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Popular languages, then and now Theme of modern artists adapting to, responding to popular culture; circumventing elitism, engaging with pop Question: to what extent are these works critiquing consumption and to what extent are they celebrating it? Thomas Kincaid cheesy motifs of landscapes dramatic light contrasts—styled himself as a “painter of light” textured brushstroke canvas, printed on top, with highlighter painters desire for artist to be a creator, leave a trace of the hand true mass culture v. artworks? boundary blurry, difficult to maintain sold in limited (but significant) runs, some paintings up to 75k (!) Speaks to deep desire for uniqueness, originality, named painter (the mass production of his paintings speaks to the paradox of the Kincaidian system) What distinguishes Kincaid from Pop Art? Possibly a lack of reflection or self-consciousness on the part of the maker; lack of complexity Pop art usually refers to 1960s engagement with popular culture we’ll look at different ways art engages with popular culture in the 1960s and beyond Beyond visual contemplation How art reflects on popular culture and its relationship to high art tradition abstraction can reflect on popular taste engagement with consumerism Three themes: Participation art / service art both about direct engagement of the viewer American pop art European pop art (and influence of American pop culture) 1.1 Participation Art art as form of popular engagement engaging physically and educationally enhancing your awareness, pushing against visually passive contemplation of artworks and the world (cf., Russian Constructivism; Heartfield, Moholy Nagy, Rodchenko) Shift away from artist as sole creator. Visitors and viewers become participants not just in the reception of the work, but in its making. Artists begin to argue the work is only complete when it’s engaged with. Happenings Alan Kaprow coined the term. A happening was a “fluid line between art and life” Themes / materials from ‘anywhere but the arts’ Expansive spaces Involve movement, changing locales “variable, discontinuous time”? Singular/one-time performances (rel’p to performance art), didn’t want them recorded or repeated
Designed to have such an effect on a viewer that the viewer was “eliminated” => elimination of the audience (because audience = participant) collage element (locales stitched together). Collage influence also in materials real space, real objects — relates to Minimalism - push away from any sense of illusionism; viewer part of work Kaprow, Words , 1962 Sounds playing Room changed day-to-day Increasing “affect” of the artwork, increasing viewers’ involvement play - playful associative thinking Claes Oldenberg, The Store , 1961 price tags / objects for sale (the objects were made of shaped chicken wire covered in plaster and painted) produced in back of rented store space, sold in front: proximity between artistic production and the market Objects change their ontological status as they enter the market participation: visitors asked to contemplate buying defamiliarizing and enhancing consciousness humorous touch 39c price tag, 198.99 actual price logic of materialist accumulation scale increased, also captures logic of accumulation, the idea that “more is more” the more recent you get, the less the canon has established itself Nam Jun Paik and Lygia Clark, Beasts (Bichos), 1962 Machine-like kinetic sculptures of animals, sheets of metal with hinges haptic puzzle, move or flex in unpredictable ways objects unknowable by sight alone, challenging how much you can understand an object, playing with idea that art is not for touching parallax - pushing your perception - should be able to understand but doesn’t quite make sense participation is critical Nam Jun Paik, Participation TV, 1965 father of video art TVs increasingly popular Participatory: speaking into microphone and/or manipulating magnets would produce abstract shapes on the television television as image but also as sculptural object manipulate image on screen—not how TV usually works, viewer usually very passive —> the work makes them active, makes them reflect on their passiveness 1.2 Service art mid–late 90s serving food, producing design objects cf. Constructivism, Bauhaus Andrea Zittel, A-Z escape vehicles, 1996 strives to be the most radically popular immerse art in everyday life in literal, physical ways defines her art as providing services to people meant to be placed in homes as means of escape immersive, individualized interiors
