The Mirror Steamed Over: Love and Pop in London, 1962

In the early sixties at the Royal College of Art in London, three extraordinary personalities collided to reshape contemporary art and literature. Barrie Bates (who would become Billy Apple in November 1962) was an ambitious young graphic designer from New Zealand, who transformed himself into one of pop art's pioneers. At the same time, his friend and fellow student David Hockney - young, Northern and openly gay - was making his own waves in the London art world. Bates and Hockney travelled together, bleached their hair together, and, despite being two of London's rising art stars, almost failed art school together. And in the middle of it all was the secretary of the Royal College's Painting School - an aspiring young novelist called Ann Quin. Quin ghost-wrote her lover Bates's dissertation and collaborated with him on a manifesto, all the while writing Berg: the experimental novel that would establish her as one of the British literary scene's most exciting new voices. Taking us back to London's art scene in the late fifties and early sixties, award-winning writer Anthony Byrt illuminates a key moment in cultural history and tackles big questions: Where did Pop and conceptual art come from? How did these three remarkable young outsiders change British culture? And what was the relationship between revolutions in personal and sexual identities and these major shifts in contemporary art? From the Royal College to Coney Island and Madison Avenue, encountering R. D. Laing and Norman Mailer, Shirley Clarke and Larry Rivers, The Mirror Steamed Over is a remarkable journey through a pivotal moment in contemporary culture.

Table of Contents:
Prologue Part I: The Connection Part II: Flying Tiger Interlude: A Self-Portrait Part III: Mirror/Mirror Epilogue: America, 1964 Sources and Further Reading Illustrations Image Credits Index Acknowledgements

About the Author :
Anthony Byrt is an award-winning New Zealand author, critic and journalist. He has written art criticism for publications including Artforum, NZ Listener and Metro, and has published two major books. This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art (AUP, 2016), a finalist in the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, was described as ‘breathtaking’ and a book that ‘enlightens and provokes’ (NZ Listener). The Mirror Steamed Over: Love and Pop in London, 1962 (AUP, 2020), longlisted for the Ockhams, was ‘a wonderfully written, affecting account of the personalities and layered complexities of life in and around the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s’ according to Professor Thomas Crow from NYU; Professor Matt Saunders from Harvard wrote that Byrt has ‘a special talent for zooming into a milieu’. Byrt’s whakapapa ties him to Ngāti Kahu ki Whaingaroa and the Dalmation gumdiggers who settled later in Te Tai Tokerau. He currently lives in Naarm/Melbourne with his family and has recently published his first novel, Dying Days (Affirm Press).

Review :

‘With a special talent for zooming into a milieu, Byrt articulates the wisdoms of historical distance while transporting the reading into the local texture of time and place.’ – Matt Saunders, Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

‘The Mirror Steamed Over is a wonderfully written, affecting account of the personalities and layered complexities of life in and around the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s, making for a distinctive and original contribution to an important area of art history. The success of the undertaking rests on remarkable primary research standing behind the many unexpected observations and insights. There is no equivalent in the literature, and I recommend the book highly.’ – Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, New York University, author of The Long March of Pop