March Issue 2001
Introduction
by Shamim M. Momin, Assistant Curator, Touring Exhibitions Program, at the Whitney Museum of American Art
The 1960s was a decade of great change and contradiction - social, political, economic, and artistic. On the one hand, the postwar American economy was thrilling, as evidenced by the unprecedented explosion of commercial culture, exemplified by the proliferation of new consumer products and visual media. On the other, resistance to commercial culture was emerging with the birth of the counterculture movement, which railed against what was felt to be a misguided notion of progress and looked instead to a nostalgic and even mythical ideal of the past, expressed in the hippie lifestyle. Politically, America had begun to assert itself as a leading world power and had advertised the guaranteed freedoms of its citizens as evidence of its "more Perfect Union." But at the same time, awareness of the civil and human rights abuses suffered by increasingly vocal minorities inspired resistance movements, revolutionary political groups, and public manifestations of discontent that defied the status quo.
As both interpreters and products of their time, artists mined these contradictory and tumultuous cultural forces, Pop Art has been characterized as a movement that took its cues from popular culture - the slick, new commodities, the flashy graphics of advertising, and the crassness of consumerism. Defining themselves against the ubiquity of Abstract Expressionism, Pop artists re-introduced recognizable subjects, represented mass-produced objects, and incorporated the materials and processes of mass production into their work, These artists treasured a deadpan literalness and an appearance of uninvolved, disinterested objectivity, distinct from the perceived heroic posturing of the Abstract Expressionists.
Incorporating a range of approaches and influences, Pop Art was just as complex and multilayered as the society from which it arose. Pop Impact! From John to Warhol investigates often overlooked aspects of the movement by tracing its development from proto-POP tendencies in works by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg to icons of Pop by James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol. It also incorporates work by artists such as Marisol and George Segal, that is commonly included under the Pop umbrella, but that nevertheless troubles the standard definitions. Similarly, the essays in this publication investigate the enormous resonance of Pop Art by approaching the subject from different perspectives. Pop Art and the Found Object looks to art historical sources to understand one significant aspect of Pop's aesthetic, while Visual Inflation examines the purpose and effect of size and subject matter to explicate another. Shades of Cool explores the presence of the personal and the narrative as an aspect of, rather than as a counterpoint to, definitive works of Pop Art, while Domestic Bliss reads the effect of 1950s domestic culture in the critical approaches of these artists. Finally, Car Culture and Objects of Desire examine the influence on Pop Art of the drastic changes in American consumer society in the post war era. Paralleling the exhibition itself, these texts offer multiple viewpoints on one of the roost significant artistic endeavors of this century.
For a copy of the exhibition catalogue contact the Columbia Museum of Art at 803/799-2810 or on the web at (http://www.colmusart.org).
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