ART

CASE STUDY 2


INTRODUCTION TO BRITISH POP ART


The word POP was first coined in 1954 by a British critic when describing a new type of art that was
inspired by the imagery of popular culture. The Bristish movement was founded by critic Lawrence Alloway
and artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, who were part of a group that included artists,
architects and writers explored radical approaches to contemporary visual culture. This was illustrated by a
series of collages (collage was still cutting edge as it is believed to have been used first as an art form by
Picasso) created from American magazines that Paolozzi received from GIs who were still in Paris in the
late 40s. I was a Rich Mans Plaything was the first artwork to include the word POP.

Some young British artists in the 1950s who grew up with the wartime austerity of ration books and utility
design, viewed the seductive imagery of American popular culture and its consumerist lifestyle with a
romantic sense of irony and a little bit of envy. They saw America as being the land of the free free from
the crippling conventions of a class ridden establishment that could suffocate the culture they envisaged: a
more inclusive, youthful culture that embraced the social influence of mass media and mass production.
Pop art became their mode of expression in this search for change and its language was adapted from
Dada collages and assemblages. The Dadaists had created irrational combinations of random images to
provoke a reaction from the establishment of their day. British Pop artists adopted a similar visual
technique but focused their attention on the mass imagery of popular culture which they waved as a
challenge in the face of the establishment. The key players in this movement were Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter
Blake, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Joe Tilson, Derek Boshier, Richard Smith and R.B Kitaj.


INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN POP ART


Pop art in America evolved slightly differently to that of its British counterparts. It was both a development
and reaction against abstract expressionist painting. Abstract expressionism was the first American
movement to achieve global acclaim but by the mid 50s many felt it had become to elitist. American Pop
Art evolved as attempt to reverse this trend by reintroducing the image as a structural device in painting,
to pull art back from the obscurity of abstraction into the real world again. This was a model that had been
tried and tested before. Picasso had done something forty years previously when he collaged real world
printed images onto his still lifes, as he feared that his painting was becoming too abstract. Around 1955,
two remarkable artists emerged who would lay the foundations of a bridge between Abstract
Expressionism and Pop Art. They were Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the forerunners of
American Pop Art.


INTRODUCTION

Like Andy Warhol, Australian artist Maria Kozic was fascinated by pop-
culture icons, reworking sources that had become banal through
overexposure. For her series MASTERPIECES 1986, Kozic translated
celebrated images by 20th-century art masters onto canvases that are
literally fractured into irregular shards, imitating comic book explosions.
MASTERPIECES (Warhol) cites one of Warhols legendary Campbells
soup cans, the subject of his inaugural solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery
in Los Angeles in 1962. With characteristic wit, Kozics gesture of blowing
up such an iconic image parodies the precious and authentic status of
the original a Warholian sentiment that was widely invoked in
postmodern art of the 1980s.

Maria Kozic Australia 1957M A S T E R P I E C E S (Warhol)

1986 synthetic polymer paint on
wood JW Power Collection,
University of Sydney, managed
by Museum of Contemporary
Art, purchased 1987

But why should I be original? Why cant I be non-original?

- Andy Warhol, 1963
Pop was one of the defining art movements of the 20th century. It was radical because it brought the
realms of mass entertainment and consumerism into the hallowed halls of art galleries and museums.
Pop artists looked to advertising, product design, packaging, television, film, tabloid journalism,
celebrity photographs, pulp fiction and comic books for both subject matter and style. While for many
this new art was a shocking betrayal of high cultural values, for others it was a liberating encounter with
the world that people actually lived in.
The Pop to popism exhibition considers arts encounter with popular culture over four decades. It
begins with pops origins in the 1950s, proceeds through the classic pop of the 1960s and early 70s,
and charts the return to pop culture by a new generation of artists in the 1980s.
This is the first time Australian pop artists have been exhibited with their international peers, situating
the story of Australian art within the broader pop art narrative.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

1950 First credit card

introduced in the United
States, as individual
spending is promoted to
stimulate economic growth
1952 The Independent
Group forms at the IC A ,
London
1954 Wartime food
rationing ends in the UK
1954 Robert Rauschenberg
creates his first combine
paintings

Robert Rauschenberg U S A 1925
2008 Dylaby 1962 oil, metal objects,
metal spring, metal Coca-Cola sign,
ironing board, and twine on
unstretched canvas tarp on wood
support Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation Untitled Press
Inc/V A G A . Licensed by Viscopy,
Sydney

