Mid Modern Exhibit

 POP!... Art 

    Pop art emerged in reaction to consumerism, mass media, and popular culture. This POPular movement surfaced in the 1950's and gained major momentum throughout the 60's. Pop art transitioned away from the theory and methods used in Abstract Expressionism, which was previously the leading art movement. Instead, it drew upon everyday objects and media like newspapers, comic books, magazines, and other mundane objects to produce vibrant compositions, establishing the movement as a cornerstone of contemporary art. Pop art began in the mid 1950's in Britain by a group of painters, sculptors, writers, and critics called the Independent Group, and it spread soon after into the United States. Much of the movement’s roots were prompted by a cultural revolution led by activists, thinkers, and artists who aimed to restructure a social order ruled by conformity during this time. Pop art is easily recognizable due to its vibrancy and unique characteristics that are present in many of the most iconic works of the movement. I chose six different artworks from three separate artists to introduce to you the bold and fascinating works of Pop art. 

Andy Warhol 

    The most famous and iconic Pop artist, Warhol expanded on this idea of capturing a type of visual ‘noise,’ using repetition of familiar images to represent a de-sensitization to the images we see in the media. His subject matter came from mass-culture imagery, like advertisements, newspapers, comic strips, television, and celebrities of all types. By using second-hand images of consumer products and famous people, Warhol was fascinated by the ordinary and used his art to make the ordinary interesting. Through his most famous series, Campbell’s Soup Cans, where he paints each individual type of Campbell’s soup can, Warhol presents the aesthetic of mass-production as a reflection of contemporary American culture.

Campbell's Soup Box (Chicken Rice) and Gold Marilyn Monroe

    Warhol painted Campbell's Soup Box (Chicken Rice) in 1986 using synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas. Regarding his Campbell's Soup Cans series, he said, "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good.” 


    I chose Campbell's Soup Box (Chicken Rice) to include in my exhibit on Pop art because Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans series proves to be timeless and influential for this era and style of art. This painting showcases quite a few vibrant, familiar colors, along with fun, decorative shapes. The red and white of the box are familiar with the Campbell's brand, and I love that he used a darker shade of red to contrast the lighter red. I feel that it helps add some dimension to the painted box. There are hints of blue used here too, very subtle but noticeable, which I appreciate. My favorite part of this painting is Warhol's use of thin, white, odd shapes painted in with the rice in the spoon. This adds a little dramatization and appeal to the food presented front and center to its viewers. I find Campbell's Soup Box (Chicken Rice) extremely comforting and enjoyable to look at. I grew up on various kinds of Campbell's soups, so this painting is quite nostalgic for me. I could see myself owning prints of the whole series and hanging them up in my kitchen. 

Gold Marilyn Monroe  

    Warhol further plays on the idea of iconography with Gold Marilyn Monroe by placing Marilyn's face on a very large, golden colored background. The background is reminiscent of Byzantine religious icons that are the central focus in Orthodox faiths to this day, but instead of a God, we are looking at an image of a woman that rose to fame and died in horrible tragedy. Warhol subtly comments on our society, and its glorification of celebrities to the level of the divine. Here again the Pop artist uses common objects and images to make very pointed insights into the values and surroundings of his contemporaries. After Monroe's tragic death, Warhol began a series of paintings to pay tribute to the actress, singer, and model. 


    Gold Marilyn Monroe was painted in 1962 with silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on a canvas. Warhol took Monroe as his subject in different mediums, silkscreening the actress’s image multiple times in a grid in bright colors and in black and white. By repeating Monroe’s image over and over again, Warhol acknowledged his own fascination with a society in which personas could be manufactured, commodified, and consumed like products. I really enjoy the use of vibrant pink, teal, and yellow used for Monroe. These colors wildly stand out on the gold background. I believe Warhol used the color gold as the background behind Monroe to symbolize wealth, extravagance, and success. The use of vibrant teal for her eyeshadow and clothing really help her stand out even more, especially against her pale, pink skin. If it weren't for the teal, I feel that this painting would be a little too dreary for my liking. The dark shadows against her cheek and ripples of her hair help add dimension and reality to the painting. I could honestly see my mom owning this and hanging it up in her bathroom or laundry room. She likes Marilyn Monroe. 

