More than three decades have passed since Lubaina Himid’s A Fashionable Marriage was first exhibited at the Pentonville Gallery. A satirical refashioning of morality critic William Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode 4 (The Countess’s Morning Levee), the piece throws world leaders of the time Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan into the roles of Hogarth’s countess and her lover; Reagan draped in a star-spangled cape, for Margaret, pearls. It’s unlikely that Himid could have ever anticipated the relevance this piece would hold in 2017, a time where the US and UK’s political leaders bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the 1980s, but the fact that it’s only being rewarded thirty years on for its inclusion in her Turner Prize exhibition is distinctly less surprising.
Read the full article in Vogue Magazine by Olive Pometsy published 9 December 2017