Hal Foster

ON THE FIRST POP AGE NA IDADE

POP PRIMEIRA
An epic poem of early Pop by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson, in an essay published in
November 1956, three months after the landmark Independent Group exhibition 'This is Tomorrow'
opens at the Whitechapel Gallery: 'Gropius wrote a book on grain silos, Le Corbusier one on
aeroplanes, and Charlotte Perriand brought a new object to the office every morning; but today we
collect ads.' Um poema épico do Pop cedo pelos arquitectos Alison e Peter Smithson, em um ensaio
publicado em novembro de 1956, três meses após o marco de exposições do grupo independente "This
is Tomorrow" abre na galeria Whitechapel: 'Gropius escreveu um livro sobre silos de grãos, Le
Corbusier um dos aviões, e Charlotte Perriand trouxe um novo objeto para o escritório todas as
manhãs, mas hoje nós coletamos anúncios '. Forget that Gropius, Corbusier and Perriand were also
media-savvy; the point is polemical: they , the protagonists of modernist design, were cued by
functional structures, vehicles, things, but we , the celebrants of Pop culture, look to 'the throw-away
object and the pop-package' for our models. Esqueça que Gropius, Corbusier e Perriand também foram
meios-entendido, a questão é polêmica: eles, os protagonistas do projeto modernista, foram cued por
estruturas funcionais, veículos, coisas, mas nós, os celebrantes da cultura pop, olhar para "o lançamento
-away objeto eo pop-package 'para os nossos modelos. This is done partly in delight, the Smithsons
suggest, and partly in desperation: 'Today we are being edged out of our traditional role by the new
phenomenon of the popular arts—advertising . Isto é feito, em parte, prazer, o Smithsons sugerir e, em
parte, em desespero: "Hoje nós estamos sendo reconhecido fora do nosso papel tradicional pelo novo
fenômeno das artes populares publicidade. . . . . We must somehow get the measure of this intervention
if we are to match its powerful and exciting impulses with our own.' [1] Others in the IG, Reyner
Banham and Richard Hamilton above all, share this urgency. Temos que começar de alguma forma a
medida dessa intervenção se estamos à altura do seu impulso poderoso e emocionante com a nossa.
"[1] Outros no IG, Reyner Banham e Richard Hamilton, acima de tudo, partilhar este urgência.

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Who are the prophets of this epic shift? Quem são os profetas dessa mudança épica? The first we to
'collect ads' is Eduardo Paolozzi, who calls the collages made from his collection 'Bunk' (an ambivalent
homage to Henry Ford?). A primeira vez que a «recolha de anúncios" é Eduardo Paolozzi, que chama
as colagens feitas a partir de beliche sua coleção '(uma homenagem a Henry Ford ambivalente?).
Although this 'pinboard aesthetic' is also practised by Nigel Henderson, William Turnbull and John
McHale, it is Paolozzi who, one night in April 1952, projects his ads, magazine clippings, postcards
and diagrams at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in a demonstration that underwrites the distinctive
method of the IG, an anti-hierarchical juxtaposition of archival images disparate, connected, or both at
once. Embora esta "estética pinboard 'também é praticado por Nigel Henderson, William Turnbull e
John McHale, é Paolozzi que, uma noite em Abril de 1952, seus projetos de anúncios, recortes de
revistas, postais e diagramas no Institute of Contemporary Arts, em uma demonstração que garante o
método distintivo do IG, um anti-hierárquica justaposição de imagens de arquivo diferentes, ligadas, ou
ambos ao mesmo tempo. The 'Bunk' idea is developed in such shows as 'Parallel of Life and Art',
directed by Paolozzi, the Smithsons and Henderson in 1953, 'Man, Machine and Motion', produced by
Hamilton in 1955, and 'This is Tomorrow', which grouped artists, architects and designers in twelve
teams in 1956; it is also elaborated in such practices as the 'tabular image' of Hamilton, as I will
discuss. A idéia "beliche" é desenvolvido em séries como "Parallel of Life and Art ', dirigido por
Paolozzi, o Smithsons e Henderson, em 1953," homem, máquina e Movimento', produzido por
Hamilton, em 1955, e "This is Tomorrow" , que agrupados artistas, arquitetos e designers em doze
equipes em 1956, é também elaborada em práticas como a "imagem de quadros 'de Hamilton, como eu
quero discutir.
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If Paolozzi suggests an aesthetic paradigm that is at once collagist and curatorial, it is Banham, the
great animateur of the IG, who provides the theoretical arguments for a Pop Age. Se Paolozzi sugere
um paradigma estético, que é ao mesmo tempo colagens e curatorial, é Banham, o grande animador do
IG, que fornece os argumentos teóricos para uma Idade Pop. 'We have already entered the Second
Machine Age,' he writes in Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960), 'and can look back on
the First as a period of the past.' [2] In this dissertation, conceived in the midst of the IG, Banham
exploits his distance, both historical and ideological, from the framers of modern architecture
(including his advisor Nikolaus Pevsner) in order to redefine its meaning. "Nós já entrou na segunda
máquina Idade", escreve ele em Teoria e Projeto na Primeira Era da Máquina (1960), e pode olhar
para trás sobre o primeiro como um período do passado. "[2] Nesta dissertação, concebida no meio do
IG, Banham explora a sua distância, históricos e ideológicos, desde os autores da arquitectura moderna
(incluindo seu assessor Nikolaus Pevsner), a fim de redefinir o seu significado. He challenges the
functionalist and rationalist biases of Gropius and Corbusier, Giedion and Pevsner—that form follow
function and technique—and recovers the Expressionist and Futurist imperatives of modern
architecture that they neglected. Ele desafia o viés funcionalista e racionalista de Gropius e Corbusier,
Giedion e Pevsner, que forma seguir a função e técnica e recupera os imperativos expressionista e
futurista da arquitetura moderna que negligenciadas. In so doing Banham also advances the imaging of
technology as the principal criterion for design—for design of the Second Machine Age, or the First
Pop Age, as well. Ao fazê Banham também avança a imagem da tecnologia como o critério principal
para a design para o projeto da segunda máquina Idade, ou o primeiro age pop, também.

