James Francis Gill, a prominent artist of the Pop Art
movement, is one of the last original Pop Artists still alive today. He is
considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of this popular art
culture in America.
A
new school of artists had emerged on the art scene during the sixties and “Pop
Art” soon became an exciting and recognized form of expression. Life Magazine,
in 1963, did an article featuring James Gill’s ‘Marilyn’. In 1968, an
exhibition known as The São Paulo 9 featured 20 artists who were to become the
“Who’s Who” of the American Pop Art movement. Gill’s work was represented in
this exhibition along with artists Edward Hopper, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns,
Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Tom
Wesselmann. This event, curated by
William Seitz, arguably one of the most important and prestigious international
exhibits of the day, was one of spectacular imagery yet few anticipated it
would be the catalyst for an eruption of fame to follow. Also in 1968, Gill was
commissioned to produce a portrait of Russian Nobel Prize-winning author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn for Time magazine’s September 27, 1968, cover. That painting is now in the permanent
collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
His paintings and drawings were
finding their way into the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian as
well as many West Coast museums. Major
corporations, such as the Mead Corporation, LA Times and Time-Life Corporation,
were also purchasing his paintings for their collections.
His
fame and popularity came from not only painting figures such as Jackie Kennedy,
John F. Kennedy, Cassius Clay and John Wayne, but inventing a new genre where a
person can appreciate the method as well as the subjects he painted which could
be very controversial. Los Angeles Times
art editor, Henry J. Seldis, wrote
in the November 8, 1965, edition of the paper. “Whether he paints on
newspaper or re-creates the grayness of the front page in painting, Gill
manages to create a sense of immediacy that is in no way removed from the aura
of timelessness,” “If we are at first struck by the seeming topicality of his
paintings, we soon find his deliberate generalization of the human features
presented to us, along with his rather devastating comments about military and
political big shots, to be actually timeless and universal in meaning.” His Main topic was social and political
events and daily news coverage of the Vietnam War. Gill responded with a serial
of anti-war paintings featuring civilians and military leaders. In Machines he
formally connects media reporting from the United States with combat conditions
in Vietnam. Gill states: “All people are political prisoners…they are prisoners
of the system into which they are born.”
Over the decade that followed,
The playwright William Inge described the men in these paintings as
“figures of high public reputation, momentarily caught in some nefarious act
that will probably destroy their political or professional reputations…”..
Gill
has never been afraid to use the photograph as source material. In his book on photography and painting,
author Van Deren Coke noted Gill’s use of camera-derived vision, stating, “The
camera creates a new way of seeing and opens to an artist a repertory of
pictorial imagery which is quite unlike that of direct vision.” Coke’s further statement on Gill’s use of
camera-derived vision is also applicable to his present use of the computer and
printer. “By assimilating these
recordings which are the unique property of the machine, Gill has increased the
cryptic emotional appeal of his work.”
His use of the
appropriated, photo-derived image continues, but just as the source material of
magazine reproductions has changed, so too has his ability to compose the
visually rich colors and chance effects produced in the printing process. One of the real strengths of his current
paintings is how they attract the eye.
The rich colors and the appropriated images’ montage effects give these
paintings a “visual snap” as well as the appearance of Pop Art newness -- even
more so than in his earlier Pop Art images that were based exclusively on
subject matter. Gill continues to produce original
paintings as well as several series of Limited Edition prints. He works
exclusively from his own studio in San Angelo, Texas, where he personally
produces all his paintings and prints his own
Limited Edition prints.