Rethinking the Image

Image source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/boshier-the-identi-kit-man-t01287 (Accessed: 20 December 2025). © Derek Boshier

Derek Boshier, The Identi-Kit Man (1962), London, Tate Britain, 183 cm x 183.2 cm, oil on canvas.

The Identi-Kit Man is an early painting by Derek Boshier, a British artist commonly associated with the pop art movement, who died last September at the age of 87^[1]. Its large, square canvas depicts a male figure in a state of striking metamorphosis, dissolving into the form of toothpaste while being scrubbed by an ensemble of oversized toothbrushes.

At first glance, the painting seems somewhat comical in tone, owing to its bright colours and its bizarre juxtaposition, but it quickly offers extensive possibilities for interpretation through its other metaphorical motifs. These include the jigsaw pieces, the floating, disconnected head of the main figure, and the faint, washed-out silhouettes of other figures and body parts.

In The Identi-Kit Man, as in other early works by Boshier such as Re-Think/Re-Entry^[2] and Self Portrait^[3], such motifs are deployed freely and abundantly in order to interrogate the advent of consumer capitalism and its potentially disruptive effects on both the consumer’s own sense of personal identity and on society as a whole^[4]. Here, the ambiguously indexical ‘sight line’ which connects the figure’s head to one of the smaller jigsaw pieces is a particularly intriguing detail.

While the figure’s right-hand side undergoes a relatively straightforward reshaping, his left-hand side is subject to considerably more violence, with his left leg cruelly severed and his thickly painted torso broken down by one of the toothbrushes that surround him. The longer the painting is viewed, the more its initial sense of irrelevance evaporates and the more tortured the figure appears.

For Boshier and many of his pop artist contemporaries, concerns relating to consumerism were interwoven with what was perceived as the pervasive influence of American culture on other societies^[4][1]. In The Identi-Kit Man, the striped pattern of the toothpaste recalls the red and white stripes of the American flag, while the wash of white, blue, and green that forms the backdrop to the figure’s unusual transformation is consistent with the visual language expected of toothpaste advertising.

Against this backdrop, the large jigsaw piece that ensnares the figure serves as the painting’s central motif. As well as facilitating his transformation into a household product, it suggests both his isolation from society and his ultimate fate – his insertion into the system of consumerism.

[1] Derwent, C. (2024) Derek Boshier Obituary. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/sep/17/derek-boshier-obituary (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[2] Derek Boshier (no date) Pop Art, 1961-62. Available at: https://www.derekboshier.com/pop-art-1961-62?lightbox=dataItem-j65ns4oj3 (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[3] ArtReview (2024) Derek Boshier, Acerbic British Pop Artist, 1937–2024. Available at: https://artreview.com/derek-boshier-acerbic-british-pop-artist-1937-2024/ (Accessed: 20 December 2025).

[4] Tate (no date) The Identi-Kit Man. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/boshier-the-identi-kit-man-t01287 (Accessed: 20 December 2025).