Allen Jones, R.A. (b. 1937)

Marco Livingstone comments 'It is not surprising to find in Nietzsche's Zarathustra the image of the tightrope walker as mankind balanced over an abyss; the "dangerous going-across" is a journey which every person must make. The walking of a tightrope is a metaphor also in a more purely formal sense, in that Hot Wire is concerned with various aspects of pictorial balance: weight and counter-weight; light and dark; warm and cool colours; and diagonal lines of force played against a vertical/horizontal grid. Every aspect of the picture is related to notions of equilibrium. An image is never used arbitrarily by Jones: its presence is always supportive of the pictorial and philosophical content of the painting' (see exhibition catalogue, Allen Jones, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1979, no. 38).