Pop Art “The Landscape of Signs”

1. Pop Art“The Landscape of Signs” • “In the ten years after 1947 the number of televisions in the United States jumped from ten thousand to fortymillion,...” (Fineberg) • Rise of the art market – Newly rich collectors like Robert Scull bought in quantity: “Assisted by the careful promotion of a few key dealers, the price of work by the most fashionable younger artists of the sixties escalated as much as 4,000 percent over the decade [1960s]” (Fineberg)

2. POP ART BEGAN IN LONDON (left) Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992), Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef, 1954, British Existential Figuration; (right) Eduardo Paolozzi (British, 1924-2005), Real Gold, collage, 14 x 19 in., 1950, British Pop

3. The Blitz: FromSeptember 7 1940 through May 1941, the German Luftwaffe bombed British cities, especially London, almost nightly. Here London fire fighters extinguish flames following an air raid. More than 43,000 deaths and 1,400,000 people were made homeless, 4 million homes destroyed or badly damaged.

4. (left) Eduardo PaolozziIts a Psychological Fact That Pleasure Helps Your Disposition, 1948, collage. Affirmative or adversarial (avant-garde) posture? Shown in his influential 1952 “Bunk” slide lecture that marks the beginning of British Pop. “Bunk” is from Henry Ford: “history is more or less bunk….we want to live in the present.” (right) Hannah Höch, The Beautiful Girl, collage (photomontage), 1919, Berlin Dada / Adversarial posture toward commercial culture – what was Paolozzi’s attitude towards it?

5. Eduardo Paolozzi, (right) I was a Rich Man's Plaything  1947; (left) Meet the People, 1948, from Ten Collages from 1952 BUNK lecture, collage mounted on card support, 14 x 9.5 in. “The iconography of a new world.”

6. Richard Hamilton (British, b. 1922) Just What is it That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Collage (photomontage), 10 x 9”, 1956, KunsthalleTübingen, Tubingen, Germany. British Pop Hamilton defined Pop Art in a letter dated January 16, 1957: "Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business." 1964

7. The Independent Group’s “This is Tomorrow” exhibition, 3 installation views, 1956, Whitechapel Gallery (Institute of Contemporary Art) London

8. Richard Hamilton, (left) Towards a Definitive Statement on the Coming Trends in Men's Wear and Accessories (a) Together Let Us Explore the Stars 1962; (right) $he, 1958-61, both oil & collage on canvas, British Pop

9. (left) Richard Hamilton, The Large Glass or The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even, 1963, an exact copy and homage to (right) Marcel Duchamp, The Large Glass or The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even 1915-23; (center) Photo of Duchamp by Hamilton, c. 1968

10. Hans Namuth, photograph marking the 25th Anniversary of Leo Castelli Gallery, 1982. Standing left – right: Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, Nassos Daphnis, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Salvatore Scarpitta, Richard Artschwager, Mia Westerlund Roosen, Cletus Johnson, and Keith SonnierSeated left – right: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Castelli, Ed Ruscha, James Rosenquist, and Robert Barry In the late fifties and Sixties, “There were two Camps, mine and Clement Greenberg’s. “ Leo Castelli

11. Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Before and After, 1961, casein and pencil on canvas, 54 x 69 7/8" 

12. Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Bonwit Teller window decor, NY, April 1961; (left) Dick Tracy, 1960, casein and crayon, 48” high;A Boy for Meg, 1962oil on canvas, 72” high

13. Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, acrylic on canvas, screened with hand painted details, 20x16 in. ea (lower right) Ferus Gallery installation, Los Angeles,1962. Warhol’s first gallery show. Repetition and coldness of appropriation from commodity culture is the hallmark of Pop Art. Five canvases sold for $100 each, but Irving Blum, co-owner of Ferus, bought them back to keep the set intact and later partly gifted them to MoMA NYC.

14. Jasper Johns (American, b.1930), Painted Bronze, hand painted cast bronze, 1960, Proto-Pop (Neo-Dada)(right) Warhol, Campbell Soup Can, 1968, screened acrylic on canvas, Pop Art

15. Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga (1967) silk-screening in the Factory, located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The Factory moved to 33 Union Square West in 1967. Warhol used silkscreen from 1962 on.

16. (right) Warholstars group portrait by Gerard Malanga, 1968(?); (left) film still and poster for Warhol's film Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 1966, with the Velvet Underground. The Andy Warhol Museum owns 273 Warhol films and almost 4,000 videotapes. “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am… There’s nothing behind it.” - Andy Warhol

17. Warhol, (left) Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962, acrylic, silkscreen and oil on canvas; (right) Marilyn, 1962. Series followed Monroe’s (probable) suicide in August 1962.

18. Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic silkscreen on canvas

19. Andy Warhol, 210 Coca-Cola bottles, 1962, Silkscreen, ink & synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 6’10” x 8’9”

20. Warhol, (left) Jackie, The Week That Was, 1963 (right) Suicide 1963, Acrylic and silkscreen, 6’ H

21. Warhol, Five Deaths Eleven Times in Orange, synthetic polymer paint, silk-screened on canvas, 1963

22. Warhol, (left) Lavender Disaster, 1971; (right top and below) Electric Chair, 1971, screenprints. “Everything I do is connected with death.” (Warhol, 1978)

23. Andy Warhol, Brillo Box, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen on plywood, 17 x 17 x 15 in “Greenberg’s narrative … comes to an end with Pop … It came to an end when art came to an end, when art, as it were, recognized there was no special way a work of art had to be.” - Arthur Danto (1964) After the End of Art, 1997 “Is an endless playing with the definition of art all that art now has to offer?” - Charles Harrison “Conceptual Art” (Themes) At the Tate Modern: the conundrum

24. Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997), cover of Newsweek, 1966, New York Pop Art

25. Roy Lichtenstein’s educational background: (left) Reginald Marsh (Lichtenstein’s teacher at the Art Students’ League, NYC), Why Not Take the “L”?, oil on canvas, 1930 (right) Flash Lab, Ohio State, where Lichtenstein studied 1942-44

26. Roy Lichtenstein, Girl With a Ball, 1960 compare with Andy Warhol, Dick Tracy, 1960, New York Pop Art. When Warhol saw Lichtenstein’s cartoon paintings in 1960 he stopped making them.

