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Regent Street London Routemaster Bus sign c. 1970 transport poster

c. 1970

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To see our other posters and views of London, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message if you cannot find the vi...

Wonderful and very rare poster created in 1971 for London Transport. This charming design by the great British poster designer Abram Games uses London landmarks and the London Transp...

This large Allen Jones lithograph is printed exuberantly in primary colors. A swath of bright red brushstrokes represents the side of a bus. In the upper left, small windows reveal the passengers: a woman’s face is cut off above her vampy red lips, and a blue-haired man’s face is hidden. Royal blue fills the upper right corner of the composition, giving the impression of looking up at a passing bus against the cloudless sky. One can imagine Jones was thinking of the iconic red double decker bus the AEC Routemaster, first introduced in London in 1954. In the 1960s buses were a living symbol of familiar and new technology coexisting: as David Bucken put it, “In and around London a midpoint change on a journey might involve alighting from an RT bus, of which production had started just prior to World War II, and getting on one of the sexy new Routemasters.” In the artist’s words: “The whole problem as a figurative artist was that it was going against the main march of modernism, which was towards abstraction. But here was a way of making the subject you were painting the same as the object you were painting on. By making the canvas a rhomboid, and putting little wheels on it, you have a schematic version of a vehicle, in this case a London bus.” Jones plays with the space between abstraction and figuration: windowed passengers, elaborated with just a few lines and placed adjacent to a weighty red ground of brushstrokes, easily convey the form of a bus, yet the print also conveys Jones’ visceral, painterly delight in color play. Four color lithograph on wove paper Paper 28.5 x 42.5 / 72.4 X 108 cm Wood frame 31 x 46 x 2 in. / 78.75 x 117 x 5 cm with 1 in. moulding Signed by the artist lower right in pencil, labeled Trial Proof lower left in pencil. Edition 20. Printed at Tamarind Los Angeles with Clifford Smith...