Orlik’s first painting, completed at the age of nineteen.

Orlik approached this early painting of Brigit Bardot in his oeuvre with a defined Pop Art technique, encompassing the brashness of the style. The background to the figure and Bardot’s body and clothing are represented on a coloured ground covered with geometric leaf-like shapes; painted in different colours to define the separate parts – the ground, background, dress and legs - of the portrait. However, with great insight, Orlik paints Bardot’s face in a decidedly realistic manner, skilfully depicting her beauty with trademark French chic, dark false eyelashes and tousled blond hair. In this way, Orlik depicts Bardot as an individual with an understandable character which penetrates the razzmatazz of Pop Art. He astutely acknowledges her humanity which is often absent from and over-looked in Pop Art with its comic book rendition of people. Bardot’s character is apparent, behind the commercialised sexual veneer and Orlik portrays her with a sure, knowing look as she sums the viewer up as much as they gaze at her. This suggests the control that she has over her image. For many, Bardot was the epitome of the liberated, sexually emancipated woman in the post War years and during the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. Simone de Beauvoir called Bardot a ‘locomotive of women’s history’ (the ‘Lolita Syndrome’, 1959). Bardot’s expressive, worldly-wide expression in Orlik’s painting seems to have a premonition to how she retired from acting in 1973, turning her back on the spotlight, before becoming a successful and outspoken campaigner for animal welfare.

The portrait gives a clear insight into the strength of Bardot’s character and we see through and understand the absurdity of the unrealistic round, red clown cheeks and the distortion of her body, portrayed as a 1950s style cut-out dress with exaggerated heart-shaped bodice with enlarged breasts, no neck or arms, triangle of skirt and wide spread legs finishing in red stilettoes on the feet.