Pop art

Pop art was a visual artistic movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in England and later in the United States. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so. However, much pop art is now considered very academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult for some to comprehend.

Origin of the term "pop art"

The term was not coined in 1958 by British critic Laurence Alloway as many art historians have asserted. Lawrence Alloway clearly stated in his 1966 article that he did not use the term POP art in his earlier 1958 article The Arts As Mass Media. The concept of POP art was originally developed by the British Modern Artist John McHale, with some assistance from his friend Frank Cordell who was a leading composer and film musician well versed in the commercial popular media in Britain. John McHale coined the specific term "POP Art" in an ongoing conversation with Lawrence Alloway in London circa 1954.

The original concept of POP Art had nothing to do with a response to works by Richard Hamilton. The concept of POP Art as McHale developed it first emerged out of his experience in post war Paris where he met the Dadaist Tristan Tzara and was also exposed to Surrealism and Cubism and the leading French Existentialist writers, Symbolists, and the design ideas of Corbusier.Back in England at Nelson Teachers College in the 1940's McHale became aware of the Logical Positivists, and the Bauhaus movement. McHale then became involved with the ICA at its inception,around 1951. He introduced Alloway to the ICA and they both met Paolozzi and Reyner Banham and became firm friends. McHale was also befriended by Roland Penrose who provided him access to his extensive private collection of Surrealist collages. McHale and Alloway had been friends since the late 1940's and they would often meet at McHale's studio at #8 Randolph Mews in Maida Vale to discuss aesthetics and film theory. Turnbull often dropped by the studio, as did Albert Tucker the influential Australian artist and theorist and famous "Angry Penguin". It was out of this milieu that McHale evolved his Pop art ideas.

McHale was raised in a Left Wing Labour Union background in Glasgow and he carried some of this approach over into his developemnt of his early POP art ideas. It was initially intended to confront the exiting hierachic attitudes toward so called High and Low art, and the need to examine the logical inconsistencies in dominant art modes. From there McHale's critique went on to posit art as a continuum, and Alloway later gave a talk on this topic at the ICA. Some of the Bauhaus theories along with Reyner Banham's ideas on the machine aesthetic, and Innes and McLuhan's notions of the medium is the message also got incorporated into McHale's early notions of Pop art relating to mass access and production of art forms such as films, media and printed material. McHale produced several very early POP art collages in 1954 that are crammed full of Pop Art material such as his Transitor series, now on loan to the TATE, which actually includes a fragment of a comic with dialogue along with numerous press clippings relating to his wartime experience as a Royal Marine. McHale produced his re-programmable decision tree gaming collage Why I Took to Luxury Flats, 1954, that is also full of POP art imagery. Some of the same themes and similar images in McHale's Luxury Flats collage show up in his later design of the Pop art poster for the TIT which Richard Hamilton erroneously has assumed credit for over the years.McHale categorically stated when he was still alive that Hamilton was given access to McHale's trunk in his private studio along with all the collage material and measured design produced by McHale for the collage and it was made available to both Richard and Terry Hamilton. Therefore, Richard Hamilton did not design the POP art collage for the TIT he merely cut out and pasted the visuals down based on McHale's original design and imagery with the assistance of his wife and Magda Cordell McHale. There is no documented evidence of Hamilton producing any POP art collage material prior to the TIT, whereas there are definitely several POP Art works by McHale's starting in 1954. Contrary to Hamilton's assertion in the TATE #4 article, the fact is McHale produced and designed most of the POP art items installed at the TIT.When Hamilton claims he took a few ideas from John he is neglecting to mention that Hamilton had very little to do with the design or provison of the POP Art for the TIT. This is clearly documented in the Aesthetics of Pleanty by Robbins, and later confirmed by Magda Cordell McHale who assited John McHale with the installation at the TIT and was well aware of Hamilton's negligible contribution to the POP art intallation at the TIT . Most of the POP art were requested by McHale and accessed by his friend Frank Cordell from his extensive media contacts. These POP Art items at the TIT specifically requested by McHale included: Robby the Robot;the Marilyn Monroe poster; the Marlon Brando Poster; the can can dancer poster; the large Guinness beer bottles;the Van Gogh Sunflowers painting poster;the Juke Box with an endless free assortment of Pop music;the Duchamp rotor disks; the design of the large POP art mural collage behind the Juke box;the film projector with the endlees loop of film depicting the Royal Navy Fleet at sea that McHale served in during the war; McHale designed the interactive 3-D collage spaceship module, and the design of the Space theme installation. McHale also designed and produced the Op art dazzle pannels positioned at the portals to the TIT that were influenced by Albers at Yale and British Vortists. Frank Cordell on his own initiative installed the first British "happening" with an electronic amplifier and microphone that provided cybernetic feedback of the ambient audience sounds at the TIT.

