On the Road: Parking Markings

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Allen Jones RA's 52-page book 'On the Road: Parking Markings' offers a graphic visual journey through the evolution of road markings. Jones reflects on how the pictorial language of roads began with the introduction of the white line, marking the Primitive phase of visual vocabulary. He notes that parking markings, created with stencils, were introduced during his student years, characterized by human error and chance. The 1960s saw a shift due to rising traffic, with yellow markings representing a Classical phase, indicating prohibitions. By the 1990s, red emerged as a color of urgency and danger, marking a Baroque phase in road marking language. Jones observes that communication has evolved from polite white in the 1950s, to instructive yellow in the 1960s, to the alarming red of the 1990s, and now, as he states, “the air is blue.” Elected a Royal Academician in 1986, Jones is a prominent figure in Britain's Pop Movement, with works featured in major international collections, including the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.