Robert Rauschenberg Dylaby

1962 oil on rubber tyre and
packing case timber with iron
nails, Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney. John Kaldor
Family Collection Untitled
Press Inc/VAGA. Licensed by
Viscopy, Sydney

1957 U S S R launches
Sputnik 1, the first artificial
Earth satellite
1961 Colin Lanceley, Mike
Brown and Ross Crothall
form the Annandale
Imitation Realist group

In the mid 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg sought a greater

connection between art and life, famously declaring his ambition was to act in that gap between the two.
He used collage and assemblage to incorporate everyday materials into his work, an approach that
subsequently influenced many artists around the world.
The two works on display, both titled Dylaby, were part of an installation Rauschenberg made for the
exhibition Dylaby: dynamic labyrinth in 1962. They are both combines, the term Rauschenberg coined to
describe his works that combined elements of both painting and sculpture, and found material such as the
Coca-Cola sign and ironing board you see here.
Pop art seemed to arrive like a cartoon explosion in the early 1960s but its origins lay in the previous
decade. In the 1950s artists began responding to the dramatic social and cultural changes that followed
W W II. One of the names for this new art was neo-dada, in homage to the disruptive dada art movement
that had followed W W I.
In London, younger members of the Institute of Contemporary Arts formed the Independent Group which
produced a series of lectures, essays and exhibitions exploring popular culture. American consumer goods
and mass entertainment seemed glamorous and desirable in austere postwar Britain and artists such as
Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton created collages from advertisements and images found in
American magazines.
In America itself, the dominant abstract expressionist movement promoted an intensely personal and
enclosed art. Some younger artists desired a greater connection between art and everyday life, and reacted
against what they saw as the self-referential nature of abstraction. Robert Rauschenberg sought this
connection by incorporating found objects into his work, while Jasper Johns painted familiar and banal
subjects such as numbers and letters.
In Australia, the Sydney-based artists known as the Annandale Imitation Realists combined collaged objects
and images with paint and text in a neoprimitive funk and junk style that was an exhilarating local pop art
precursor.


SWINGING LONDON

Peter Blake was a pioneer of pop art in Britain. In
this self-portrait, the artist represents his
fascination with American and popular culture.
Blake is holding an Elvis Presley fanzine and wears
baseball boots, fashionably turned-up wide-legged
Levi jeans, and a denim jacket covered with an
array of badges. As well as the obvious stars and
stripes on the jacket pocket, other badges have
American associations, such as Pepsi-Cola. At the
time, Blake was yet to visit the United States and
his choice of a suburban, vaguely British garden
setting locates him as a distant consumer of its
trends.

In 1966, Time magazine famously
described London as the Swinging City: a
thriving hub of optimism and innovation,
bolstered in part by pop arts boldness and
rebellious spirit.
The new pop style announced its arrival at
the Young contemporaries exhibition in
1961. This annual showcase of emerging
talent profiled young artists from Londons
Royal College of Art, including Derek
Boshier, Peter Phillips and David Hockney.
They found their subjects in city life, which
was rapidly evolving in the wake of renewed
economic prosperity.
British pop art of the early 1960s often
included both American and local
references, such as Peter Blakes selfportrait as an Elvis fan in an English garden.
The artists maintained a painterly style,
combined aspects of abstract and figurative
art and brought together diverse visual
elements in a style that often mimicked
collage. Their work became part of the socalled British invasion of fresh music,
fashion and culture that swept around the
world.
British pop influenced Australian artists
during this period; at the same time, many
Australians who moved to London in the
1960s such as Robert Hughes, Germaine
Greer, Barry Humphries, Richard Neville
and Martin Sharp also played a part in
shaping the London scene

Peter Blake England 1932 Self-portrait with

badges 1961 Tate. Presented by the Moores
Family Charitable Foundation to celebrate the
John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 1979 Peter
Blake/DACS. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

1962 Sunday Times first colour supplement

features pop art and Mary Quant miniskirts
1964 The Beatles embark on their first world
tour
1964 Mods and rockers riot along Englands
south coast, Easter weekend
1967 Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and gallery
owner Robert Fraser appear in court on drugs
charges
1967 Martin Sharp lives at The Pheasantry,
Kings Road, Chelsea with Eric Clapton,
Germaine Greer and Robert Whitaker, among
others
On the English side Pop was a resistance
movement: a classless commando which was
directed against the Establishment John
Russell, art critic, 1969

