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Nigel Graeme Henderson ('With Egg On My Face')

2 of 4 portraits by Nigel Graeme Henderson

© Nigel Henderson Estate

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Nigel Graeme Henderson ('With Egg On My Face')

by Nigel Graeme Henderson
hand-coloured photo collage mounted on board, 1980
19 7/8 in. x 16 1/8 in. (505 mm x 410 mm) image size; 23 7/8 in. x 19 1/2 in. (605 mm x 495 mm) overall
Purchased, 2016
Primary Collection
NPG 7016

Sitterback to top

  • Nigel Graeme Henderson (1917-1985), Artist and photographer. Sitter in 2 portraits, Artist or producer of 4 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Nigel Graeme Henderson (1917-1985), Artist and photographer. Artist or producer of 4 portraits, Sitter in 2 portraits.

This portraitback to top

With Egg on My Face belongs to an important body of work beginning in the 1980s in which Henderson returned repeatedly to the theme of the human head. This was an early preoccupation which began with the large and disturbing altered photograph Head of a Man (1956), exhibited in This Is Tomorrow, and now in the Tate collection. Henderson's images of the human head have been seen as the culmination of what he referred to as his 'stressed' photographs. They refer to destruction, atrophy and decay and have been seen as being related to the artist’s traumatic experiences during the Second World War as well as an expression of the age of nuclear anxiety. Henderson was influenced by Arcimboldo's paintings of heads composed of vegetables and was interested in the idea of metamorphosis. In this self-portrait Henderson has applied collage over a photograph of his face to distort his own image.

Events of 1980back to top

Current affairs

Margaret Thatcher makes one of her most famous speeches, living up to her nickname of 'the Iron Lady'. The speech was given to the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in response to the media speculation that the party would go back on its counter-inflationary policies: 'The lady's not for turning!'

Art and science

John Lennon is murdered on the steps of his house. After fatally shooting him, Mark David Chapman calmly sat down on the pavement and waited to be arrested by police. Chapman had a history of mental illness and claimed that he had committed the murder as a way of getting attention.

International

Iraq invades Iran, beginning eight years of conflict. The invasion followed years of border disputes, but was precipitated by the 1979 revolution in Iran and the resulting instability which Saddam Hussein saw as an opportunity to expand Iraqi influence in the region. Despite early gains for Iraq, the conflict soon descended into a war of attrition with huge causalities caused by Iraq's use of chemical weapons.

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