R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007)

Executed in 1964, and unveiled at the artist’s debut American exhibition the following year, Vibration is an early collage dating from a pivotal moment in R.B. Kitaj’s career. Following the success of his first solo show at Marlborough Fine Art in 1963, Kitaj took his place at the centre of London’s thriving art scene, befriending artists on the gallery’s books including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Though often associated with the rise of British Pop Art, the works produced by Kitaj during this period emphasised the wide-ranging visual and intellectual compass that distinguished him from his peers. Layering a variety of found images with deeply-embedded allusions to literature, philosophy and music, Kitaj’s works aimed less at a critique of consumer culture than a rich assimilation of genres, structures and modes of expression. As Marco Livingstone writes, ‘Kitaj’s work revealed the way picture-making could, and should, be a vehicle for intellectual as well as sensual communication. The making of images was viewed [by him] as the construction of a language of signs which could be “read” in the way that words can be read’ (M. Livingstone, David Hockney, London 1981, p. 18). The present work coincides with Kitaj’s series of prints that responded to Jonathan Williams’ poems on the symphonies of Mahler. The word ‘vibration’ might be understood within this context, imposing a notion of swelling orchestral grandeur upon the work’s seemingly random chorus of magazine, archival and utilitarian images.