His most famous early works feature a few simple objects with heavy black outlines and flat colour - almost a stripped-down style of painting. He dispensed with visible brushwork and distracting detail and simplified the representation of objects in order to make them appear more iconic. During this period he deliberately chose subjects that seemed mundane. This pursuit of simplicity was an influence on Julian Opie and others that would follow him.
His bold and highly colourful images and his association with the leading artists at the RCA resulted in his early work being classified as pop art. However, Caulfield was opposed to this label, instead seeing himself more as a ‘formal’ artist.
Marco Livingstone of London auctioneers Christie’s observed that: “Patrick Caulfield consistently denied that he was a pop artist, pointing to the fact that he deliberately avoided images from contemporary culture and gave preference to standard subjects such as landscapes, interiors and still lifes. His primary inspiration came not from America but from Europe. In spite of Caulfield’s protests, however, it is in this search for an apparent anonymity, as well as in his flirtations with the Kitsch, in his witty allusions to other art and in his sophisticated play with style, that his close links with Pop Art lie.”
Christopher Finch in his book about Caulfield believes his early style was even more ‘pop art’ than some of his fellow students: “What distinguished Caulfield’s paintings when he graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1963 was their concreteness. At this time, most of his contemporaries were – even within a Pop-oriented figurative context – still concerned to a degree with gestural painting . . . Caulfield on the other hand was presenting hard, flat, glossy images that lay blandly on the pictorial surface like butterflies, pinned on a board.”
He was at the very least an influence on others who became known for their pop art style. He died in London in 2005 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Buy his artwork from mainstream galleries here.
