Pop Art
Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Home So Different, So Appealing? 1956, Collage.
Hamilton was also the designer of The Beatles' White Album cover. The Tootsie Pop lollipop is where Pop Art gets its name from. It's a term that was coined by Hamilton's friend (whose living room this is, by the way), John McHale in 1954. [Source: Warholstars' interview with John McHale, Page 3].Originally exhibited in the This Is Tomorrow exhibition at The White Chapel Gallery in London in 1956.
"When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect." -- Warhol [Guggenheim] Tom Wesselman, Great American Nude #57, 1964
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) Self-Portait, 1962
Warhol, Before and After #3, 1962
Warhol, Dick Tracy, 1960
Warhol, 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, 1961-62.
Warhol, Gold Marilyn, 1962
Warhol, Byzantine icon like the kind Warhol saw as a child (Saint George)
Warhol, Turquoise Marilyn, 1962
Warhol, Orange Disaster #5, 1963
Damien Hirst is exploring very similar issues in his work, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, at The Met until 2010.
Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963.
Original images taken in a photo booth with Warhol directing Ethel. This installation of 36 silkscreens suggests cinematic movement.Movement is a central aesthetic concern of 1960s pop art. European art in the Renaissance and baroque eras was fundamentally about movement, simulating the organic motion of human and animal bodies. In the American, and American-dominated, art of the 1960s, the most urgent subject matter was inorganic: things and, more specifically, things to buy. Pop art was concerned with shops, supermarkets, shelves, boxes, cans and bottles. It was about, as Warhol put it, "comics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles - all the great modern things". And yet it was not about them as mute objects. It was about their magical presence in the imagination, their fetishisation, their worship, the way that - just as the baroque artists painted saints so they seemed alive and human, and put tears on the face of a carved Christ - commodities, in the magic realm of their fetishism, seem alive. [Source: Jonathan Jones, "Objects of Desire: Art's Obsession with Shopping", The Guardian, Thursday December 12 2002.]
Volkswagen's Theory of Evolution Ad (showing models from 1949-1963), 1963.
This may be little more than serendipity that this ad appears to have the same seriality as some of Warhol's works. However, Warhol comes from the commercial art world, and there is a reciprocity between the fine art and commercial art worlds at this time. Advertising in this period is "younger" and moving into a completely new era, as the counterculture collides with commerce. VW seems to have led the way, as the company was known for its unusual and sometimes self-deprecating ads. More info and VW ads: here, and more info on the ad business in the 1960s here.Accompanying text beneath the full ad read:
Can you spot the Volkswagen with the fins? Or the one that's bigger? Or smaller? Or the one with the fancy chrome work?
You can't?
The reason you can't see any revolutionary design changes on our car is simple: there aren't any.
Now, can you spot the Volkswagen with the synchromesh first gear? Or the one with the more efficient heater? How about the one with the anti-sway bar? Or the more powerful engine?
You can't?
The reason you can't see most of our evolutionary changes is because we've made them deep down inside the car.
And that's our theory: never change the VW for the sake of change, only to make it better.
That's what keeps our car ahead of its time. And never out of style.
Even if you aren't driving the most evolved VW of all.
Our '63.
Included in the Myths Series (1981) are: characters loved by children, such as Mickey Mouse, Howdy Doody, Superman, Uncle Sam, Dracula, the Wicked Witch of the West, Santa Claus, the Shadow, Mammy, and the Star (Garbo). The only real person depicted in the series is Warhol himself, posing as The Shadow. The Myths Series characters all represent facets of Warhol who was known affectionately by his friends as Drella: part Dracula, part Cinderella. Myths Andy Warhol, Mona Lisa, 1963 (Silkscreen on linen)
According to Robert Indiana, Andy shot Eat in Indiana's studio in lower Manhattan on Sunday, February 2, 1964.
Robert Indiana, Love, 1976
Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes, multiples (1969)
Valerie Solanas - Society for Cutting Up Men (S.C.U.M.), 1968
Richard Avedon, Andy Warhol, NYC, 1969
Avedon, Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York City, May 6, 1957
Warhol, Mao, 1972
Warhol, Mao (scale), 1972
Warhol, Howdy Doody from the Myths Series, 1981
Warhol, Santa from the Myths Series, 1981
Uncle Sam from the Myths Series, 1981
Micky Mouse from the Myths Series, 1981
Roy Lichtenstein, American, 1923-1997
Lichtenstein, Crying Girl, 1963
Reginald Marsh, Spooks (Tunnel of Love), 1943
R. Crumb's Devil Girl
R. Crumb silk screen
R. Crumb's Mr. Natural
Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963
Lichtenstein, Vicki, 1964
Grrrrrrrrrrr!!, 1965
Lichtenstein, Big Painting, 1965-66
James Rosenquist, born in 1933
Rosenquist, Nomad, 1963
Rosenquist, F-111, 10 x 86', 1965 (detail)
Rosenquist, F-111, 10 x 86', 1965 (detail)
Rosenquist, F-111, 10 x 86', 1965 (detail)
Rosenquist, Paper Clip, 1974
