On the Road: Parking Markings

Allen Jones RA’s 52-page book On the Road: Parking Markings takes the reader on a graphic visual journey… by road.

“Since roads were first bisected by a white line, a pictorial language has evolved that, in classic parlance, is the first or Primitive phase in ever-developing visual vocabulary,” says Jones. “Parking markings were introduced during my final years as a student. Produced with stencils, these marks are enlivened by human error and chance.

“Because of increasing traffic during the 1960s a change was needed. Yellow represented a new and Classical phase, telling us what we should NOT do,” the artist continues. “Familiarity breeds contempt and by the 1990s the problem required desperate measures. Red, the colour of danger, anger and hell marked a third, Baroque phase in the developing language of road marking.

“During the 1950s we were asked politely – in white. During the 1960s we were told – in yellow. During the 1990s we were shouted at – in red. Now the air – is blue.”

Jones was elected a Royal Academician in 1986. He is one of Britain’s most distinguished artists from the pioneering Pop Movement, whose paintings and sculptures are held in many important international collections, including: Tate Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, the Museum of 20th-Century Art in Vienna, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

On the Road: Parking Markings is one of a collection of four artist’s books by Allen Jones that Black Dog Press is releasing in September 2022.