Cut-outs and ‘silent companions’: theatricality and satire in Lubaina Himid’s ‘A Fashionable Marriage’

Abstract

The article discusses Himid’s first cut-out series A Fashionable Marriage, a remaking in life-size cut-out figures of William Hogarth’s Marriage a la mode. The author draws links between Himid, David Hockney and Hogarth, and especially their shared love of the theatre. An extended analysis of the work shows how Himid uses satire to stake a place for Black and British art; reflective of the politics of the Black Arts Movement of the 1980s. The cut-out form is then discussed in relation to later work by Himid and linked to 17th-century Dutch ‘dummy boards’ or ‘silent companions’.