Derek Boshier, the working-class artist who was a key part of the pop art movement and a collaborator with the Clash and David Bowie, has died aged 87.
The Portsmouth-born artist studied at the Royal College of Art in London from 1959 to 1962 alongside David Hockney and was profiled with Pauline Boty and Peter Blake in Ken Russell’s 1962 film about the pop art movement, Pop Goes the Easel.
Boshier died “peacefully at home” in Los Angeles on Thursday, the artist’s publicist said. “Derek Boshier undoubtedly helped create and define the pop art movement in London and the USA,” he said. “His observations and comment around popular culture spanning the last 60 years is clear to be seen in the world’s greatest museums and galleries. He will be greatly missed.”
After his training at the Royal College, Boshier taught at the Central School of Art and Design, where one of his pupils was John Mellor, later known as Joe Strummer, of the Clash. This led to Boshier designing the Clash’s second songbook, which included a collection of drawings and paintings released in conjunction with the 1978 album Give ’Em Enough Rope.
Another relationship with a musician – this time David Bowie, whom Boshier helped create the sleeve for the third album of his Berlin trilogy, Lodger – was forged after the Lives exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1979.
Boshier curated the show, which featured 30 artists and sparked controversy because it included the newspaper cartoonists such as Gerald Scarfe and Posy Simmonds.
The artist said Lives was about making art accessible and relevant to people, and featured work, such as Conrad Atkinson’s pioneering video art, that could not have been bought by the Tate because of its strict and conservative acquisitions policy in the late 1970s.
The Guardian argued Boshier’s exhibition was simply pointing out that “visual communication was no longer the prerogative of a specialist minority”, but the Arts Council reacted by asking artists to remove certain works deemed too risque.
Bowie, however, was intrigued and started a friendship that lasted three decades and shortly before his death in 2016, Bowie sent Boshier a personal handwritten note. In it, Bowie praised Boshier for a recently completed art book and told him his work “cascades down the generations”.
In 2022 Boshier said the “strongest influence” on his art and life had been his working-class roots. “I’ve learned a lot from that and I’m proud of being working class,” he said.
