Abstract

REVIEWS 215 with its exploration of Private View,a ‘lavish hardback’ where images of artists (often at work or sitting close to it) took the centre-spread, so to speak, over words. Celebrity spoke to celebrity in the construction and publication of such a book: Anthony Snowdon, married to Princess Margaret, took striking and nuanced photographers of artists like Eliza- beth Frink, Frank Auerbach, Bridget Riley and Frank Bowling, creating a new kind of celeb- rity artist not so unlike how commercial galleries promote their clients today. Much like his early photography, Russell’s directorial work for Monitor also captured and shaped this emerging metropolitan artistic scene. Like Snowdon’s later coffee-table art book, Russell’s docu-film, Pop Goes the Easel (1962), turned the lens on the artists themselves, more so than their art (Chapter 1, 23–57). Thus we have British Pop artist Peter Blake dream- ing of Bardot and other such starlets; Peter Philips suggestively pointing a toy gun at a blonde in his flat; Derek Boshier doing the twist in a crowded basement off what looks like Isling- ton’s Chapel Market and Pauline Boty miming to Shirley Temple in a top hat. Tickner notes that the flat and colourful planes of these