THE AMERICAN DREAM

In 1962, following several
years of tentative and
dispersed experimentation,
pop art fully emerged within
the New York art world. Before
the year was out, all the key
figures including Andy
Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and
Tom Wesselmann had held
solo exhibitions of pop work.
Their radically new style
polarised commentators. On
the West Coast, a regionally
nuanced pop art was also
taking root.
The subject matter of
American pop was overtly
familiar and often commercial.
Artists represented imagery
and objects from the world
around them print media,
supermarket aisles,
department stores, and the
modern home in ways that
mimicked the look and feel of
mass-produced items.

Andy Warhol U S A 192887 Triple Elvis 1963 screenprint ink, silver

paint and spray paint on linen Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.
Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts, Inc. Licensed by ARS/ Viscopy, Sydney

Andy Warhols celebrity portraits based on mass-media photographs are

among his most recognisable works. From 1962, Warhol abandoned hand-
painting for screenprinting, preferring a manufactured aesthetic. The Elvis
Presley he presents here is not the hip-shaking musician, but Elvis the actor
playing a role in the 1960 movie Flaming star.
Warhol produced this painting for an exhibition in Los Angeles the home
of Americas entertainment industry. The metallic background references
the silver screen, while the multiplied image creates a sense of cinematic
motion. This visual repetition also comments on the constructed nature of
celebrity. Warhol shows us that Elvis the man has become a mere product, a
mass-marketed idol cast as a popular stereotype

The hallmarks of their style

came directly from the realm
of commercial art: smooth
surfaces, bright colours, a
flattened perspective and
graphic treatment of imagery.
The slick, billboard-like style of
James Rosenquist is a perfect
example. However, a number
of artists associated with the
movement adopted a more
idiosyncratic approach,
emphasising the tactile and
handmade.
The cool character of
American pop art had a
certain ambiguity. Some critics
read the work as a celebration
of popular culture, while others
saw it as a critical commentary
on how consumerism and
mass media were reshaping
the American way of life

1960 Oral contraceptives approved for sale

1962 Pop art symposium at the Museum of Modern Art in New York cements the use of the term pop
art over new realism, neo-dada, and commonism
1962 Marilyn Monroe dies 1963 President John F Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1963 Andy Warhols studio becomes known as The Factory
1964 Media theorist Marshall McLuhan coins the phrase the medium is the message

EURO POP

cAlain Jacquet France 1939 USA 2008 Djeuner sur

lherbe (diptych) 1964 photo screenprint on canvas, two
panels National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased
1983 Estate of Alain Jacquet/ADAGP. Licensed by
Viscopy, Sydney

In the 1960s, French artist Alain Jacquet made a series of works
based
on famous paintings from art history. They highlighted

the
way some works of high art had infiltrated popular culture
through their wide circulation in mass reproduction.
This work imitates 19th-century realist painter Edouard Manets
Djeuner sur lherbe 1865. Jacquet restaged Manets
composition with his own friends posing in a modern setting, by
a swimming pool. Rather than capturing the scene in paint, he
photographed it, then used a screenprinting process to replicate
the image. The enlarged Benday dots allude to the offset
printing colours of cyan, yellow, magenta and black. The
resulting optical effect reveals the works mechanical
production, and exaggerates the print technique and graphic
visual style of mass media.

Pop art emerged in many

places across Europe in the
early 1960s, including
Germany, France, Italy and
Scandinavia. There were often
distinct regional differences as
artists responded to their
particular creative, social and
political circumstances. Some
reacted to the exoticism of
American pop art, while often
remaining wary of the global
coca-colonisation of an
increasingly dominant
American culture.
In France, the nouveaux
ralistes or new realists group
including Martial Raysse and
Niki de Saint Phalle
incorporated objects and
imagery related to consumer
society in their art. In Germany,
the Capitalist Realist art of
Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke
and Gerhard Richter reflected
their ambivalence to West
Germanys embrace of
capitalism, and parodied its
friction with the socialist regime
in East Germany. During the
decade, numerous European
artists working with a pop
aesthetic also made the
pilgrimage to New York by
now pop arts undisputed
epicentre.
In keeping with their diverse
approach to style and
technique, the European pop
artists pursued a range of
ideas. Some considered the
effects of mass reproduction
(such as Gerhard Richter);
others reworked old masters
from art history (such as Alain
Jacquet); or offered a critique
of consumerism and
Americanisation (like yvind
Fahlstrm).

