'Pop To Popism' - AGNSW

The Expertly Polished Turd

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.

Picasso At The AGNSW

Picasso's Picasso

As best as I can tell, the current show touring Australia from Paris is based on the collection Pablo Picasso owned of his own work at the time of his death. In other words, these are the works he liked so much, with which he would not part. As such, it offers an entirely different sort of entry point to most collections of Picasso works that are extant. I've seen the Guggenheim collection and the Norton Simon Museum collection and over the years there have been some others that have come through town so even if I can't claim to understand Picasso's work, I have a good level of prior experience of seeing his work.

In one sense, it's a Picasso exhibition that's mostly curated by Picasso himself.

What's Good About It

The outstanding thing about this collection is that it covers a great deal of his career, so there's almost something from just about every period of his career. Each room is contextualised around a part of Picasso's life, and so you get a better feel for how he developed his style and vision through his life. In that sense, this is a fine collection that allows you into the mindset of the creator, much more than other collections of Picasso, although I must admit I have not seen the big collection in Spain.

There is a wide range of works, covering small sketches and paintings through to larger canvases and sculptures. I'd seen the book of the exhibition about a month ago when I got drawn into an argument about the greatness of Picasso, but when I saw the whole exhibition it made more sense than the book.

What's Bad About It

Some of the rooms are dark. You don't really get a good sense of colours in some instances and in with some sketches, you're squinting to get a sense of contrast. You get a little booklet where they explain the rooms and the period of Picasso's life, but it still feels somewhat under-explained. I don't know if the onus is on the curator for something like this, but it did seem sparse in parts.

What's Interesting About It

When you see this series of works, some of his favorite objects and motifs begin to leap out at you. For instance, he really liked guitars, and other fretted instruments like mandolins and lutes. There are two sculptures that ostensibly are representations of guitars and it is actually quite interesting how he deconstructs the guitar into abstract art. You get the feeling that Picasso spent a lifetime tangling with the guitar - possibly because he was a Spaniard to the end - and he kept trying to capture something about the guitar that drew him in.

He also liked animals, for they make frequent appearances in his works. Bulls and Minotaurs are famous; as is the dove of peace he designed for the United Nations; but in this exhibit we're introduced to goats and goat's heads and goat's skulls quite a bit. Clearly he liked women a lot, but it's surprising just how much he liked abstracting the lines of animals.

As for the women, this is perhaps the only Picasso exhibition that offers insight into who these women were to Picasso. He kept paintings of these women long after they were out his life. He'd managed to abstract them as well as capture them and perhaps he didn't need them any more. There's clearly something predatory and unrelenting about Picasso's pursuit of these women and on to the canvas. And no matter how much he abstracted their faces, he really liked lining up the pair of nipples and breasts properly. he wasn't about to start abstracting "tits and arse".

"The Greatness of Picasso" Arguments

We've all been there. Confronted with the mass of Picasso's work, somebody always pipes up and says they don't think Picasso is that great. You can even hear that person as you walk through the exhibit, and they bloody well mean it because they say in a whisper that is inevitably heard by everybody in the room. We get int these arguments any time somebody decides the abstracted lines are simply crap, and not good descriptive art. You hear the argument that if Picasso could draw and paint as well as he could, then why didn't he go off the rails so much? And why do critics think this is so great.

My humble opinion is simply this: Picasso got bored easily. And to the extent that he got bored, he decided he was only going to paint or sculpt or draw what interested him and kept his interest. There is one particular back-to-the-classicism painting of Olga, with the background unfinished. Clearly he was interested in Olga, and painting her with sufficient fidelity, but when it came to filling in the background, he couldn't bring himself to do it, but kept the unfinished canvas. It's obvious - without ascribing motive, hopefully - that he simply chose not to fill in the background, and moved right along to the next thing. While the reason is unknown, my best guess is that he got bored.

All these developments he made such as cubism appear to be a desire to abstract shadow from form, form from subject, lines from outlines and image from perspective. The reason Picasso painted these funny mixed up faces was because he wanted to paint lines that he liked from the face at certain angles, but for them to all be there at once. To me, this is self-evident; but I have no hope of convincing you of this insight if you disagreed.

In as much as there is so much of Picasso's work in this world, I imagine there is a powerful legion of critics who still question whether Picasso was a genius or not. The thing about going through the gallery looking at this exhibition is that in the very least, Picasso was an inventive artist, forever trying a new way to express something. He did not fear failure the way a perfectionist does; and to that extent he was a lot more free than most people would imagine.

I for one do not think Picasso's works is for everybody. It's not going to convince everybody, unlike say, the voice of Pavarotti or Shakespeare's plays. It's probably sacrilege to say this but I don't think everything he did has a wide appeal. Yet, if you look at a lot his works in one spot and spend the time to carefully observe the lines and shapes he painted and sculpted, you begin to get a sense for what defines his style, as well as why that might be so.  I can't - and won't - claim to understand all of his work but I will venture that based on this exhibition, there's something of Picasso that I do grok.