Alistair Grant's Paintings for 1960 Film The Rebel Reexamined

Artist Alistair Grant created all the paintings for the 1960 film The Rebel, directed by Robert Day and starring Tony Hancock. Grant, then a printmaking tutor at London's Royal College of Art, produced three distinct groups of works in 1958: Hancock's intentionally poor paintings, the dour early works of fictional artist Paul Ashby, and Ashby's later mature pieces. The scriptwriters described the required Hancock paintings using dismissive language about modern artists like Picasso and Epstein. Grant's own real artworks, shown at Zwemmer Gallery in London, were used directly as Ashby's mature paintings in the film. This created a microsatire within the movie's larger reactionary narrative about contemporary art. Grant staged a confrontation between modernist abstraction and ridiculed figurative painting, with his serious work positioned against the comic Hancock pieces. Ironically, the intentionally bad Hancock paintings have endured more powerfully in memory than the 'good' Ashby works. The film follows Hancock's character fleeing to Paris seeking artistic credibility, only achieving success through a case of mistaken identity where Ashby's works are attributed to him. Grant's involvement allowed him playful release from his own rigorous pictorial practice. The artist died in 1997, but his comic paintings for the film continue to resonate with artists who appreciate their fantasy of creative freedom.