Remember those Athena prints that brightened up your suburban bedroom in the Eighties?
Things like the one to left? Dreadful, churned out, stylised nonsense that when you look at it now sums up the spirit of the age. Technology, communication, mad hair, Bowie-manque make-up... it's all there. If I found one of these at a jumble sale I think I'd have to buy it. *makes not to go straight onto eBay*
I used to have one in which was depicted in this cartoonish way a large American car was seen from the rear view travelling down some clearly Californian boulevard lined with palm trees. At the wheel was an Eighties fox with angular hair and possibly, saucily, bare shoulders. It was so sunny, so modern, so aspirational. So dated.
Look, at the one in which someone's using a telephone that is attached to something. And it's inexplicably melting. Must be all that hot phone passion. Show that to kids today and they'd have no idea what it all means. It's a museum piece.
What do people put on their walls now? I remember as a student having the one where a couple are hand in hand running over a bridge with the New York skyline behind them. I thought it was incredibly stylish. I also had the one with James Dean in a mack called Boulevard Of Broken Dreams. And then were was the one that all girls had with the bare-chested man holding the baby.
If you went into any one of millions of branches of Athena these and more were at your disposal: the woman and the sailor kissing in Times Square on VE Day or the old women having lunch in a Fifties diner, called Cafe Society IIRC. They were usually American in subject matter. We wanted it then as we want it now. You never had pictures of a chip shop in Rotherham or a couple skulling on Lake Windemere.
What's the trend today? Isn't it time for the long-mooted (at least by A Kitten In A Brandy Glass) Sara Moon revival? Or the faux stained-glass willowy ladies? What about Pierrot?
I saw this interesting programme recently about people who turn out art for mass sale. It's all ghastly. Generic photographs of sunsets over boardwalks or nasty flowers or scenes of French towns. But it sells like hotcakes, adorning the walls of every Barratt home from Kinross to St Ives. It's art for those who need something to fill a gap on a wall but don't really have the time or imagination to think about it. The programme said as much and I don't think that's too harsh a conclusion. It's not in my home and I bet it's not in yours either. We are of course on a higher cultural plane entirely, aren't we. Of course we are.
So what was on your bedroom wall back then? And what's on show today?