Keith Haring 

    Later on in the 1970-1980's, Keith Haring emerged and progressed the important role Pop art had on not only the art world, but in the social atmosphere as well. Known also for his activism, he used his art to promote awareness of AIDS, which he himself died from at the early age of 31. Haring created a unique style of graffiti drawings on the subways and sidewalks of New York City. By combining a cartoonish style with raw energy, he developed a very specific pop-graffiti style focused on bold, yet fluid, outlines against a crowded but rhythmic background of imagery and symbols.  His subjects often included figures such as dancing people, barking dogs, flying saucers, and people with TVs as heads. 

Safe Sex and Ignorance = Fear

    Haring produced work that was both intense and explicit around sex and sexuality. He was quickly noticed as an artist for the realism of his perception of the body and sexuality. Haring found the means of affirming his pride in being gay through the homo-erotic character of his works. His determination to fully incorporate his homosexuality as one of the indissoluble facets of his art, in spite of the homophobia and oppression that many of his predecessors suffered through, was the component triggering a huge movement in which artists no longer held back from positively expressing their homosexuality in their art.
 

    Safe Sex was painted in 1988 with acrylic on a canvas. I thoroughly enjoy this painting! I am a dedicated ally to the LGBTQ+ community, and I'm very happy that I was able to stumble upon Haring and his legacy and I'm even happier that I get to share it with you all. The colors and shapes used in this painting are incredibly theatrical and fun. The bold title with the depiction of two men performing sexual acts successfully delivers the point Haring was trying to make with this. The small, red dots that are filling in the men's figures make this painting a little more playful than erotic. Same with the green X's marked over where their faces would be. The white squiggly lines surrounding the two men implies movement between them, which I think is genius. It helps add to the illusion of what is being depicted while giving it some reality. I could see a woke indie coffee shop owning this with other various Pop artworks lining the walls. 

Ignorance = Fear 



    Following Haring's political activism and fight for awareness, he also created the street poster, Ignorance = Fear in 1989. This iconic poster delivers a memorable slogan while also starting conversation on the devastation of AIDS striking the LGBTQ+ community. What I really enjoy about this poster is the covering of the eyes, ears, and mouth depicted within the three people shown. It symbolizes the pure ignorance of society refusing to address the elephant in the room. Similar with Safe Sex, Haring uses the same squiggly lines to imitate movement between the people. I feel that it adds more dramatization to the overall dramatic and bold poster. I feel like the use of simple, solid colors make this poster really pop and grab the audience's attention. It's simple to look at, but the message itself is much deeper and bigger, and I appreciate that about this poster. I really enjoy Ignorance = Fear and I feel that even though today's society is more accepting and open to homosexuality, it's still very relevant and true.

Roy Lichtenstein

    Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was one of the most influential and innovative artists of the Pop art movement. His paintings were based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction. These paintings reinvigorated the American art scene and altered the history of modern art.  

The Drowning Girl and Look Mickey

     Lichtenstein grounded his career in imitation, beginning by appropriating images from advertisements and comic books in the early 1960s. The source for his painting, Drowning Girl, is “Run for Love!,” the melodramatic lead story of Secret Love #83, a DC Comics comic book from 1962. Explaining his appeal to comic books, Lichtenstein said, "I was very excited about, and interested in, the highly emotional content yet detached, impersonal handling of love, hate, war, etc. in these cartoon images.”


        I'm not too familiar with comic book work like Drowning Girl, but I have quickly grown to love it. Drowning Girl was painted in 1963 with oil and synthetic polymer paint on a canvas. Comical, liberating, angst-y, tragic, and more come to mind when I study this painting. Right away, this painting grabbed my attention by the bubbled sentence she is thinking. I love an independent woman! The color in this painting is overall very dull and lifeless, but the vibrant royal blue in her hair bring attention and appeal to the woman. What I really like about this painting is the dramatic water engulfing her. At first, it seems that she's displaced in a body of water, out in the middle of nowhere. However, the water that she is about to sink in are her own tears. You can tell that from the shape of forming tears under her eyes. This realization adds much more drama and tragicness to the painting. Brad must've done something incredibly hurtful and wrong to her, causing the endless streams of tears that she is going to figuratively sink in. Boo Brad! I wouldn't own this painting because it doesn't go well with my aesthetic, but I can definitely see this being in a tattoo parlor! 

