Caroline Mary Thompson Coon (born 23 March 1945) is an English artist known for her paintings, feminist political activism, writing, and photography.'Caroline Coon, Artist' Stephen Friedman Gallery, Retrieved 19 July 2024; 'Caroline Coon, Overview' Centre for British Photography, Retrieved 19 July 2024 After coming to prominence first as a leader of the British Underground counterculture of the 1960s,Green, Maureen (3 December 1967) 'Who's Who In The Underground' Observer Magazine, p. 9 and then in the vanguard of the punk rock movement of the 1970s,Jonze, Tim (2 May 2018) 'Caroline Coon: Even at 13, I knew I couldn't be respectable' The Guardian, Retrieved 19 July 2024 she is recognised today as a foremost figurative painter in contemporary British art, with her work included in landmark survey exhibitions at London's Hayward Gallery and Tate Britain.'Caroline Coon, Biography' Stephen Friedman Gallery, Retrieved 19 July 2024
While at Central School of Art in 1967, Coon co-founded the charity Release, which provided legal services for those arrested on drug possession charges.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004 In the 1970s, earning money as a freelance journalist, including writing for Melody Maker, she became conscious of the zeitgeist change in youth culture which she christened the punk rock movement.Jonze, Tim (2 May 2018) 'Caroline Coon: Even at 13, I knew I couldn't be respectable' The Guardian, Retrieved 19 July 2024; Cavaluzzo, Alexander (18 April 2019) 'Punk Legend Johnny Rotten on Design, Abortion and Trump' Newsweek, Retrieved 19 July 2024 Her photographs of the early punk days are now published and exhibited throughout the world.'Caroline Coon, Overview' Centre for British Photography, Retrieved 19 July 2024 Coon managed The Clash from 1978 to 1980, through two significant tours in the UK and North America.Cortene, Lene 'Caroline Coon - Punk Girl Polymath' Punk Girl Diaries, Retrieved 19 July 2024
Since the early 1980s, Coon's primary focus has been her oil paintings which regularly feature women and men, both clothed and nude, in scenes that often contest the misogyny of patriarchy. With reference points as varied as Pauline Boty, Lorenzo Lotto, Artemisia Gentileschi and Henri Rousseau, her work has been compared to that of Paul Cadmus, Tamara de Lempicka, Gluck and Christian Schad. Since 2022, she has been represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery.'Caroline Coon, Artist' Stephen Friedman Gallery, Retrieved 19 July 2024
Early life Caroline Coon was born in London and raised on her parents' farm outside Maidstone, Kent.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004 The eldest child and only girl in her family, she grew up surrounded by the paintings of her great-uncle, the artist Frank Moss Bennett, which contributed to her interest in art.Diament, Robert & Tovey, Russell (22 November 2019) 'Caroline Coon Interview' Talk Art Podcast, Retrieved 19 July 2024 From the age of five, she was sent as a boarder to the Legat Ballet School and trained by Russian teachers in a method which included yoga. At age ten she went to Sadler's Wells Ballet School, which later became the Royal Ballet School.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004 As Coon told writer Christiana Spens in 2021; "…from an early age, I had this contrast between the patriarchal family home with the lies, and this other arena, where women worked as artists, and got paid for it. So intellectually, I had these contrasting worlds with which to feed into what I was going to become as an adult."Spens, Christiana, 'Exploring the Revolutionary Art of Caroline Coon' The London Magazine, August - September 2021, Retrieved 22 July 2024 Her parents moved the family to Northamptonshire in 1960.
