Christmas Card, 1956
McBEAN, Angus (McBean began his career in the theatre as mask-maker and scenery designer before turning to full-time theatre photography. McBean is renowned for his theatrical and inventive photography of the 1930s and 1940s. Imitated throughout his career, his influence especially in advertising is still prominent today.
In 1935 he opened his own studio; and his prominent style was soon being published in glossy magazines. The Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 was an influence on McBean's theatrical portraits. After the Second World War he opened a larger studio in Covent Garden, and in the 1940s and 1950s was inundated with commissions from theatre companies. In the 1960s McBean photographed the Beatles for their first album.)
Angus McBean produced self-portrait Christmas cards to send out to friends and family almost every year from 1933 until 1985. The cards document changing contemporary taste and the photographer’s own ageing appearance. They are highly personal, witty and show his endless capacity for technical invention. In his unpublished autobiography Look Back In Angus, McBean writes "I have used almost every known photographic device to bend the intractable medium to my will, and many times it has been multiple exposure". This photograph features three fashion dolls wearing clothes in the style of the legendary French designer Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a McBean figure and two figures of McBean’s partner David Ball. They are all passengers on the S.S. Angus. The striped theme refers to a famous decorative scheme created by McBean for the Marquee room at the Academy Cinema, Oxford Street, in 1954.
Creation/Production
Date: 1956
Acquisition
Gift, 7/3/2007
Given by Kingsley Atkinson
Measurements
h(cm) image size:16.8
h(cm)
w(cm) image size:23.8
w(cm)
h(cm) primary support:16.9
h(cm)
w(cm) primary support:24
w(cm)
h(cm) mount:19
h(cm)
w(cm) mount:51.9
w(cm)
Techniques
photographic print on card
gelatin silver print
