Small Window 1969

This is 'Small Window' by Patrick Caulfield, who was working in Britain in the latter half of the twentieth century. Caulfield is best known for paintings like this, in which he uses flat, bold colours contained within thick black outlines. This combination of abstraction with a cartoon-like style has led to Caulfield's work often being associated with the Pop Art movement. But his work differs from that of his American peers. Caulfield's paintings are often more muted in tone, and the focus is less on the mass media and more on an exploration of art's most fundamental elements, such as line and colour. Caulfield taught for many years, and his artistic project can be seen as a deeply pedagogical one. His paintings ask us to look closely at the formal properties of art and to question the social institutions that give art its meaning. We can better understand Caulfield's aims by looking at the wider history of art education and asking what function art can perform within a rapidly changing society.