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New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Peter Phillips, Who Was at the British Pop Art Frontier, Dies at 86
Peter Phillips, a vanguard figure in the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s who drew from his working-class background in industrial Birmingham to incorporate images of gleaming automotive parts, pinups and film sirens in paintings that captured postwar culture's swirl of sex and consumerism, died on June 23 on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. He was 86. His death was announced by his family. The announcement did not cite a cause. Mr. Phillips had been living in Australia since 2015. Mr. Phillips was part of a new generation of art mavericks who shook up the staid culture of prewar Britain — and the doldrums of the post-World War II recovery years — just as the 1960s were starting to swing. As a student at the Royal College of Art in London in 1961, he found inspiration in the work of American artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, who appropriated everyday objects like American flags and beer cans into their work, blurring the line between high culture and low. He made his mark as one of the future stars featured in the seismic 'Young Contemporaries' exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London's East End, alongside his current and former classmates David Hockney, Allen Jones, R.B. Kitaj and Derek Boshier. 'When I was young, the only way to make a living as an English artist was to either teach or to secure the patronage of a wealthy aristocrat,' Mr. Phillips once said in an interview with Orlebar Brown, a men's wear line with which he collaborated on swimsuits. 'But,' he added, 'London in the late '50s was changing, and a small group of us started to use popular images for our pictures, which was frowned upon at the time. We never called it 'Pop Art'; we were just trying to express who we were.' While slight and boyish in his early years, Mr. Phillips was sometimes called the tough guy of the London Pop Art scene because of his muscular artistic approach. His 1961 canvas 'For Men Only — Starring MM and BB' combined images of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot with those of lingerie models and a snippet of newsprint from the music newspaper Melody Maker that mentions Elvis Presley. Mr. Phillips further announced his arrival with an appearance, along with Mr. Boshier and their fellow artists Pauline Boty and Peter Blake, in 'Pop Goes the Easel,' a 1962 BBC documentary directed by Ken Russell. The film shows Mr. Phillips coolly patrolling his home studio in West London, wearing a dark turtleneck, as a woman plays a pinball machine near his 1961 painting 'The Entertainment Machine,' which features mass-market detritus like piano keys, bullets and targets. Fittingly, his work eventually transitioned from the thin air of high art back to the popular culture from which it emerged. His 1972 painting 'Art-O-Matic Loop Di Loop' — a teenage boy's fantasy come to life, with its Plymouth Duster muscle car, scantily clad temptress and automotive parts, all floating as if in a dream — became the cover image for 'Heartbeat City,' the multiplatinum-selling 1984 album by the Cars. The Strokes used a portion of his 1961 painting 'War/Game,' with its pistols and playing cards, for their 2003 album, 'Room on Fire.' 'I believe in living in the times you are born into,' Mr. Phillips said in a 1963 interview with The Birmingham Post. 'I don't think a painter should isolate himself from the world he is living in — I can't, anyway.' 'Ours is a consumer society,' he added. 'That interests me.' Mr. Phillips was born on May 21, 1939, in Bournville, a village in southwest Birmingham. His father, Reginald, was a carpenter; his mother, Marjorie, worked in a Cadbury's chocolate factory. 'I was born during the war as the bombs were dropping on Birmingham, which they did occasionally, blowing up houses where people lived,' Mr. Phillips once recalled in an interview with the journal Art + Australia. 'So many other people went through it, too,' he added, 'so that as so-called Pop artists, we were on to a lighter subject.' He attended the Birmingham College of Art before enrolling in the Royal College of Art in London in 1959. After the Young Contemporaries show, Mr. Phillips's emergence continued when he was featured at the Paris Biennale in 1963 and, the next year, at the influential 'Nieuwe Realisten' exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. In 1964, he moved to New York, where he showed with the likes of Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist, as well as Roy Lichtenstein, who provided more than just moral support. 'When I first moved to New York, I tried to buy art materials,' he recalled in a 2018 interview with the website Artnet, 'but the store wouldn't take my credit. Roy, who was with me, simply put it on his bill.' Over the years, he lived in Switzerland, the Seychelles, Spain and Costa Rica as he pursued his peripatetic life with his wife, Marion-Claude Phillips-Xylander, a model and fashion designer, whom he married in 1970. Mr. Phillips's approach evolved over the years: He turned to a sleek, airbrushed style that further blurred the line between high art and commercial art, and at times veered into photorealism, as with his sensuous 'Mosaikbild' paintings from the mid-1970s. In the '80s, his work became more conceptual, featuring fantastical shapes and figures. Mr. Phillips's survivors include his daughter Zoe Phillips-Price; a daughter, Tiffany Anderton, from a previous marriage, to Dinah Donald; and five grandchildren. Ms. Phillips died of cancer in 2003. In more recent years, he largely disavowed the approach that made him famous more than a half-century ago for one that was more abstract. 'I definitely don't favor the early work,' he said in a 2019 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald. 'I am excited about some of the newest pieces, possibly because it is what interests me most at the moment.' As for Pop Art, Mr. Phillips found it a rather meaningless term. As he told Orlebar Brown, 'For me, there are really only two forms of art — good and bad.' Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The British universities reliant on Chinese students
