Gerald Laing, Lincoln Convertible, 1964

"That November the shiny image of America cracked from side to side. When the president of the richest and most powerful country in the world proved to be vulnerable to the assassin’s bullet, it came as a terrible and fundamental shock, which forced us all to adopt more realistic attitudes towards the world about us. It drove from us our comfortable and wilful naiveté. Henceforward we became less easy to please and to convince, and much harder to placate. This murder fatally eroded the power of authority and opened the door to chaos. It left us to our own devices." – G L

On 22 November 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The President was fatally shot while travelling with his wife Jacqueline, the Texas Governor John Connally, and his wife Nellie. The now famous 8mm film taken quite accidentally by Abraham Zapruder, was quickly disseminated by the media worldwide. The use of this footage marked a defining moment in television history and provided crucial evidence for the police.

'Lincoln Convertible' incorporates two sequential frames of the footage published in Life Magazine, demonstrating how the camera lens and the grainy images it produces, can abstract a tragic and nation-shattering event and detach the observer from it. The straight line along the base of the car divides the content of each frame. The lower half shows the earlier frame where we see the head of the chauffeur and the American flag, slightly to the left of the one above. In the foreground, the legs of Secret Service men running across the grass towards the car as they see something has gone wrong, but by then the car cuts through them in the second frame and we know already it is too late. Above, Jackie Kennedy can be seen in her pink pill-box hat – Laing used coloured dots for the first and only time – President Kennedy leans over, having been hit; in front we see Governor Connolly of Texas and Mrs Connolly beyond him, and then a chauffeur and a bodyguard in the front part of the car. The American flag is seen going off the screen to the right.

Reacting to the news almost immediately, Laing was one of the first artists to respond. Having spent the previous summer in New York the shock of the events contrasted violently with the optimistic and enthusiastic emergent art scene that Laing had encountered. 'Lincoln Convertible' is the only painting identified as having been created at the time of the shooting. Laing’s then dealer in New York Richard Feigen wouldn’t show the painting, deeming his clients to be too raw – indeed, all of America was traumatised by the event –and it was put into storage for about thirty years.

[from the exhibition catalogue of 'Gerald Laing - Myth & Muse: the cult of celebrity', The Fine Art Society, 2024]

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Gerald Laing 1936-2011

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Gerald Laing 1936-2011

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