Queen on tour

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The Queen: Art and Image

Patricia Andrew catches the first leg of a surprising new touring show

When I heard there was to be an exhibition of portraits of the Queen in celebration of her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, I didn’t expect anything very exciting. Especially when I discovered it was to be shown in the national art galleries and museums of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. I imagined that only very safe and respectful images would be on show.

But what a delightful surprise. Yes, there are photographs by Dorothy Wilding and Cecil Beaton, but also on show are images by Andy Warhol and Gilbert and George, not to mention the notorious cover of The Sex Pistols’ single God Save the Queen.

The selection and hang of this show prompts the viewer to consider image, reality and artifice. The images span the Queen’s reign, providing a unique chance to compare how different artists have chosen to deal with a subject almost too familiar to see afresh. The show also documents the changing attitude of the public and the media towards royalty, as the Queen is increasingly viewed as an individual rather than a symbol, a person who is doing a job.

It is almost a shock to see just how young the Queen was at the start of her reign. She looks very much the society beauty in Dorothy Wilding’s photographs, but quickly becomes weighed down – physically and emotionally – by her crown, orb and sceptre, shown both in film footage of the Coronation and the official Coronation portrait by Cecil Beaton.

The Queen has both benefited and suffered from the growth of media technology. Millions of people bought a television set to watch the Coronation. Today’s paparazzi capture every cough or blow of the nose, every failure to produce a smile. Despite having people around her all the time, the Queen is very much alone, and the isolation of her role comes across in many of these images, from an oil portrait by Pietro Annigoni to a photograph by Cathal McNaughton.

We can also see the pitfalls of courting the media. The 1969television documentary Royal Family was perhaps a mistake, for although it showed a real, genuine family, it didn’t do them any favours, and the Spitting Image puppet was an inevitable result of such an approach.

But back to the rudest image in the show: the notorious cover of The Sex Pistols’ single, God Save the Queen. Banned by the BBC (a move which only made it more of a triumph), its lyrics were equally provocative. The designer, Jamie Reid, appropriated a Cecil Beaton photograph, slashing the band’s name and the title of the single across the Queen’s eyes and mouth. But times change, and even this image has now acquired a degree of respectability, for it hangs in the exhibition as a loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and one of the early events accompanying the show was a lecture by Jamie Reid.

Even if you don’t go to the exhibition, look out for the excellent catalogue by the show’s organizer Paul Moorhouse, augmented with an essay by David Cannadine discussing the historical background, and a timeline with additional images.

The Queen: Art & Image  by Paul Moorhouse with an essay by David Cannadine is published by the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2011.  176 pp.   illustrated in colour and mono. ISBN  978-1-85514-412-5 hardback/978-1-85514-444-6 paperback