can’t sell this painting because there’s a stuffed bald eagle (illegal to sell eagles) dispute over estate taxes! (Ileana Sonnabend’s estate) Sonnabend’s heirs claimed it was worth nothing, because they couldn’t sell it The IRS (or whoever) valued it for around $67 million (so the Sonnabends would have to pay $20+ million in taxes Problem solved by family donating the painting Factum I and II reflecting on and reacting to abstract painting, the myth of the heterosexual, white, male genius abstract painter influence of Willem de Kooning [n.b. Rauschenberg had purchased a de Kooning drawing and then erased it (rebelling, but also paying tribute)] bringing mass produced images into art - undermining idea of claim to uniqueness copies one of his paintings that already engages with mass produced images. Reproducing his own painting, the gestures plays with question of reproducibility, mass production, tension with the unique gesture of the hand. Are the precise differences important? Do the Facta comprise a work about reproducibility, emptiness, ridiculousness of individual artistic gestures? Or do they assert the unique nature of gesture? Andy Warhol 100 Campbell Soup Cans , 1962 Pop art questioning the value of uniqueness and invention as fundamental to art making sameness, seriality, mass production, consumer society found image monumentalizing (6ft tall canvas) silkscreen print - paint pushes through silk screens paint goes through slightly different each time you print working with mass reproduction, but ambivalent regarding originality plays with scale can you produce artworks where you make no choices at all? Thomas Crow next week inherently ambivalent nature of pop art vis a vis mass media Warhol exaggerates mass media and its spectacle culture Orange Car Crash screenprint Image of car crash reproduced 14 times—numbs our sensitivities to horrible event ambivalent title (Orange + Car Crash seem to clash in meaning) reflecting on nature of illusionism, problematizing the nature of representation in mass media includes empty / blank canvas. become haunting in context of representation of death Gold Marilyn Monroe cf. byzantine art (gold background) painted right after her death turning her into an icon paradoxes of mass media, ability to repeat endlessly
tension between heroic icons and anonymity people argue that Warhol is critical of mass media Warhol is working through paradoxes of mass media and what it means to have art engage with mass media Dollar bills Two-Dollar Bill pop art, art market American art market and NY art world take off - moving from Europe into US high art becomes a commodity (gets really out of control in the 1960s) Warhol reflecting on the commodification of art
3. European pop art ambivalent engagement with influx of American consumerism, culture Stronger reflection on the general population’s striving for and desire for consumerism and elevated life standards in the context of reconstruction after WWII Cold War - stuff coming in from US Marshall Plan postwar economic miracle - striving for consumerism and better life standards after devastation of war Sense of progressiveness in the mass production and consumption of goods (particularly in contrast to Soviet context) shift from nothingness to plenty was hard to process British pop 1958, ‘arts and mass media’ Hamilton, “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so appealing, so different?” emblem of British / euro pop-art Packed with references to: sex technology entertainment and mass media consumerism and advertising American popular culture as a way of bettering life for everybody (democratic, accessible form of communication, as opposed to ‘Art’ and elitism). surprising embrace of American culture, but also rebelling against their own culture - British culture as regional, conservative, left behind German pop concerned less with US consumerism, than with middle class consumption, all in the context of the “economic miracle” middle-class pride in homemaking, in the reconstruction of cities from the rubble of war Richter/Lueg, Demonstration for Capitalist Realism , 1963 happening rented furniture department store, declared the whole thing an artwork put furniture on pedestals, but also then sit on it - idea of showing off with your furniture, the identity you project also creating life-size papier mâché likenesses of important dealers in the German art world sitting there complacently - complacency of leisure culture “Capitalist realism”
combining shock for attention // existentialist profundity. Bringing these two far extremes together Hirst, Some Comfort Gained in the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything preserved animals - thinking about life, existence, being, mortality processing death is impossible, can only do it in detached way, resort to amusement, disgust, sanitariness. Effort to contain, but inability to control fear of death Elizabeth Peyton, Kurt , 1995 representational painting still happening representation as highly accessible, popular drawn to popular motifs, stars and icons (here, Kurt Cobain) fragility - right after Cobain’s suicide bringing icons back down to. human realm Gursky dress and Morimura dress Dialogue between fashion and pop art Aitken, Electric Earth, 1999 proliferation of music videos, styles that music videos bring to fore in filmmaking. Fast cuts, luminosity also directed music videos and commercials spatial installation, immersive artwork (early for this) no story to these films but rather a motif — character roaming around LA airport voice over reflecting on present-ness, immersive-ness, and boundaries blurring between real world and illusionism
