The Connor Brothers: Wit, Fiction and the Art of the Unexpected
Few contemporary artists have blurred the boundaries between art, fiction and popular culture quite as effectively as The Connor Brothers. Known for their instantly recognisable combination of vintage imagery and sharply observed text, the British artistic duo have developed a visual language that is humorous, nostalgic and frequently more thought-provoking than it first appears.
BEAUTYBehind The Connor Brothers are artists James Golding and Mike Snelle, who first attracted attention in the early 2010s. Their emergence was accompanied by an elaborate fictional biography: they presented themselves as American twins Franklyn and Brendan Connor, supposedly raised within an isolated cult before escaping into the outside world. It was only in 2014 that Golding and Snelle publicly revealed the story to be a fabrication.
The deception was not simply an exercise in publicity. Questions surrounding truth, fiction and the stories we choose to believe have remained central to their work ever since.
Who Are The Connor Brothers?
The Connor Brothers came to prominence with works based on the visual language of vintage novels, particularly the dramatic covers associated with mid-century pulp fiction.
The artists appropriate and rework these images, combining glamorous portraits, romantic encounters and highly theatrical scenes with unexpected phrases and quotations. The resulting works resemble familiar book covers or advertisements from another era, but their messages are unmistakably contemporary.
Some are funny. Others are melancholic or confrontational. Many manage to be all three simultaneously.
Their best-known Pulp Fiction works use imagery inspired by 1950s novels whose exaggerated worlds offered readers an escape from everyday life. The Connor Brothers have compared this idea of constructed escapism with aspects of modern culture, where social media and popular imagery can similarly present carefully manufactured versions of reality.
Words and Images
Text is fundamental to The Connor Brothers' work.
A perfectly composed vintage image might be interrupted by a statement about love, anxiety, relationships or the absurdity of everyday life. By placing contemporary language alongside imagery from another era, the artists create an immediate tension between what we see and what we read.
The effect can initially feel like a joke, but the strongest works tend to operate on several levels.
Ideas surrounding identity, mental health, authenticity and human relationships appear repeatedly throughout their practice. The artists have also spoken openly about their own experiences with mental health and addiction, subjects that helped shape both their early anonymity and later work.
This balance between humour and vulnerability has become one of the defining characteristics of their art.
From Pulp Fiction to a Wider Practice
Although the Pulp Fiction imagery remains perhaps their most immediately recognisable work, The Connor Brothers' practice has expanded considerably.
Series including True Love Stories, Regression, True Fiction and Ride or Die have allowed the artists to develop their ideas across paintings, prints, works on paper and editions.
Their work often borrows the visual confidence of advertising and mass-produced popular culture. Images are bold, text is direct and compositions are designed to communicate almost immediately.
This accessibility is important. A viewer doesn't need extensive knowledge of contemporary art to engage with a Connor Brothers work. The image draws you in; the phrase gives it another meaning; and the tension between the two often stays with you afterwards.
Truth, Fiction and Contemporary Culture
The fictional identity with which Golding and Snelle began their career now seems particularly relevant.
Long before terms such as "post-truth" became part of everyday conversation, The Connor Brothers were already examining how easily convincing stories can be manufactured and accepted.
Their subsequent projects continued that exploration. In 2014 they created The Hanbury Collection, another fictional construction that deliberately confused the boundaries between reality and invention.
Seen in this context, their pulp imagery is about considerably more than nostalgia.
The works ask us to consider how images influence perception and how quickly a persuasive combination of words and pictures can create its own version of reality.
Art With a Social Conscience
Beyond the studio, Golding and Snelle have also used their work to support social and charitable causes.
Their projects have addressed issues including mental health and the refugee crisis. They have worked with organisations including The Big Issue and Teenage Cancer Trust, while previous projects have involved work connected with CALM and the refugee camp in Calais.
This element of their practice provides an important counterpoint to the humour of the artworks themselves.
Behind the dry slogans and glamorous imagery is an interest in considerably more serious questions about vulnerability, belonging and the way society treats people on its margins.
Collecting The Connor Brothers
For collectors, one attraction of The Connor Brothers is the remarkable consistency of their visual identity.
Their work can be recognised almost immediately.
The strongest examples bring together three elements that have come to define the duo: compelling vintage imagery, memorable typography and a phrase that changes the meaning of the image around it.
The artists work across original paintings as well as prints and editions, giving collectors different points of entry into their practice. Their work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in notable public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Penguin Collection.
When looking at an edition, collectors should consider the same fundamentals that apply to contemporary prints generally: edition size, condition, signature, provenance and the significance of the image within the artist's wider body of work.
Why Their Work Endures
The humour of The Connor Brothers makes their work immediately approachable, but humour alone does not explain its longevity.
Their images address subjects that remain remarkably constant: love, loneliness, insecurity, desire, truth and the strange contradictions of modern life.
By taking imagery from an apparently simpler age and combining it with distinctly contemporary anxieties, The Connor Brothers create works that feel simultaneously familiar and new.
The joke might be what catches your attention.
The idea behind it is often what makes you keep looking.
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