Best known for his sculptures of women in submissive poses to be used as furniture (hypothetically, mind), Allen Jones is no stranger to kinkiness. In 1975, he was asked to create the poster for ‘Le Maîtresse’, a saucy French film about a dominatrix whose costumes were designed by Karl Lagerfeld. After rediscovering the original in his studio in 2008, Jones decided to repeat and vary the motif in this series of paintings, drawings and prints.
Wearing vertiginous stilettos and skin-tight latex that leaves little to the imagination, Jones’s mistress is an arresting sight. In some pictures, she peeks from behind curtains; in others, she brandishes a riding crop. Exaggerated and stylised, she has about as much to do with real-life femininity as Kim Cattrall in ‘Mannequin’.
And like the furniture sculptures, these pictures are bound to split opinion. Attitudes to the representation of women have certainly changed in the four decades since the original poster was commissioned – should ‘Mistress’ have been dug up for the twenty-first century? Perhaps they’re a critique of the shop-bought nature of our desires (y’know: consumerism, capitalism and all that). Perhaps they’re just libidinal male fantasy. Whatever the case, they’re also bright, playful and deftly composed. Go and make up your own mind.