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Dimensions: 102 by 102cm.; 39¾ by 39¾in.

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Provenance: Marlborough Fine Art, London
Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 11 November 1987, lot 273

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Notes: When looking at Jones' work from the first half of the 1960s what is immediately clear is not only how he constantly seems able to draw a new theme into his work and make it distinct, but how fresh each theme remains. The earliest paintings, such as The Artist Thinks of 1960 or The General and his Girl of 1961 (both Private Collection), fuse the formal problems of abstraction with a variety of other concepts such as the artist's interest in Freudian and Jungian philosophy. This combining of approaches has links to that employed by Hamilton a little earlier, a process that was taken further in the 'bus' paintings and the 'hermaphrodite' paintings of 1962-3. Here Jones explores the links between subject, process and the physical elements of a painting, and we see the introduction of the shaped canvases as a definite attempt to emphasise the physicality of the painting. The paintings which followed, such as Zips and Green Dress (Private Collection) introduce a less abstracted imagery and may relate to the influence of Jones' trip to New York in 1964 and in its harder edges could suggests an awareness of the work of James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann as well as Jones' own interest in the American erotic illustrators of the 1940s. However by retaining the shaped canvases he had been using earlier and by adopting a pseudo-realist manner that treats all elements of the image equally, Jones is able to imbue his paintings with a sense of momentary abstraction which disturbs the reading of the basic erotic imagery that he is using. Zips is an extreme example of this, the inverted T-shape of the canvas offering a narrow glimpse of the back of a figure in a state of semi-undress, although the artist gives us no further clues as to the situation. This concentration on one specific area of the body was one which Jones has retained throughout his career, and would appear in the more overtly fetishistic paintings that would follow, such as Wet Seal (Tate Collection, London).