1951 Americas Marshall Plan funding for European postwar recovery ends; participating countries
enjoy unprecedented economic growth
1960 Nouveaux ralisme art movement is founded by the art critic Pierre Restany
1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall begins

Alain Jacquet France 1939 USA 2008 Djeuner sur lherbe

1962
New 1964
realists
exhibition
opens inon
October
at two
Sidney
JanisNational
Gallery, New York, showcasing
(diptych)
photo
screenprint
canvas,
panels
international and American pop art
Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1983 Estate of Alain
Jacquet/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

1963 Dsseldorf artists Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter declare
themselves Capitalist Realists
1967 Guy Debord publishes his revolutionary critique of capitalism and modernity, The society of the
spectacle

MADE IN OZ
In the 1950s Australia shared the same
postwar booming economic conditions as
much of the western world. By the early
1960s Australian artists were using pop
culture references to reflect the growing
dominance of advertising and
consumerism. Many were also reacting
against the expressive abstraction
prevalent in Sydney, or the anxious
figurative art of the largely Melbournebased Antipodean Group.
By 1964 pop art provided an alternative to
both these movements, and critic and
curator Daniel Thomas declared it to be
really proliferating. It is undeniably pop
art, clearly acknowledging its source
material in signs, trademarks,
advertisements, comic strips.

Bridgid McLean Australia 1946- Untitled

1969 synthetic polymer paint on canvas Art
Gallery of N S W , Sydney. Patrick White Bequest
2013 Bridgid McLean

Between 1968 and 1974, Bridgid McLean made

numerous paintings of racing cars and racing-car
drivers which merge man and machine. She was
a fan of Formula One racing which had a high
profile during this period, particularly with the
international success of Australian driver Jack
Brabham.
McLeans vivid, graphic pop style was critically
well-received. James Gleeson described her first
exhibition in 1973 as a spectacular debut,
noting She does not admire the automobile as a
symbol of our time but as an object of aesthetic
beauty. In this painting McLean meticulously
emulates the flawless effect of airbrushing, but
in fact she hand-painted it using a dry-brush
technique.

Australian pop is energetic, daring and

often erotic, as exemplified by the work of
Richard Larter. During the 1960s
Australias deeply conservative society
started to become more open. Along the
way, some pop artists such as Mike
Brown and Martin Sharp challenged
what they saw as repressive social norms
resulting in high-profile court cases.
In common with British pop art, Australian
pop often
used a collage
aesthetic
1963
Counterculture
magazine
Oz and
painterly style,
and included
abstract
launched
in Sydney;
the editors
face their
elements.
Inevitably
pop was discussed
first
obscenity
charges
within the context of ongoing debates
about
regionalism
versus
internationalism,
1965 Prime
minister
Robert
Menzies
and
Australian
pop
was
often
an unruly
sends first Australian combat troops
to the
hybrid
of
local
and
international
styles and
war in Vietnam
subjects
1965 Mike Brown arrested for showing
obscene works at his Paintin a-go-go
exhibition at Gallery A in Sydney
1966 End of the White Australia Policy
1966 Bob Dylans first Australian tour
1967 Two decades of American painting
exhibition tours National Gallery of Victoria
and the Art Gallery of NSW
Perhaps Im sort of a mixture between
Mickey Mouse and Van Gogh. Martin
Sharp, 1970

LATE POP

By the end of the 1960s, the society

that gave rise to pop art had changed
dramatically. The decades early
optimism had been surpassed by
disaffection and rebellion, driven by an
unfulfilled desire for cultural change.
Agitation around issues of race
relations, gender rights and sexual
liberation; the ongoing trauma of the
war in Vietnam; and broader antiauthoritarian sentiment all had an
impact in the realm of pop art. The
emergence of a counterculture cast a
shadow over consumerism and big
business.
Pop arts established codes had
become somewhat mainstream and
new directions were now pursued.
Artists like Martha Rosler, James
Rosenquist and Brett Whiteley made
works that expressed the tension
between ominous events taking place
on the world stage or at home, and the
utopian pretence of the American
dream.

