Pop Art Final

IN AN EARLY DEFINITION

OF POP ART, WHICH OF

THE FOLLOWING

ADJECTIVES DOESN’T

BELONG:

GLAMOROUS

PERSONAL

YOUNG

BIG BUSINESS

Personal

LEO STEINBERG SAID

(AFTER VICTOR HUGO)

THAT ARTISTS DON’T

JUST MAKE NEW

THINGS, THEY CREATE A

NEW _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

Shudder

WHAT SUBJECT MATTER

IS TOM WESSELMANN

BEST KNOWN FOR?

‘The Great American Nude’

ALTHOUGH ROBERT

INDIANA IS MOST WELL

KNOWN FOR THE LOVE

SERIES, WHAT OTHER

TOPICS DID HE

INVESTIGATE?

The American Dream Series, Civil Rights Movement

NAME SOME OF THE

STATES REPRESENTED

IN INDIANA’S

“CONFEDERACY SERIES”.

Florida, Alabama, Mississippi

WHAT ARE THE

COLORED DOTS CALLED

THAT ARE USED TO

COLOR COMIC STRIPS

(WHICH LICHTENSTEIN

IMITATED)?

Ben-Day Dots

AS A COMMERCIAL

ILLUSTRATOR, WHAT

TECHNIQUE DID WARHOL

USE TO MAKE HIS

DRAWINGS LOOK MASS

PRODUCED?

Blotted Line Technique

AT THE FACTORY, WHICH

METHODS DID WARHOL

FAVOR?

Silkscreen

WHAT INSPIRED WARHOL

TO START MAKING

IMAGES IN THE “DEATH

AND DISASTER” SERIES?

The Media: Specifically the Tunafish Disasters, The Death of Marilyn Monroe, The Plane Crash

WHAT DO WE CALL THE

PRACTICE OF USING

PRE-EXISTING OBJECTS

OR IMAGES WITH LITTLE

TRANSFORMATION OF

THE ORIGINAL?

Appropriation

WHAT ADJECTIVE IS

OFTEN USED TO

DESCRIBE THE

APPROACH (AND SENSE

OF HUMOR) OF ARTISTS

SUCH AS WARHOL

AND ED RUSCHA ?

Deadpan

WHO MADE A WORK

THAT INVOKES

DUCHAMP’S FAMOUS

FOUNTAIN?

WHAT IS THE NAME OF

THE WORK?

Jim Dine, Black Bathroom # 2, 1962

WHAT WERE SOME OF

THE SUBJECTS OF

WARHOL’S EARLY FILMS?

Eating, The Screen Tests, Empire State Building, Kiss

WHAT WAS THE

EXPLODING PLASTIC

INEVITABLE?

The multi-media tour that Warhol organized that had the Velvet Underground

NAME THREE FEMALE

POP ARTISTS.

Martha Rosler, Rosalyn Drexler, Idelle Weber, May Stevens, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

WHO SAID “THE MEDIUM

IS THE MESSAGE”?

Marshall Mcluhan

Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948.

Oil and enamel paint on canvas, 173 x 264cm. MoMA, New York - AB EX

Richard Hamilton, Just What is it that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? 1956 ——-One of the first Pop Art works; collage using ads, comics, and home-magazine images to build a “perfect” modern living room.

Mark Rothko, (Untitled) Green on Maroon, 1961.

Oil on canvas. Thyssen Museum, Madrid.

Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, 1962.  —— A series of 32 canvases, each a different soup flavor; early Pop Art using an everyday product and advertising imagery.

Roy Lichtenstein, Woman in the Bath, 1963.
Oil and magna on canvas. 173.3 × 173.3 cm. Thyssen Museum, Madrid. ——- Comic-book style with Ben-Day dots, turning cheap print imagery into a large oil painting.

Leo Steinburg

A major 20th-century art critic who wrote influentially about Pop Art. He argued that Pop Art represents a new spectator experience and a new way artists relate to the viewer. He believed Pop creates a “new shudder” — a new perceptual reaction — rather than a traditional aesthetic experience.

