsthalle Tübingen, June 16–September 16, 2012 | UNESCO Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte, Saarbrücken, October 12, 2012–June 16, 2013 | Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, June 29–September 29, 2013