After leaving the Royal Ballet School in London in 1961, the 16 year-old Coon took on a variety of jobs to earn a living as she continued her education to secure a place on a pre-diploma fine art course. She worked as a house model at various fashion brands including Alexon, Strelitz, and Norman Hartnell. An incident with the police – she forged her father's signature on a passport application form – necessitated Coon's return to Northamptonshire where she lived with her grandmother, attending a secretarial course by day and completing her A-level Art by night. She was accepted into the fine art pre-diploma at the Northampton School of Art in 1964.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004
Studying in London In 1965, she enrolled at Central College of Art in London. Coon's interest was primarily in figurative art at a time when abstract expressionism and the teachings of Clement Greenberg were favoured by the art world establishment. As she became increasingly politically active, she realised that figurative painting was the main means through which her art could express social commentary.Buszek, Maria Elena "Great Offender and Realist Criminal' in Caroline Coon: The Great Offender, Tramps, 2019, Retrieved 23 July 2024 To fund her studies, she worked as a glamour model for photographers like George Harrison Marks.'The Kamera Klub - Caroline Coon' Retrieved 19 July 2024 In 1967, as Miss Mayfair in Mayfair Magazine, she appeared nude on the cover and as the centrefold, painted gold like actress Shirley Eaton in the Bond movie Goldfinger (1964).Mayfair Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, 1967
At Central College of Art, one of Coon's tutors was the now renowned pop artist Derek Boshier. He introduced her to his friend and colleague, the seminal British pop artist Pauline Boty and her husband, the literary agent Clive Goodwin.Buszek, Maria Elena "Great Offender and Realist Criminal' in Caroline Coon: The Great Offender, Tramps, 2019, Retrieved 23 July 2024 Boty had appeared alongside Boshier in Ken Russell's 1962 television film Pop Goes The Easel for the BBC's Monitor series. Boty's art was to exert a powerful influence over Coon.Kristal, Marc Pauline Boty: British Pop Art's Sole Sister, Frances Lincoln, 2023 After the young painter's untimely death from cancer in 1966, her widower Goodwin gave Boty's paints and brushes to Coon. Speaking to art historian Maria Elena Buszek in 2019, Coon said""he believed in me, I think. Whenever things got really tough, I could rely on the promise I made to myself after Boty died, to carry on where she left off. In a way, I've pulled through many a psychological and financial crisis and kept on painting in her honour."Buszek, Maria Elena "Great Offender and Realist Criminal' in Caroline Coon: The Great Offender, Tramps, 2019, Retrieved 23 July 2024
Like Boty, as a fine art student Coon also did paid work in film and television. She appeared as an extra in both Blow Up (1966) and in the Vincent Price thriller The House of 1,000 Dolls (1967). Retrieved 20 July 2024 She starred in Harrison Marks' erotic films Amour (1966) and The Naked World of Harrison Marks (1967).'Caroline Coon - The Kamera Club' Retrieved 20 July 2024 Alongside Boshier and Goodwin, she was cast as the Pre-Raphaelite model Annie Miller in Ken Russell's Dante's Inferno (1967), with Oliver Reed as Dante Gabriel Rossetti.'Dante's Inferno (1967) Production Credits' BFI Collections Database, Retrieved 20 July 2024
Coon's studies at the Central College ended in 1967 as she set-up Release. In the early 1970s, on the recommendation of British sociologist and criminologist Baroness Wooton of Abinger, whom she met through her work with Release, Coon returned to education at Brunel University, studying psychology, sociology, and economics.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004
Release In 1965, after seeing a friend, a young man from Jamaica, sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years in prison for possession of a negligible amount of cannabis, Coon came to believe that drug prohibition is significantly racist and prejudicial against the working class. From then on, she became actively involved in campaigns to decriminalise drug use in favour of a harm-reduction model of control. In June 1967, with Clive Godwin and Tariq Ali, she helped organise a demonstration outside the offices of the News of the World tabloid newspaper to protest against the demonisation of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in coverage including the infamous Redlands police raid and arrest. There Coon met fellow art student Rufus Harris. They began discussions that led to the creation of Release, a legal advice service to help young people understand their rights, with a 24 hour helpline for anyone who was arrested in possession of drugs.Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004
The office was initially run from the studio of Coon's West London basement flat. From there they moved to 50 Princedale Road in Holland Park, which was described by The New York Times as "a long, narrow room that was crowded with psychedelic posters, filing cabinets, desks, telephones and young people."Mobiles, Dom (13 September 1970) "A Walk on London's Wild Side" The New York Times, Retrieved 20 July 2024 In a landmark profile in Life magazine at the time, the journalist Horace Judson observed that:"[i]n two years Release has become one of the most important civil liberties and legal-aid organisations in Britain. Besides the many cases where the police make an arrest but then do not press charges, Release takes from 50 to 80 cases a month into the courts. Six solicitors in London have handled the bulk of the more than 2,000 court cases over the last 18 months… no first offenders on cannabis charges helped by Release have been sent to prison whereas 17% of the total population of first cannabis offenders do get sent down."Judson, Horace (15 September 1969) "This Is an Underground with Office Hours" LIFE Magazine, pp. 43 - 48Release and Coon were profiled regularly in the media in these years, including a short film on BBC's New Horizons series in May 1971.'A Chance to Meet: Caroline Coon of Release' BBC One 12.50pm, 15 February 1971, BBC Genome Project, Retrieved 20 July 2024 As well as thousands of young people, the service was used by those in the public eye, including John Lennon and George Harrison, who donated £5,000 to Release in 1969,Coon, Caroline, "We were the welfare branch of the alternative society" pp. 183 - 197 in The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of social innovation, eds. Curtis, Helene & Sanderson, Mimi, Whiting & Birch Ltd, 2004 and Mick Jagger whose film Performance (1970) was premiered as a benefit fundraiser for Release at his request.Jonze, Tim (16 November 2018) 'Performance? I still don't understand it - Behind the scenes of the cult classic' The Guardian, Retrieved 20 July 2024