A participant in the influential YBA "Freeze" exhibition conceived by Damien Hirst in 1988, Simon Patterson is well known for his lithograph The Great Bear (1992), an altered version of the London tube map where the names of the underground stations are replaced with names of engineers, philosophers, explorers, planets, journalists, footballers, musicians, film actors, saints, and Italian artists, among others. Patterson's paintings, sculptures, and films frequently co-opt and subvert traditional sources of information (for example, periodic tables and film credits). In his series of diptychs "Name Paintings" (1987–), icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are represented by their names silk-screened in black on white canvas, a conceptual counterpoint to Warhol's glamorous Pop depictions.
A participant in the influential YBA "Freeze" exhibition conceived by Damien Hirst in 1988, Simon Patterson is well known for his lithograph The Great Bear (1992), an altered version of the London tube map where the names of the underground stations are replaced with names of engineers, philosophers, explorers, planets, journalists, footballers, musicians, film actors, saints, and Italian artists, among others. Patterson's paintings, sculptures, and films frequently co-opt and subvert traditional sources of information (for example, periodic tables and film credits). In his series of diptychs "Name Paintings" (1987–), icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are represented by their names silk-screened in black on white canvas, a conceptual counterpoint to Warhol's glamorous Pop depictions.