Wings of Love (painting)

Wings of Love (c.1972) is a painting by Stephen Pearson.[1] The painting depicts a muscular naked man who is delivered to a woman on the wing-tip of a gigantic swan in a scene.[2] The swan was "cemented in the imagination as a creature of romance for a whole generation of impressionable working class suburban kids" and the anthropomorphic projection wasn't entirely random.[3] Swans are believed to take a mate for life and the graceful white birds might symbolise monogamous felicity.[3]

Reproduction

After World War II, shops such as Woolworths sold large numbers of colourful and sentimental or 'exotic' prints.[4] As a commercially reproduced picture, ‘Wings of Love’ was sold ready-framed in many high street outlets, and became a best-selling image in the early 70s. By 1992, 2.5 million copies of 'Wings of Love' had been sold with many sales outside of the UK.[5][6]

The most notable appearance of ‘Wings of Love’ was in a mural commissioned for a wall beside one of Saddam Hussein's many swimming pools in his palace.[7] The mural was recreated in the form of a projection on the wall of the Platform Arts Gallery in Belfast, in February 2009. In the exhibition ‘Taste: The New Religion’, at Manchester's Cornerhouse Arts Centre, ‘Wings of Love’ finds a place beside pictures by Vladimir Tretchikoff, John Lynch and Peter Lightfoot as an example of the independent course of popular taste. Andrea Patrick Byrne, an award-winning London based artist, references ‘Wings of Love’ in her 2014 audiovisual self-portrait ‘Girlhood’.[8]

The print house Athena owed much of its resurgence in 1980s to selling fantasy-world style of kitsch prints such as Unicorn Princess, Beach Lovers and A Dolphin Moon that were inspired by Stephen Pearson.[9] ‘Wings of Love’ was immortalised on the Ogdens' wall in Coronation Street[10] and the painting also achieved cult status by its appearance in Mike Leigh's 1977 film Abigail's Party.[11] In the film, the painting provokes a heated debate on the nature of "erotic art", culminating in Alison Steadman's husband dropping dead of a heart attack. The Bob Hoskins film Mona Lisa also features the ‘Wings of Love’ as part of recurring references to surrealism.[12]

Artist

Stephen Pearson was born in Yorkshire and studied painting in London and the North, but referred to himself as self-taught. Pearson listed influences as Caravaggio, Turner, and other artists concerned with representation of light in its most dramatic forms. Among contemporary painters, he was most influenced by the surrealists, but ultimately rejected the negative content of much of their work and focused instead on romantic fantasies. Pearson worked in oils and pastels and occasionally watercolours and gouache to create “quasi-pornographic, quasi-religious dreamscapes.”[13] Pearson exhibited in London and in the provincial cities and gained a world-wide reputation from the widespread reproduction of his work.[14] Stephen Pearson died in March 2003.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "Stephen Pearson - Wings of Love".
  2. ↑ "It isn't bad taste. It's a pivotal work of transgressive irony; Michael Bracewell on an exhibition which challenges all your values'". The Guardian (London). November 13, 1999.
  3. 1 2 Allen, Jeremy (November 27, 2014). "Swan Songs: Baxter Dury Interviewed". The Quietus.
  4. ↑ McMillan, Michael (2009). The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home.
  5. ↑ Whitford, Frank (October 11, 1992). "'Sunday At home with the master'". The Sunday Times (London).
  6. ↑ ""HOMESTYLE: HOW'S IT HANGIN'?; THESE DAYS WE CHANGE THE ART ON OUR WALLS AS FREQUENTLY AS OUR."". Sunday Mirror. January 28, 2001. You can still buy it and in Scandinavia it's still on their bestseller list. When it was first available in 1972, its popularity was due to its encapsulation of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius - freedom. Plus it's a bit rude.
  7. ↑ Sadiq, Rashida (2011). "Review: Saddam's Babylon". Super Massive Black Hole Magazine (8).
  8. ↑ http://www.beesofrita.com/audiovisual-self-portrait/. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. ↑ "Weekend: WONDERWALLS: There was the tennis girl, that man and baby, the icy, airbrushed women with electric blue eye shadow and glossy red lips. Think of the pictures that bedecked the bedrooms of teenagers 20 years ago and one name springs to mind: Athena. As the 1980s enjoy a revival, Lindsay Baker looks back at the poster company that became a phenomenon". The Guardian (London). November 10, 2001.
  10. ↑ ""Coming soon to a wall near you; Charles Saatchi reckons Wayne Hemingway's collection of kitsch art is 'the right stuff'. NICK CURTIS says the time is ripe for the reinvention of tat."". The Evening Standard (London). November 8, 2000.
  11. ↑ Sandbrook, Dominic (2012). Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979. Penguin.
  12. ↑ Middleton, Francesca (2014). ""A Queen of Hearts and a White Rabbit: Storytelling Traditions, Lacunae and Otherness in Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa (1986)."". Studies in European Cinema. 11 (3).
  13. ↑ ""Coming soon to a wall near you"". The Evening Standard (London). November 8, 2000.
  14. ↑ "stephen pearson". Thecontainergallery.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-25.
  15. ↑ "Obituary". Art Business News. 30 (6): 14. June 2003.
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