Billy Apple® New Zealand, 1935-2021
Colour Progressives: Set of 6
Offset lithography on paper
57 x 32 cm (22 1/2 x 12 5/8 inches)
Overall:
150 x 166 cm (59 x 65 3/5 inches)
Further images
Wild Flower Face was exhibited in Billy Apple’s survey exhibition curated by the German director, Nicolaus Schafhausen at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art (2009 Rotterdam). Billy Apple gave an explanation about the work in a conversation published by Nicolas James (2010 London).
The image was made for "an issue of Harper’s Bazaar from April 1968. Marshall McLuhan looked at fashion, The Mirror is the Message. It was an issue devoted to his thinking. I was invited to contribute and did two works for it.
Bill Silano was a photographer used regularly by 'Harper’s Bazaar' and 'Vogue'; he was assigned for me to work with. The first image I settled on was a large lipstick, a black and white photograph. I had Harper’s Bazaar do the full page as split fountain printing using split rollers, which means every issue is slightly different.
There was another full page of a model; it was a lovely photo of a woman with a flower on the side of her head. My instruction to the printer was to cut the colour film separations in half and move the right side of the CMYK tints over three quarters sequentially, so you could see the colour bars. Therefore you’d get multiple eyes and multiple flowers. It’s lovely. Max Factor did an ad campaign and took the same idea and used it. No artist’s rights, copyrights, no fee, nothing. They didn’t use that model but the concept was the same – I couldn’t believe it; they just did it."
Billy also noticed that recently the artist Richard Philipps copied his work without acknowledgment in a painting called Spectrum in 1998. When Bill Silano died in 2014, the editor of The Villager used their Flower woman to illustrate his obituary.
These are the large scale art originals that Billy used for proofing. The offset photo-lithographic works on paper and title page (Master Eagle, Progressive Proof, 16 Feb, 1968) make up the six work framed set.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artistExhibitions
London, The Mayor Gallery, Billy Apple, The Artist Has to Live Like Everybody Else, 12th September - 2nd November 2018London, The Mayor Gallery, Billy Apple® / Braco Dimitrijević: Conceptual Art Pioneers, 22 Mar - 24 May 2024
Literature
Christina Barton, Billy Apple®: Life/Work, Auckland University Press, 2020, ill. p.113Publications
The image was made for "an issue of Harper’s Bazaar from April 1968. Marshall McLuhan looked at fashion, The Mirror is the Message. It was an issue devoted to his thinking. I was invited to contribute and did two works for it.
Bill Silano was a photographer used regularly by 'Harper’s Bazaar' and 'Vogue'; he was assigned for me to work with. The first image I settled on was a large lipstick, a black and white photograph. I had Harper’s Bazaar do the full page as split fountain printing using split rollers, which means every issue is slightly different.
There was another full page of a model; it was a lovely photo of a woman with a flower on the side of her head. My instruction to the printer was to cut the colour film separations in half and move the right side of the CMYK tints over three quarters sequentially, so you could see the colour bars. Therefore you’d get multiple eyes and multiple flowers. It’s lovely. Max Factor did an ad campaign and took the same idea and used it. No artist’s rights, copyrights, no fee, nothing. They didn’t use that model but the concept was the same – I couldn’t believe it; they just did it."
Billy also noticed that recently the artist Richard Philipps copied his work without acknowledgment in a painting called Spectrum in 1998. When Bill Silano died in 2014, the editor of The Villager used their Flower woman to illustrate his obituary.
These are the large scale art originals that Billy used for proofing. The offset photo-lithographic works on paper and title page (Master Eagle, Progressive Proof, 16 Feb, 1968) make up the six work framed set.