27. Roy Lichtenstein screened and hand- painted ben day dots, a method of mechanical color printing, evident below in detail from a 1964 painting http://www.lensculture.com/lambrecht.html?thisPic=2See slide show of Roy Lichtenstein studio / process

28. Roy Lichtenstein, 1990 notebook, “Crying girls”

29. Roy Lichtenstein, WAAM! 1963, Magna on canvas, 2 panels; 68 x 166 inches overall; source: a 1962 issue of DC Comics' All-American Men of War “Lichtenstein was not painting things but signs of things.” Fineberg

32. James Rosenquist,President Elect, oil on masonite, 12 feet wide, 1960-1 (New York Pop Art); (right) mockup for painting and (below) artist in studio“I’m interested in contemporary fission – the flick of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Big-bang! Bing-bang! I don’t do anecdotes; I accumulate experiences.”

33. Rosenquist,(left) right & left halves of F-111, installation, oil on canvas and aluminum, 23 sections, 10 x 86 feet, 1964-5, The Museum of Modern Art, NY

35. http://vodpod.com/watch/4830179-theartview-power-up-female-pop-art-at-kuntsthallehttp://vodpod.com/watch/4830179-theartview-power-up-female-pop-art-at-kuntsthalle Marisol, Baby Boy, 1963 Marisol, The Family, 1963

36. Claes Oldenburg, Snapshots from the City, performance with first wife, Pat Muschinski, at Judson Gallery, Judson Memorial Church, New York. February 29, March 1-2, 1960. Performance / Happening at Oldenburg’s “Ray Gun Theater”(right) The Street installation 1960

37. Claes Oldenburg, The Store, Dec. 1, 1961 - Jan. 31, 1962, Ray Gun Mfg. Co., 107 East Second Street, New York. Roast Beef, 1961, inside studio/store (with artist), view looking out, poster, Green Gallery sponsor. “I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.”

38. Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden, 1929). Pastry Case, I. 1961-62. Painted plaster sculptures on ceramic plates, metal platter and cups in glass-and-metal case, 21 x 30 x 15," New York Pop Art "I make my work out of my everyday experiences, which I find as perplexing and extraordinary as can be.“ Oldenburg, 1960

39. Claes Oldenburg. (American, born Sweden, 1929). Green Gallery Installation (2 views), 1962; Floor Cake (right) 1962. Synthetic polymer paint and latex on canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, 58 3/8" x 9' 6 1/4" x 58 3/8“. Pop Art

40. Claes Oldenburg, Bedroom Ensemble, life size, wood, vinyl, metal, artificial fur, cloth, paper, 1963, National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa. Oldenburg took a perspective drawing of a set of bedroom furniture from a newspaper advertisement, built his furniture in 3-D, giving them the forms they had in 2-D. “This is the kind of reality that if you intrude it vanishes.”  Oldenburg http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artist_e.jsp?iartistid=4095

41. Oldenburg, Soft Toilet, 1966; Dormeyer Mixer,1965

42. Oldenburg, Giant Lipstick, erect (left) and limp (center), Yale University, 1969. Anti-Vietnam war

43. Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976, Cor-Ten and stainless steels, 45 ft. x 12 ft. 3 in. x 4 ft. 6 in., Centre Square Plaza, Philadelphia. Scale. Carnivalesque humor in public art, as well as inside art world joke in allusion to Brancusi’s 1909 Kiss (above).

44. Wayne Thiebaud (US, b. 1920), Five Hot Dogs, 1961, o/c, 18 x 24 in, Whitney MAA Thiebaud earned a BA degree from Sacramento State College in 1941 an M.A. degree in 1952. Thiebaud’s “Pop” work was in The New Realist show at Sidney Janis (1962 NYC) with other major figures associated with Pop, New Realism, and Gutai

45. Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes, 1963

46. Joan Brown ,Fur Rat, 1962, wood, chicken wire, plaster, string, raccoon fur, and nails; 20 x 54 x 14 in. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, Bay Area Funk (Beat) and Figuration overlapped. Joan Brown was a student of Elmer Bischoff part of both movements. Exhibition of works from the early 70’s including cardboard sculptures (begun in her kitchen from household materials while her studio was under renovation) Joan Brown c.1960

47. Joan Brown (US, 1938-1990), Bay Area Figuration, student of Elmer Bishoff(left) Wolf in Studio, enamel on masonite, 90 x 48”, 1972, Crocker MA, Sacramento(right) Self With Fish, 1970 Brown is second generation Bay Area Figuration

48. Bruce Conner (US 1933-2008) The Child, 1959-1960. Assemblage: wax figure with nylon, cloth, metal, and twine in a high chair, life size. MoMA NYC. San Francisco North Beach beat counterculture Funk Art that challenged ‘good taste’ of establishment culture.

49. A still from A Movie, a 1958 short by Bruce Conner selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. Conner’s films are assemblages of found footage.

50. Bruce Conner, Inkblot Drawing 5/28/1995, a Rorschach-like ink-and-pencil work. Conner worked with an extremely wide variety of visual media.