Chinese students are still propping up UK universities, despite institutions being urged to wean themselves off money from Beijing. UK universities' financial accounts for 2023-24 show almost a third of the entire income of some institutions comes from Chinese students, Telegraph analysis has found. In total, Chinese students brought in about £5.5 billion in fees across 158 universities last year, about 10 per cent of all university income from tuition fees. The Royal College of Art (RCA) had 1,295 students from China last year, equivalent to 45 per cent of the London university's entire student body. The Telegraph estimates suggest that, when applied to fees, this would be equivalent to £100 million in revenue, or 37 per cent of the college's entire income. Using this same analysis, The Telegraph found that 21 universities are reliant on tuition fees from Chinese students for at least a tenth of their income. It includes four universities that derived more than a fifth of their overall income from Chinese students last year – the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London (UAL), the University of Southampton and Goldsmiths, University of London. In total, 57 UK universities have seen the proportion of their overall income from Chinese students increase over the past few years, or about 37 per cent of institutions analysed by The Telegraph. It comes despite universities being told to reduce their reliance on Chinese students amid growing national security concerns relating to Beijing. The Office for Students (OfS) wrote to a select number of institutions with large proportions of Chinese students in 2023, urging them to draw up contingency plans in case of a sudden interruption to overseas recruitment. The universities watchdog said such interruptions could come from 'a changing geopolitical environment which could cause an immediate and significant impact on income' – widely interpreted as a potential souring of relations with Beijing. The OfS has not disclosed the names of the 23 institutions and refused a request for the information by The Telegraph. Russell Group institutions such as University College London (UCL), Imperial and Leeds are among universities with the largest proportions of Chinese students, according to the latest data from the Higher Education Statistics Authority (Hesa). The OfS said in its annual report on university finances published on Thursday that institutions have been reminded about the impact of 'uncertain geopolitics' on their student intake. It comes after overall foreign student numbers fell by more than a fifth last year, partially due to student visa restrictions brought in by the Tory government. It has led to concerns that universities may scramble to recruit even more students from China this year as they seek to balance the books, and ahead of potential fresh restrictions on other nations. Sir Keir Starmer is reportedly considering applying new restrictions on student visa applications from countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, where students are considered more likely to overstay and claim asylum in the UK. University leaders have warned that the move will worsen a financial crisis across the sector, after The Telegraph revealed on Wednesday that 43 per cent of UK higher education institutions are currently in a deficit. Chinese students made up the largest foreign intake of any country at UK universities until 2022/23, when a surge in students from India saw the country sail into the top position for the first time. But a drop in foreign students across the board last year and a large decline in Indian enrolments have seen the gap between New Delhi and Beijing narrow. HESA data published on Thursday showed there were 107,489 Indian nationals studying in the UK last year, while 98,4000 were from China. Will Dent, head of financial sustainability at the OfS, told The Telegraph in a media briefing on Thursday: 'By far and away, the biggest domiciles for international students [are] India and China. Those geopolitical risks still apply, and we've certainly commented on that in [our] report for the first time. 'We're able, as part of our engagement with individual institutions, to talk to them about their international strategies at a country level… so we can target our interventions and our discussions with institutions about that, and that's something we're doing.' It comes amid mounting concerns over Chinese influence in the UK, brought to a head last month by a diplomatic spat over a Beijing-owned steel plant in Scunthorpe. The UK Government was forced to take control of British Steel's site in Lincolnshire after Chinese owner Jingye threatened to shut down the furnaces, prompting warnings about Beijing's control over key parts of the UK economy. Experts have also accused British officials of being asleep at the wheel over Chinese interference at UK universities. Call for public register of donations The Telegraph has reported numerous instances in recent months of universities stifling criticism of Beijing on campus for fear of jeopardising lucrative Chinese students and contracts with the country's institutions. The chairman of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee last month urged ministers to create a public register of Chinese donations to British universities. Writing in The Telegraph, Lord Beamish, who served as a Labour MP for 23 years and was Gordon Brown's veterans' minister, warned the Government not to be 'naive' about Chinese influence in British academia and emphasised the need for 'transparency'. Both Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, have voiced a willingness to engage more with China despite potential challenges as they view Beijing as a key economic driver for the UK. The Department for Education was approached for comment. A UAL spokesman said: 'We value the diversity of our student body, and our international students form a key part of that. 'While we celebrate our international appeal and community, UAL has been alert to the associated risks of reliance on any particular country for a number of years, and has put in place measures to mitigate these. These measures include prioritising globally inclusive recruitment activities and developing our scholarships to help diversify our recruitment.' A University of Southampton spokesman said: 'Our global reputation means Southampton is a popular destination for students from across the world, with international students playing an important and welcome role in our diverse and vibrant community.' A spokesman for Goldsmiths, University of London, said: 'Goldsmiths is a leading creative and cultural university so it should come as no surprise that students from across the world choose to come here to acquire the skills and conduct research that will lead to successful careers. 'Britain's strength in attracting international students is only now seen as a weakness because of a broken university funding model that needs to be urgently fixed.'
