Patrick Caulfield 1936-2005
Document, 2002
acrylic on canvas
42 by 36 inches
signed, titled and dated on artist's labels verso

Provenance
The Artist
Waddington Galleries, London

Exhibited
London, Waddington Galleries, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings and Drawings 1985-2002, 27 November - 21 December 2002, ex catalogue

Literature
Marco Livingstone, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, illus colour p243



The mysterious document of the title sits in front of the iconic Arne Jakobsen chair and a rather more prosaic office pen. Caulfield was throughout his career concerned with pictorial illusions and the language of painting. His instantly recognisable outlined images of the 1960s, were in later paintings combined with areas of high realism, gestural marks and thickly impastoed paint, as here in the buttons of the chair. While associated with Pop art, Caulfield himself denied an interest in popular culture, preferring instead to make timeless pictures that reconfigured such traditional subjects as interiors and still-lives. His paintings are marked by a graphic elegance, a finely tuned colour sense and a sometimes melancholy air.