Jones deliberately chose items that would be out of context and referred to them verbally and in writing as “pop art” and not “popular art” as early as 1950. Although the term is usually attributed to curator and art critic Lawrence Alloway in 1955, and he was happy to perpetuate this, it is untrue. She had direct contact with the Independent Group and involved some of them in her pop art exhibition, most especially Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi. Henderson lent items for the event and Paolozzi incorporated some of the elements directly into his future artworks.
As the collector B.C.Bloomfield said: “She was the author of three important books that significantly affected the taste and perception of her contemporaries in ways that more famous artists have never succeeded in doing. The first, The Unsophisticated Arts (1951), opened people’s eyes to the art in everyday life … and that the enjoyment of art was not restricted to an educated few, but was available for the enjoyment of all. It is difficult to over-emphasise her work in this area.”
Peter Blake visited Black Eyes and Lemonade just before he started at the RCA himself. It influenced his views of what art could be and later while studying in the highbrow world of art school he still depicted pop stars, fairground stalls, muscle men and tattooed ladies. He later said: “I have no doubt that discovering Barbara Jones was one of the more important things that happened to me.” Jones had dared to put these things front and centre in Black Eyes and Lemonade and made public many of the ideas that would later become important for the emergence of pop art in Britain.
Buy her artwork at mainstream galleries here.
