The Herald - The Herald Magazine
ADD TO 2019 WATCH LIST
PHILIP COLBERT, ARTIST WHAT to make of Philip Colbert? A Perthshire boy, the son of a property developer, he’s now an artist and fashion designer who has collaborated with Rita Ora, Disney and Comme Des Garcons and currently has a show at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
His work is full of Smiley faces and art history references and fried eggs. Oh, and crustaceans (GQ’s editor Dylan Jones calls him the “lobster guy”).
Colbert, meanwhile, says he’s a neo-pop-surrealist and he’s even been described as “the godson of Andy Warhol”. Others might call him a joker whose paintings are art gags at best. It’s possible that he is all of the above, of course. What is interesting is the fact that his art – which is comic and primary-coloured and riffs on the very 1960s utopian belief in consumerism feels of the moment (the “neo” matters) and a kind of rejection of now – has never been more popular.
But that might be just because Colbert’s vision of the world is frantic and busy, but doesn’t feel doomed. When everything else does, maybe that comes as a relief.
Philip Colbert: Hunt Paintings continues at the Saatchi Gallery in London until January 13
PLAYING an amnesiac, stepping into the shoes of Scotland’s national bard and a rumoured role as a villain in the forthcoming Star Wars trilogy are among the many guises we can expect from Jamie Robson in the very near future.