Look Mickey

 


    Carrying on Litchenstein's comic book style, Look Mickey was painted in 1961 with oil on a canvas. Look Mickey represents the first time Litchenstein directly transposed a scene and a style from a source of popular culture, the 1960 children’s book Donald Duck: Lost and Found. This painting is super comical and mischievous, I love it! Mickey Mouse has a soft spot in my heart because I have an amazing dog named Mickey, and he has a Mickey Mouse toy that he loves very much. What I love most about this painting is the depiction of Mickey and Donald, who are traditionally innocent cartoon characters for children. Knowing Mickey's character, he wouldn't necessarily act this mischievous towards his friends, which is why I enjoy this painting so much.  The bright and bold colors used are playful and fun to look at. I really enjoy Look Mickey because it provides a sense of nostalgia and comfort for me. 

Reflection

    Pop art elevated interest in and value of graphic art, printmaking, artistic repetition, and pattern making. The subject matter became far from traditional art themes of morality, mythology, and classic history, while instead, Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial images, Pop art has become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art and influences many art, including structures and house decor. 

Sources 

"The History and Evolution of Pop Art" Heritage Auctions. March 16, 2019. https://blog.ha.com/2019/03/the-history-and-evolution-of-pop-art/

"Gold Marilyn Monroe" MoMaLearning. MoMa, 2006. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/about.html 

"Safe Sex, 1988" The Keith Haring Foundation. Haring, 2020. https://www.haring.com/!/art-work/604

"Keith Haring's Ignorance = Fear: Political Activism" Art and Design. The Guardian, August 23, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/aug/23/keith-haring-ignorance-equals-fear


"Look Mickey, 1961" Roy Lichtenstein. National Gallery of Art, 2020. https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/lichtenstein-look-mickey.html





Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 24, 2020 at 6:30 PM

    I've never been a fan of Andy Warhol, perhaps it's because I can't understand his artistic vision, or perhaps because (at least to me) his artwork mirrors his drug and alcohol addictions. I don't appreciate the less realistic or unnatural colors he uses to portray natural things. As far as Haring's work is concerned, I know I've seen several of his pieces throughout my lifetime and I sincerely appreciate his comfortability in depicting the more taboo nature of his sexual orientation—we have seen so much art throughout the course of this semester that depicts the naked form in terms of a heterosexual and even Christian viewpoint—piety and shame when it comes to the human form. I like the unashamed depiction of the homo-erotic being used to bring attention to a terrible disease that primarily afflicts homosexuals. I really like the fact that you combined all three of these artists to illustrate the style of pop art! The theme you chose was incredibly interesting and I learned a lot about all three of these artists, two of which I didn't know by name, but all three that I had viewed work by before. It's intriguing that pop art continues in some fashion through today; it's interesting being a part of the art community and seeing my peers experiment with this (pop) art style.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownNovember 30, 2020 at 12:52 AM

    Chandler,

    Wonderful blog post. I really liked Pop Art while I was learning about it in this course. It was very iconic and I just overall like the style. My favorite work that you chose was The Golden Marylin By Andy Warhol. I really liked how Warhol depicted Marilyn Monroe, especially after she died. I really enjoy looking at the gold background in contrast with Marylin’s pink face.

    The second work that I really enjoyed in you blog was Safe Sex I really liked that you chose to discuss this work. It is an interesting piece and I find what it stands for important. I really like the art element of color and how each aspect of this work seems to stand out.

    The one work that I did not particularly like was the Cambell’s Soup Box (Chicken Rice). I just really do not fully understand why Warhol decided to do a whole collection of soup cans and it blows my mind that they became so famous!

    Overall, I really enjoyed your post. It was informative, expressive, and fun! I can’t wait to read your next one.

    ReplyDelete

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