Clement Greenberg

A hugely influential American art critic (mid-20th century) and the leading advocate of Modernist formalism. He championed Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and argued that each art form should purify itself by focusing on its essential qualities (flatness, color, surface).

What is Leo Steinberg’s central question about Pop Art?

Is it art?

If so, what defines it?

What is new about it?

He insists the value of Pop Art lies in the viewer’s response rather than traditional formal qualities.

What are Ben-Day dots?

Tiny colored dots used in cheap printing; Lichtenstein paints them by hand to mimic mass-printed comics.

Two beer cans cast in bronze; plays with high art material (bronze) and low object (beer). Origin story: someone said dealer Leo Castelli could sell “two beer cans as art,” so Johns made them.

Jasper Johns, Flag – He turns the U.S. flag into a thick encaustic painting with collage; plays with a national symbol and idea of the American Dream.

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955 – A real quilt, sheets, and pillow hung like a painting and splashed with drips; mixes Abstract Expressionist painting with found objects (between AbEx and Pop).

Warhol’s Car Crash / Death and Disaster works – Repeated news photos of car crashes, electric chairs, etc.; show how mass media repeats images of death until we feel numb.

Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962 – Repeated Marilyn Monroe headshot, bright on one side, fading on the other; about celebrity, mass reproduction, and death.

Warhol, Red Race Riot, 1963 – Repeated news photos of police attacking civil rights protesters; Pop Art engaging directly with race and politics.

Warhol’s studio in New York, covered in silver foil; a social and work space for silkscreens, films, and “screen tests.”

Idelle Weber, Munchkins I, II, and III – Silhouettes of suited office men on yellow escalator-like diagonals; comments on corporate culture and gender roles.

Martha Rosler, The House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home – Cleaning the Drapes – Collage showing a stylish house interior mixed with Vietnam War images; uses Pop-style collage to make an anti-war, feminist point.

Faith Ringgold, The Flag is Bleeding – Shows figures behind a bleeding flag; links patriotism to racial violence and civil rights struggles.

Edward Ruscha, Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire – A clean, almost architectural view of LACMA with part of the building on fire; cool Pop style plus critique/anxiety about art institutions. - Ruscha’s Ophelia

Vija Celmins, Time Magazine Cover – A Time magazine cover about the Los Angeles riots; repaints mass media coverage of violence in a careful, cool style.

Rosalyn Drexler, Is It True What They Say About Dixie? – Uses an image linked to Birmingham and Bull Connor’s police violence against civil rights protesters; Pop language used to critique racism.

Indiana, American Dream, I, 1961. Oil on canvas, MoMA, NY

Was Greenberg a fan of Pop Art?

No. He thought Pop Art slid back into kitsch and mixed art with mass culture in a bad way.

What does “medium specificity” mean?

Art should focus on what is unique to its medium. For painting: flatness, color, surface – not narrative or 3D illusion.

What Victor Hugo quote does Steinberg use?

“You create a new shudder” – meaning Pop Art gives us a new way of feeling and seeing.

How does Pop Art treat high and low art?

It mixes them – using low culture images in high art formats (large canvases, museums).

What is appropriation in Pop Art?

Taking existing images (ads, news photos, comics) and re-using them in art with little change.

Indiana, The Rebecca, 1962.

Jim Dine Black Bathroom #2, 1962 Oil with wash basin on canvas, 182.9 x 182.9 cm Art Gallery of Ontario

Sonny Assu, Leila’s Desk, 2013. Vintage 1930s school desk and soap.

Sonny Assu, The Breakfast Series, 2006

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Target, 1992 Mixed media on canvas (340.4 × 106.7 cm ) National Gallery of Art, Washington Purchased with funds from Emily and Mitch Rales

Jasper Johns Target with Four Faces, 1955 Encaustic on newspaper and cloth over canvas surmounted by four tinted-plaster faces in wood box with hinged front Overall, with box open, 33 5/8 x 26 x 3" (85.3 x 66 x 7.6 cm); canvas 26 x 26" (66 x 66 cm); box (closed) 3 3/4 x 26 x 3 1/2" (9.5 x 66 x 8.8 cm) MoMA, NYC