Douglas Arthur Peter Field (6 August 1945 – 7 March 2021
Duggiefields.com), known as Duggie Fields, was a British artist who resided in

Earls Court Earl's Court is a district of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the ...

, London.

Early life

Fields was born in

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. His parents were Henry Field and his wife Edna (née Rosenthal). He grew up in the garrison town of

Tidworth Tidworth is a garrison town and civil parish in south-east Wiltshire, England, on the eastern edge of Salisbury Plain. Lying on both sides of the A338 about north of the A303 primary route, the town is approximately west of Andover, south ...

where his father owned a pharmacy, and later in

Borehamwood Borehamwood (, historically also Boreham Wood) is a town in southern Hertfordshire, England, from Charing Cross. Borehamwood has a population of 31,074, and is within the London commuter belt. The town's film and TV studios are commonly know ...

, Hertfordshire. He first came to notice in 1958, when he was 14, in the Summer Exhibition at the Bladon Gallery, Hurstbourne Tarrant, while he was attending the nearby Andover Grammar School. Fields briefly studied architecture at

Regent Street Polytechnic The University of Westminster is a public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first polytechnic to open in London. The Polytechnic formally received a Royal charter in Aug ...

before studying at the

Chelsea School of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educat ...

for four years from 1964. He left with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States, in 1968.

Career

As a student, Fields' work progressed through minimal, conceptual and constructivist phases to a more hard-edged post-Pop figuration. His main influences were at that time

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

, Mondrian and comic books, with a special regard for those worked on by Stan Lee. In 1968, Fields went to live in

Earl's Court Square Earl's Court Square is a garden square in Earl's Court, London, England. It was developed from 1872 or 1873 on agricultural land belonging to the Edwardes family. It is primarily made up of stuccoed terraced houses with Italianate dressings b ...

and shared a flat with Syd Barrett, who had just left Pink Floyd. Fields continued to rent the flat and work in Barrett's former room, using it as his painting studio and remodelling the visual appearance of the property in his personal style. By the middle of the 1970s his work included many elements that were later defined as

Post-modernist Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

. In one painting,

Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...

is shown with her head severed. In 1983, Fields was invited to Tokyo by the Shiseido Corporation, where a gallery was created to show his paintings. For the occasion, the artist and his work were featured in a television, magazine, billboard and subway advertising campaign throughout Japan. In 2002, he designed a poster for Transport for London. In 2013, he was taken to Los Angeles by artist and benefactor

Amanda Eliasch Amanda Eliasch (born 1960) is an English photographer, artist, poet and filmmaker. Early life Amanda Eliasch was born in Beirut, Lebanon, 13 May 1960, where her father Anthony Cave Brown worked as a foreign correspondent for the ''Daily Mail' ...

with fashion designer Pam Hogg for Opfashart, which Eliasch had put together for "Britweek". From 2013 to 2015, Fields worked for the preservation of

Earls Court Exhibition Centre Earls Court Exhibition Centre was a major international exhibition and events venue just west of central London. At its peak it is said to have generated a £2 billion turnover for the economy. It replaced exhibition and entertainment grounds, ...

– designed in the 1930s by Howard Crane – and the surrounding area. The campaign was not successful but made people aware of the general decline of architecture in London. In 2016, Fields was celebrated by the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...

FLARE with a collection of his videos. The National Portrait Gallery, London holds two portraits of Fields, by photographers David Gwinnutt and Chris Garnham. Fields also composed and recorded music which he accompanied with spoken word performances.

Exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

* 1971 Hamet Gallery, London * 1972 Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford * 1975 Kinsman-Morrison Gallery, London * 1979 Kyle Gallery, London * 1980 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Midland Group, Nottingham; New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh; Roundhouse Gallery, London * 1982 Spacex Gallery, Exeter; B2 Gallery, London * 1983 Shiseido Exhibition, Tokyo * 1987 Albemarle Gallery, London * 1991 Rempire Gallery, New York * 2000 Random Retrospective, DuggieFields.com * 2008 Shifting Perspectives, Galleri Gl. Lejre, Denmark The Arts Council and

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

have examples of Fields' paintings in their collections.Duggie Fields paintings
Artuk.org. Retrieved 1 October 2013.

Selected group exhibitions

* 1976 New London in New York, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York * 1979 The Figurative Show, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London; Masks, The Ebury Gallery, London; Culture Shock, The Midland Group, Nottingham; Art and Artifice, B2 Gallery, London * 1983 Taste, Victoria and Albert Museum, London * 1984 The Male Nude, Homeworks Gallery, London * 1985 Image-Codes, Art about Fashion, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; VisualAid, Royal Academy, London * 1986 The Embellishment of the Statue of Liberty, Cooper Hewitt Museum/Barney's, New York * 1987 Twenty Artists Twenty Techniques, Albemarle Gallery, London * 1989 Fashion and Surrealism, Victoria and Albert Museum, London * 1988 Het Mannelisknaakt, Gallery Bruns, Amsterdam, St. Judes Gallery, London * 1990 Universal Language, Rempire Gallery, New York * 1993 Tranche d'Art Contemporain Anglais, Tutesaal, Luxembourg * 1998 Exquisite Corpse, Jibby Beane, London * 1999 Art 1999, Jibby Beane, London; Flesh, Blains Fine Art, London Nerve, I.C.A., London * 2000 Art 2000, Jibby Beane, London Up & Co., New York

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fields, Duggie 1945 births People from Salisbury English painters English contemporary artists Painters from London 2021 deaths