At the beginning of the 1960s, while still at Saint Martin's, Laing was introduced to artists in New York City, meeting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Robert Indiana.[7] After art school he moved to New York, and his art career began to take off.[8]
Career
Laing's career took him from the avant-garde world of 1960s pop art, through minimalist sculpture, followed by representational sculpture and then back full circle to his pop art roots. He also taught sculpture at the University of New Mexico and at Columbia University in New York City.[9]
In 2012 Sims Reed Gallery staged an exhibition of his prints and multiples, his most comprehensive show of work to date.
Laing did a series of anti-war paintings, based primarily on photographs from the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. These paintings were the beginning of his return to pop art. They were followed in 2004 by a series of Amy Winehouse paintings, as well as a painting of Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss.
In February 2014, Laing's Brigitte Bardot painting from 1963 work sold for £902,500 in an auction at Christie's in London, a record sum for the artist.[12]
Sims Reed Gallery represents the Estate of Gerald Laing.[13]
New Paintings for Modern Times (2004–2009): a series of work drawn from the Gulf war and modern media
The Spirit of Rugby – Line-Out (2010), sculpture group at Twickenham Rugby Stadium, London[14]
Personal life
Gerald Laing: Relief Portrait of Michael von Clemm (1998). Bronze. Canary Wharf, London[15]
Laing was married three times and was the father of six children.[8] In 1962, he married Jennifer Anne Redway, with whom he had one daughter. They divorced in 1967 and he married Galina Vassilovna Golikova, with whom he had two sons, in 1969.[4]
They divorced in 1983 and in 1988, Laing was married to Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York by the Rev. C. Hugh Hildesley. Adaline, a graduate from the Madeira School, attended Sarah Lawrence College and was a daughter of former U.S. RepresentativePeter Frelinghuysen Jr. and the former Beatrice Sterling Procter, an heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune.[16] Adaline, with whom he had two more sons, is the sister of Rodney Frelinghuysen, also a former U.S. Representative, and a granddaughter of the prominent New Jersey lawyer and banker Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen I.[9] Laing fathered his sixth child with Alison Urquhart in 2002.
In 1968, Laing and his second wife found Kinkell Castle in the Black Isle of Ross and Cromarty,[17] " a Z-plan stronghold that was the former seat of the clan Mackenzie, ruinous and in the hands of local farmer Angus MacDonald." Gerald paid £5,000 for it and spent the remainder of his life nurturing it into a family home, studio and workshop.[18][19]
Laing died on 23 November 2011 at his home, Kinkell Castle.[8] His son Farquhar (b. 1970), the elder son from Gerald's second marriage, is the founder and director of the Black Isle Bronze foundry, "one of Europe's foremost bronze caster" and another son, Sam Ogilvie, owns Ogilvie Design Studio,[19] which designs bespoke sculptural furniture and does commercial interior design work.[20]
↑Laing, Gerald (1984). Kinkell: The Reconstruction of a Scottish Castle (2nded.). Dingwall, Scotland, UK: Ardullie House (1st edition 1974, Latimer New Dimensions Ltd)). pp.180pp. ISBN0-9509870-0-X.
