Woman, 1965

Allen Jones’ edition Woman (1965) is a key early work in his Pop vocabulary. The image is based on a photograph by Bert Stern of Elizabeth Taylor, but Jones replaces the actress’s face with a large red diamond-shaped form containing two floating pairs of lips. The simplified female body, bold colours and sharply defined forms reflect Jones’ engagement with the visual language of advertising, fashion and popular culture.

The work exemplifies Jones’ interest in the fragmented and idealized female figure. By obscuring the face and isolating the lips as an erotic sign, he transforms the photographic source into a highly stylized image that shifts between portrait, abstraction and commercial imagery. The mandala motif, which recurs in Jones’ work of this period, further adds a symbolic dimension to the image.