Based on McHale's Pop art theories and prior design direction for the TIT Richard Hamilton several months later after the TIT is alleged to have written an unsent letter to the Smithsons where he lists some of the attributes without detailing the theory of Pop Art - "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business".

Pop art in Britain

The Independent Group who met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from 1952 included key figures in the development of Pop art,John McHale, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi had begun to make collages using imagery from American magazines in 1947 but stated that this was more influenced by his interest in Surrealism than popular culture. McHale had met Tzara and Marcel Duchamp, and had developed and coined the term Pop art and exhibited his formative Pop art collages, including Machine Made America and his POP art Telemath series of collages. Hamilton had begun to study the work and ideas of Marcel Duchamp and developed a series of exhibition projects that blurred the boundary between art and advertising. Lectures at the Independent Group by Reyner Banham included American product and magazine design and Futurism while there were discussions of science fiction and cybernetics. Alloway also lectured on the theory of a continuum between the 'high art' accepted by cultural institutions and the 'low art' of pop culture.McHale and Alloway collaborated on a Collages and Objects Exhibit at the ICA, and a Francis Bacon painting retrospective, and lectured on advertising and sociology, and on Dadaists as Non Aritoteleans.

In 1956, members of the Independent Group participated in the exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery for which McHale designed the collage and the mechanicls were done by the Hamiltons with Magda Cordell McHale, and titled Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?. The work's content provides a manifesto for the preoccupations of early Pop art in Britain as well, as the first appearance of the word Pop in this context.The layout of the collage is based on the living room, with slight modifications to the stairs and fenestration, of the McHale/Cordell atelier at 52 Cleveland Square. The Tootsie Pop is a deliberate design reference by McHale to the fact he designed the collage work for the poster, and coined the term POP Art circa 1954. The bodybuilder has never been identified by name by Hamilton and was actually identified over forty years ago by McHale as "Zabo" the well known Mr California and runner up Mr. Universe who still works out in his gym in Venice California.McHale chose Zabo the bodybuilder for quite a few personal reasons, and because Zabo represented a visual compression of numerous artistic concepts. McHale was born in Maryhill Glasgow known as the Venice of the North, his Randolph Mews studio was located in Little Venice, and Zabo the sculpted bodybuiding artist worked out in Venice,California. McHale had served in the ultra physically fit Royal Marines as a Medic during the war, and boxed for the Royal Navy. McHale had given a lecture at the ICA on the Dadaists as Non Aritotelians which was based on a well known author with a similar name to Zabo's surname. McHale was deliberately using Dadaist style imagery and visually punning on the perfect Aristotelian Greek form fitting function. He humerously linked Zabo's ideal sculpted anatomical form to the Bauhaus functional mass produced design and its innovative athletics program, and the fact that Zabo had been part of a famous burlesque revue with connections to New Haven where McHale studied with Albers at Yale. Yale was also known as the founder of physical fitness programs designed for the Olympics which influenced the American bodybuilding cult. The burlesque theme in McHale's Pop art collage design is carried through to the woman burlesque artist, then to the dual Warners/Minsky's burlesque image and right on through to McHale's POP art TIT ready mades of the can can dancers, the leggy Marilyn Monroe poster image, and the high kicking leggy athletic woman in the large wall Pop Art collage mural installed behind the Juke Box at the TIT. Following This is Tomorrow McHale continued to develop the Pop art idiom exhibiting collages featuring American cars, consumer goods and mass produed items and media images. McHale also used his POP Art in his commercial work with Talkie Strips, J.Walter Thompson, Frigidair and other design and TV clients. Later in 1961/62 McHale moved perminantly from London and went to lecture in America at Southern Illinois University, which was known as Bauhaus South because most of the faculty, including Harold Cohen the Chairman, had trained with Nagy at Bauhaus North in Chicago.While at SIU McHale continued his POP Art work and implemented many of his POP art inspired installations with his students. McHale worked with Buckminster Fuller at SIU and headed the Centre For Integrative Studies where he developed his ideas on Futures ,and the ecological context. McHale continued to build on his achievements at This Is Tomorrow exhibit, and became a founding father of Futures studies, and a member of the World Futures Federation.

