When I was younger, I was a lot more enthralled with Pop Art. I was - for a start - much closer to it time-wise as well as having been in NYC in the 1970s, a stone's throw from where this action was allegedly going on. There were plenty of artists enabled by the industrial possibility of art doing wild and whacky things and all these galleries I got taken to as a pre-teen was packed with modern art that didn't look like what was supposed to be, being painted. The Guggenheim was filled with art that would make you read the title and giggle. It was a time and place in history that I was most fortunate to have been exposed to as a kid.
So I was always a big fan of Pop Art in principle; Just as Roy Lichtenstein adopted comic books, The Who adopted Pop Art in theory and operation, I had an instantly workable framework from where to start my thinking on art. It put a handle on art through recognisable image genres. You could walk into art through Pop Art, not just sneak in but walk right in like you belonged.
With all that in mind, this is a wonderful exhibition that finally shows just how bankrupt those ideas were. This is an expertly curated assembly of junk culture detritus which itself was more curated than it was created. It is a soul-destroying exhibition - one which revealed once and for all the Emperor of High Art wore no clothes and may have even been dead on the throne for a very long time.
What's Good About It
It's a far reaching survey of the important artists in Pop Art. The jewels in the crown are obviously the Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein works with other recognisable names such as Rauschenberg and Hockney to round out the more famous names. It also includes closer practitioners such as Colin Lancely as well as the descendant artists like Cindy Sherman which contextualises the whole impact of the movement.
It is informative and well thought out in terms of lay out as it guides you through the history. The works are undoubtedly representative of the movement from all parts of the epoch. It is kid-friendly, art-friendly, and so well annotated, it leaves few questions.
What's Bad About It
Maybe it's a little too reverential. Certainly judging from the content, it was hardly worth the reverence afforded to it.
Also, if you look at the works not produced by the famous people, there's a lot of immensely ugly art hanging around. It's a great way to see some truly awful art, hanging in the AGNSW like it's meaningful to our civilisation. It doesn't take long to figure out that one would be misguided in thinking that these are even remotely meaningful as a Picasso or a Pollock.
What's Interesting About It
Pop Art, as it is narrativised is the story of how Artists and the consumers of High Art simply gave up in the flood of industrial images. It's not coincidental that the term graphic design came to prominence around the time Pop Art found its break through. Commercial and industrial artist and designers found their footing in the world of industrial production of things, just a the 'High Art' artists saw the train leave, leaving them behind stranded.
So instead of selling technique or aesthetic insight, a whole bunch of artists took to raiding the fruits of commercial and industrial art and sold it back to the privileged as 'Art'. Truth be told, somebody did the graphic design of the Campbell soup can for Campbell's soup; but we do not readily recall that name. Instead, Andy Warhol sold the graphic design right back to the capitalist establishment, raising it to High Art. Lichtenstein similarly raided the larder of commercial artists drawing comic books and re-couched that as 'High Art', effectively selling the merchandise right back at the people who owned the capital markets that owned the enterprises.
The point is, this can be understood as what 'sampling' was to music, obscuring the first order creativity to celebrate the second order creative act. Other people call this theft, but we'll skip this discussion for now. In this exhibition, Pop Art reveals itself as the first Post-Modern art movement that won over the market for 'High Art'. All the while this was happening, it was dressing itself up in the language of Modernism and successor to various movements before but even that can now be understood to be a kind of parody of such language which for the sake of salesmanship, got co-opted.
The subsequent critiques of these works fed an entire industry of art criticism. What becomes very apparent in this exhibition is that the language of criticism is in of itself a kind of shroud that hides the meaning. The bleeding obvious in this show is that American capitalism is invasive, exploitative, pleasurable and devoid of philosophical depth. You can readily give yourself to it because on some level it just doesn't mean anything.
Thus, when subsequent artists quote the vernacular of Warhol and Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg, it is literally 'pop eating itself'. As the exhibition comes to its closing stages putting Popism on display, they show works by Cindy Sherman which underscores the aporia and narcissism of artist-as-art-object, while Maria Kozic's 'Masterpieces' merely echoes the original Soup Can painting but claims to be the post-modern reply. The joke is that the Post Modern commentary is already implicit in the prior Warhol work, so the commentary work merely exists as a redundant raspberry. It's not exactly edifying - but somebody paid great money for this work.
I Know This Is Bolshy But...
The series of Campbell Soup prints are not the original 1962 versions. They're a set that Warhol reissued in 1968. Clearly he did it for the money. Clearly they're not the very same important Campbell Soup Cans, they're replicas/forgeries that have the single distinguishing benefit of being made by the artist himself.
So who owns these Soup Can prints? Channel Seven owner Kerry Stokes. Think about that for a moment. An Australian billionaire went and blew some money on High Art, and he bought the wrong ones. But that is exactly why Warhol did the reissue - so some unsuspecting idiot billionaire could fork out money for them and feel like they understand art or are somehow more philanthropic. Or feel something-anything.
But this is what you get when you read labels, about prints of soup cans no less.
Marilyn Ad Infinitum
The famous Marilyn Monroe screen prints were included in this exhibition. Then there are the other works, which reference the Monroe screen prints. Of course the screen prints come from a photo that Andy Warhol himself did not take. However he was willing to infinitely expand upon her face as a found image and mass produce images based upon it. The importance of Marilyn to Pop Art culminates in the 'Eyesight to the Blind' scene in the film version of 'Tommy' where there is a church dedicated to a giant idol of Marilyn in her 'Seven Year Itch' pose, holding down her skirt above the railway vent.
The weird thing about this amplification of her visage is that if you really want to understand Marilyn Monroe, you'd be better off watching the oeuvre of her films. The proliferation of the face thanks to Warhol and Pop Art and all the subsequent referencing does not begin to form a metonymy for the actress. It's a weird kind of a co-opting of a face, to then load it up with a vacant consumerist dream. Somehow this time through, seeing all the Marilyn-images rammed home the point that the exploitation of her image is quite gratuitous.
It's nice that Andy Warhol sort of immortalised a single image of Marilyn Monroe for the High Art crowd. Her own actual work immortalises her much better. Watch her films instead - it will make you happier. It's nice that Roy Lichtenstein raises comic book art for the High Art crowd to consume. If you really want to enjoy such images, just read comic books - you'll be much happier for it. Lichtenstein's work is actually redundant except to ratify this stuff for a select crowd of moneyed bourgeoisie. Rock music doesn't need Warhol to validate it through enlisting the Velvet Underground. Go listen to a real rock band - listen to 'The Who: Live at Leeds' instead. You'll be much happier for it.
And that, is the ultimate failure of Pop Art as capital -'A' Art. It's just not as good as the stuff from which it chooses to raid and pilfer, and then ruins it by abstracting the meaning out of it. It's so wilfully dumb, it's infuriating.
Oh and Martin Sharp's 'Jimi Hendrix' gets it so wrong. Jimi was a left hander, a southpaw. How could he have shared that time and space, and heard the music, and get that wrong? It sums up the shallowness of Pop Art.
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