Caroline Coon: Paradise Beach

Caroline Coon

Paradise Beach, 1981

Oil on canvas

106.5 x 91cm (41 7/8 x 35 7/8in)
Framed: 110.1 x 95.1cm (43 3/8 x 37 1/2in)

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“I consider these paintings to be manifestos”

 

Coon’s beach scenes showcase her use of vibrant colour and psychedelic detail, but also a strong conceptual framework. Inspired by ideas of feminist liberation, these paintings explicitly challenge patriarchal values and conventions of gender and sexuality. We see nudes floating in the cerulean blue water, Adonis-like figures posing on Saint Lucia’s Paradise Beach (1981), and athletes cooling off in the ocean. The works are fundamentally shaped by the artist’s experience, coming of age at a time when neither the great woman artist nor female libido were acknowledged.

Caroline Coon, In the Studio

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Caroline Coon

Luke Massey – Model, 1982–84

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Caroline Coon

Paul Murray – Muse, 1982

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Set against a star-filled night sky, the artist presents a nude portrait of model and long-standing friend, Luke Massey. Illuminated by the light of the moon, which falls like a catwalk over the ocean, he holds a bunch of white calla lilies as a symbol of love and purity. Discussing her practice, the artist writes: “My love of watching people propels them into my paintings - strangers, friends, lovers and composites of them all. I paint people into my paintings to convince you that they are real, that I saw it happen – and then the paintings become inevitable recreations of life.”

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Caroline Coon

Adonis Beach, 1999

Oil on canvas

122 x 153cm (48 1/8 x 60 1/4in)
Framed: 125.6 x 156.1cm (49 1/2 x 61 1/2in)

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"I love the male physical form, and I protest the way male nudity is so often hidden from us. [...] With my male nudes, I hope to redress the balance. The male nude narrative, or story, in these beach themed paintings is definite, deliberate, obviously telling about human sexuality. A male nude painted by a woman artist can be particularly telling about female sexuality. I put him there for his pleasure, for sure. But more particularly I put him there for the delectation of the female gaze, for her pleasure.”

 

- Caroline Coon

Caroline Coon

See, He is Absolutely Gorgeous!, 2002

Oil on canvas

153 x 122cm (60 1/4 x 48 1/8in)
Framed: 156.1 x 125.6cm (61 1/2 x 49 1/2in)

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“Pleasure is political”

 

A towel held open to reveal his naked body, the central figure in See, He is Absolutely Gorgeous! (2002) recalls a neoclassical statue, which has sprung to life. Coon’s muse is not a god, however, but a sensual possibility – fixed in paint “to convince you that he is real”. The woman who admires him is a clear statement from the artist, because “pleasure is political,” she contends. This contemporary Venus “has earned her freedom and independence. She is reasonably safe alone on the beach, she can gaze at women and men for the sake of their youth and beauty.” Only the storm clouds and plumes of smoke from a volcano in the background suggest that this bucolic pastoral scene can be easily shattered and hard-won freedoms lost.

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The artist’s range of visual references further defamiliarise her imagery, underlining that what we perceive as natural is often loaded with ideological significance. Coon explains that for her, “using aesthetics from distant cultures is a way to avoid the people in my paintings from being overcome by a clichéd veneer of contemporary [life].” K.E.R.S (2015), for instance, shows four athletes in the ocean, splashing about semi-nude after a match. Their tattoos reference anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s idea that tribal communities decorate their skin as a way of distinguishing themselves from nature. The figures’ physicality adds a homosexual spark whilst pointing to the erotic gaze – realities typically ignored in discourses around watching and playing sport.

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“My paintings talk to the position of women in society - whatever our class or colour – what we are allowed to see or do or say, and what it means to interpret the world from a female point of view.” 

 

Caroline Coon’s ‘The Beach’ is one of three chalk drawings, inspired by Robert Capa’s 1948 photograph of Pablo Picasso and his lover Françoise Gilot in Golfe-Juan, France. In Capa’s image, traditional gender roles play out as Picasso stands behind Gilot in a protective stance – holding a large umbrella over her head. Here, Coon replaces the famous artist with a second nude woman. Coon’s subjects are shaded in vibrant hues of pink, yellow and green, evoking the sense they are at one with the natural landscape. “For me”, Coon explains, “the beach represents a paradise, where land meets and sea, where naked flesh touches air and water and all life on Earth is one (and skin becomes land as ‘skinscape’)”.

Recent Institutional & Exhibition Highlights

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Photo by John O’Rourke

Artist Biography

Caroline Coon was born in London in 1945, where she lives and works today. A trailblazer of London’s countercultural movement, Coon has campaigned for women’s rights since the 1960s; co-founded Release in 1967, a legal-advice agency for young people charged with the possession of drugs that continues today; and was central to London’s nascent punk scene, managing The Clash from 1978 to 1980. Coon studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in the mid-1960s, opting for a medium and subject deemed unfashionable at the time – figurative painting. Her distinctive style is characterised by crisp-edged lines, bright colours and hyperrealism redolent of Paul Cadmus and Tamara de Lempicka.

 

In 2018, at the age of 73, Coon had her first ever solo show at The Gallery Liverpool titled: ‘The Great Offender'. This was followed by a solo exhibition at TRAMPS in London (2019) curated by Peter Doig and Parinaz Magadassi. Her work recently featured in the group exhibition ‘Mixing It Up: Painting Today’ at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021) and is also currently highlighted in ‘Women in Revolt!' at Tate Britain, London. Two paintings by Coon were recently added to the permanent collection of Tate, London.

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Caroline Coon

Inspired by feminism and the politics of sexual liberation, Caroline Coon’s unique paintings contest binary notions of gender and oppressive patriarchal values. Her works cover a variety of subjects including...

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