Amazon.co.uk: Just Above the Mantelpiece: Mass-market Masterpieces: Wayne Hemmingway: Books

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Synopsis
Celebragtes the mass-produced art that began to decorate thousands of homes from the late 1950s. Now highly collectable, this art has found new acclaim in the world of fashion, fine art and photography.

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

70s Kitch Art Revisted, 27 Nov 2001

By A Customer

The author grew up in Morcambe in where his grandmother was a great art collector. She did not buy from Sothebys or Christies but from the Freemans and Littlewoods catalogues and Argos. This is a collection of the mass market art prints that were often reviled by the critics but bought by the public in their millions. Hemmingway's collection is fascinating and will bring back memories for those who grew up in suburbia in the 1970s and 1980s. He includes an excellent section on Vladimir Tretchinkoff the first mass market artist in the 1960s. Themes include running horses and scary big-eyed children. Includes the famous "Wings of Love" by Stephen Pearson (a surreal depiction of a naked couple on a concrete beach being engulfed by a swan) which featured on many walls including the one in Mike Leigh's Abigail's party. The final chapter includes a section on the garish air-brushed prints from Athena which typified the 1980s.

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Wide-eyed kitsch, 28 Sep 2007

By	Robin Benson - See all my reviews

You'll be wide-eyed with amazement at the comprehensiveness of Wayne Hemingway's book. Page after page of real pop art. This stuff sold in the millions and some of it probably still is. Mainly seen from a British and Continental perspective, so no poker playing dogs by CM Coolidge, the book rightly kicks off in the fifties with the king of kitsch Vladimir Tretchikoff and his painted ladies and then meanders through crying boys, street urchins, doe-eyed pets and ends with what I thought was nice touch, the British poster company Athena in the late eighties.

Despite the fact that these paintings were very popular with the working class as far as I can see very few of the artists are particularly good. Being popular does not equate with professionalism for this market segment. None of them seem to have the draughtsmanship of, for example, Norman Rockwell or Charles Wysocki. These pop art reproductions probably sold in their millions because they displayed the right sort of sentimental image and were pre-framed and cheap, obviously the perfect buy.

The book is a pop art production itself I thought. Many of the pages use eighties wallpaper as a background for the text a