Claes Oldenburg Sweden/U S A 1929 Giant soft fan

ghost version 1967 canvas, wood and polyurethane
foam The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gift of D and J
de Menil Claes Oldenburg

Giant soft fan hangs limp from the ceiling, dragged

down by gravity. Its exaggerated size and sagging form
makes a familiar object both strange and humanlike.
The subtitle of this work, ghost version, refers to its
colour.
Oldenburg also made a companion Giant soft fan in
black vinyl (Museum of Modern Art, New York). He
described the pair as winged victories suggesting
they were modern equivalents of a famous ancient
Greek heroic statue. But Oldenburgs wilted fans
subvert all expectations of monumental sculpture. Hard
becomes soft, the heroic is replaced with the banal, the
grounded becomes airborne and structure is left to
chance.

By contrast, other artists such as Allen

Jones and Tom Wesselmann
developed an exaggerated eroticism
in their work, extending pops timeworn
engagement with Hollywood glamour,
the female body and consumer desire.
Finally, a number of artists who had
been at the vanguard of pop art in the
60s explored aspects of other styles,
from realism (David Hockney) to
psychedelic art (Martin Sharp)
1966 Psychedelic drug advocate
Timothy Leary coins the catchphrase
turn on, tune in, drop out
1968 Dr Martin Luther King
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
1968 Student protests and riots across
Europe; USSR invades
Czechoslovakia
1968 Documenta IV art festival in
Kassel, Germany dominated by
American pop art and post-painterly
abstraction
1970 Germaine Greers The female
eunuch published

POPISM

At the end of the 1970s, a new generation of

artists revitalised pop arts strategy of
referencing and borrowing from popular and
consumer culture. They lived in a world now
saturated with images and could relate to pops
critique of originality and authenticity.
In 1982, the art historian and critic Paul Taylor
curated the exhibition Popism at the National
Gallery of Victoria, which profiled the rise of a
post-pop sensibility in Australia. It included
work by Juan Davila, Jenny Watson and Imants
Tillers, among others. The popists were
deeply engaged with the way images are used,
manipulated and spread through mass
reproduction, yet painting remained a key
means of expression.

Jeff Koons U S A 1955 Three ball 50/50 tank

(Spalding Dr JK Silver series) 1985 glass, steel,
distilled water, three basketballs Courtesy
Murderme Jeff Koons

In the early 1980s, Jeff Koons captured the

publics attention with his displays of banal,
everyday objects. The simple appearance of
Three ball 50/50 tank belies its symbolism: the
artist considers the basketballs as surrogates
for the self. Initially suspended in equilibrium,
they will eventually move and decay, reminding
us of the impermanent nature of happiness,
stability and, ultimately, life.
Koons deliberately references a sport often
used by urban, working-class youths as a path
for upward social mobility. His parallel message
is that the middle classes use art in much the
same way.

In New York and elsewhere, artists such as

Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince were
exploring these issues using photography.
They approached the seductive and alienating
effects of mass media images with notable
irony. Others referenced street culture (Keith
Haring) and suburbanism (Howard Arkley).
These practices owed a significant debt to
Andy Warhol and in a gesture of homage,
Taylor lifted the term popism from the title of
Warhols 1980 memoir about the sixties. Some
artists also acknowledged this legacy by citing
Warhols work or the history of pop art more
broadly.
1973 Hip hop and graffiti culture proliferates in
New York
1977 The Sex Pistols become poster boys for
the British punk movement
1981 Jean Baudrillard publishes Simulacra and
simulation, a seminal text on the relationships
between reality, signs and society
1981 The IBM Personal Computer is released
1984 Keith Haring paints murals in Sydney and
Melbourne
1985 Pop art 195570 exhibition tours the Art
Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria
and Queensland Art Gallery

QUESTIONS

Practice
Assess how Lichtensteins practice is affected by time.
(One page)

Conceptual Framework

Explain using Andy Warhols Marilyn Monroe 1976, how the relationships between the agencies can shape
the meaning of artworks.
(one page)

Subjective Frame

Discuss how Derek Boshiers Drinka Pinta Milka 1962 conveys his feelings about advertising to the
audience.
(Half page)

Structural Frame

Evaluate the signs and symbols used by Joe Tilson in Nine elements 1967.
(Half page)

Cultural Frame

Keith Haring made graffiti art in the New York City subway. His characters often look like they are moving
in time to the rhythm and sound of the city. Looking at his work Untitled 1982, explain what sounds/music
you think this creature is moving to?
(Half page)

Post Modern Frame

Outline how an artist and one of their artworks (of your choosing) exemplify the Post Modern frame.
(half/whole page)