Hamilton has for years been trying to position himself as the Pop Daddy, when the term "Father of Pop" was clearly attributed to McHale by Reyer Banham. BanHAM is the other iconic individual in McHale's Pop art poster collage, along with HAMilton and the McHale linked reference to Fancis Bacon's retrospective exhibit. It is only after the TIT, that Hamilton started to work in Pop art idiom with Chrysler cars and Pin-Ups as part of an anthropological study that introduced the element of fetishism that became a major feature of his Pop art. Hamilton became a lecturer at the Royal College of Art where he met David Hockney and other younger artists who would develop Pop art in Britain. Hockney with Peter Blake and R. B. Kitaj exhibited together in 1961 announcing the arrival of the second generation of Pop art.

Pop art in Spain

In Spain, the study of Pop art is associated with the “new figurative,” which arose from the roots of the crisis of informalism. Eduardo Arroyo could be said to fit within the Pop art trend, on account of his interest in the environment, his critique of our media culture which incorporates icons of both mass media communication and the history of painting, and his scorn for nearly all established artistic styles. However, the Spaniard who could be considered the most authentically “Pop” artist is Alfredo Alcaín, because of the use he makes of popular images and empty spaces in his compositions.

Also in the category of Spanish Pop art is the “Chronicle Team” (el Equipo Crónica), which existed in Valencia between 1964-1981, formed by artists Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes. Their movement can be characterized as Pop because of its use of comics and publicity images and its simplification of images and photographic compositions.

The most famous Spanish Pop artist of recent years is Antonio de Felipe.

Pop art in Japan

Pop art in Japan is unique and identifiable as Japanese because of the regular subjects and styles. Many Japanese pop artists take inspiration largely from Anime, and sometimes Ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art. The most well known pop artist currently in Japan is Takashi Murakami, whose group of artists, Kaikai Kiki is world renowned for their own mass produced but highly abstract and unique Superflat art movement, a surrealist, post modern movement whose inspiration comes mainly from Anime and Japanese street culture, and is mostly aimed at youth in Japan, and has made large cultural impact. Some artists in Japan, like Yoshitomo Nara are famous for their Graffiti inspired art, and some, such as Takashi Murakami, are famous for mass produced plastic or polymer figurines. Many pop artists in Japan use surreal or obscene, shocking images in their art, which is clearly taken from Japanese Hentai. This element of the art catches the eye of viewers young and old, and is extremely thought provoking, but not taken as offensive in Japan. A common metaphor used in Japanese Pop Art is the innocence and vulnerability of children and youth. Artists like Aya Takano and Yoshitomo Nara use children as a subject in almost all of their art. While Yoshitomo Nara creates scenes of anger or rebellion through children, Aya Takano communicates the innocence of children by portraying nude girls.

Notable Pop artists

External links

Modern art | Popular culture | Pop art