The Sixties Britain and France, 1962-1973. The Utopian Years

by Mellor, David Alan; Gervereau, Laurent

• ISBN13: 9780856674679
• ISBN10: 0856674672
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-19
• Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers

Summary

In that exciting decade, Britain and France exchanged ideas but devised their own powerful and different responses to the aspirations of sixties' youth - in painting, photography, graphic art, film, posters, fashion, music, architecture and interior design, television, revolution and protest. The striking visual momentos of these years of unprecedented prosperity and consumerism have become almost mythical - from images of the Beatles, the Who and Johnny Halliday, to Pop and Op Art, students' revolts and pleas to make peace and love, mini-skirts and fshion magazines, happenings, swinging London and Carnaby Street, to psychedelic fantasies, material abundance, outrage and scandal. British Pop music flooded across the world, Quant invented the mini-skirt which was popularised in France by Courreges and Ungaro, CND posters, drawings from Steadman and, in France, comic strips perpetrated protest and satire. The New Wave films of Godard and Truffaut were admired in Britain, and television became central in the family life of both nations. The collection of pictures here shows the work of the most famous artists and designers - Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Allen Jones, Pauline Boty and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as Rancillac, Erro, Cueco and Martial Raysse - and of such photographers as Robert Whitaker, Lewis Morley, David Bailey and Sarah Moon. At the end of the twentieth century, this book examines the effects of the revolution in behaviour and politics brought about in the sixties, as well as generating astonishment, gaiety, the pleasure of discovery and the warmth of memory. This book accompanied the exhibition 'Les Sixties' at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

Author Biography

David Alan Mellor is Reader in History of Art at the University of Sussex.

Laurent Gervereau is Curator of the Musee d'Histoire Contemporaine, Paris.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Did the Sixties really happen?	7	(5)
`Tomorrow starts Now': Utopian visual culture in Britain	12	(18)
David Alan Mellor
Tomorrow you'll all be artists: The art scene in France, 1960-73	30	(26)
Laurence Bertrand Dorleac
Life in the image	56	(18)
Laurent Gervereau
Daughters of Albion: Greer, sex and the Sixties	74	(12)
Sarah Wilson
Beatlemania	86	(10)
Perverse Pop: From Joe Meek to David Bowie	96	(8)
Andy Medhurst
King's Road to Courreges: Fashion and fashion photography	104	(12)
Philippe Garner
Architecture and design	116	(8)
Gerard Monnier
The cult of creativity: Young British architects	124	(8)
Ian Jeffrey
The dawn of a revolution: Comic strip and newspaper cartoons	132	(18)
Thierry Groensteen
Jean-Pierre Mercier
The New Wave, or the power of the ephemeral	150	(12)
Antoine de Baecque
Dedicated follower of fashion: British cinema in the Sixties	162	(6)
Philip Dodd
Vicky Allan
The television revolution in Britain	168	(10)
Stuart Laing
French television	178	(8)
Marie-Francoise Levy
A new domestic landscape: British interior design, 1960-73	186	(8)
Barry Curtis
Psychedelic living	194	(16)
The Sixties on both sides of the Channel	210	(10)
Michel Winock
Pop music and protest in France	220	(10)
Marianne Amar
`Something in the air': Youth culture and subcultural style in Britain	230	(10)
Bill Osgerby
Photography in France: Forms of photographic expression	240	(14)
Therese Blondet-Bisch
Moving times -- New words -- Dead clocks: Sigma, London counter-culture	254	(8)
Andrew Wilson
Protest movements of the `1968 years' in France	262	(12)
Genevieve Dreyfus-Armand
Michelle Zancarini-Fournel
A chronology: The Sixties in Britain and France, 1962-73	274
David Alan Mellor
Laurence Bertrand Dorleac