Might we operate a similar parallax today, and do onto Banham, Hamilton and colleagues what they
did onto the modernists? Poderíamos operar uma paralaxe semelhantes hoje, e não para Banham,
Hamilton e colegas o que eles fizeram para os modernistas? That is, if the IG detected a shift in
conditions from the Machine Age, might we trace a similar displacement vis-à-vis the Pop moment?
Ou seja, se o IG detectada uma mudança nas condições da Idade da Máquina, poderemos traçar um
deslocamento semelhante vis-à-vis o momento Pop? As we frame our questions of Pop—concerning
the phenomenology of the screened image, the formation of the subject in a mediated world, the
representability of technologies that often appear immaterial—might we also refine our questions about
art, architecture and design today? Como se estruturam as nossas questões de Pop-relativas à
fenomenologia do selecionado de imagem, a formação do sujeito em um mundo mediado, a
representatividade de tecnologias que muitas vezes aparecem imaterial, pode também refinar as nossas
perguntas sobre arte, arquitetura e design hoje? No doubt if we pursue this line of inquiry, related
mistakes in self-understanding will be made: if the Pop moment showed the Machine Age to be
charmed by an instrumental reason, and we see the Pop moment as taken over by a media euphoria,
what might our dominant ideology be revealed to be? Sem dúvida, se prosseguir esta linha de
investigação, relacionadas com erros na auto-compreensão será feita: se o momento Pop mostrou a
Idade máquina a ser encantado por uma razão instrumental, e vemos o momento Pop como tomado por
uma euforia de mídia, o que poderia ser a nossa ideologia dominante mostrou-se? Or are we still too
suspicious of all such epic poems, all such period fictions, to permit these questions in the first place?
Ou será que estamos ainda muito desconfiado de todos os poemas épicos, todos ficções desse prazo,
para permitir a estas questões, em primeiro lugar? (Obviously I am not; I think we default on cultural
narratives at great cost—one counted in, among other ways, the slack relativism of much contemporary
art and the indifferent thematicism of much exhibition practice.) [3] (Obviamente eu não sou, eu penso
que nós padrão em narrativas culturais a um grande custo-contadas em uma, entre outras formas, o
relativismo folga de arte contemporânea e muito o thematicism indiferente da prática de exposição
muito.) [3]

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If Banham is to be our model of revisionism, we need to know more about his project. Se Banham,
deve ser o nosso modelo de revisionismo, precisamos saber mais sobre seu projeto. First and foremost,
he is committed to modern architecture, but again not to the canon of Gropius, Corbusier and Mies laid
down by Pevsner, Giedion, Hitchcock and others. Em primeiro lugar, ele está comprometido com
arquitectura moderna, mas, novamente, não para o cónego de Gropius, Corbusier e Mies estabelecidas
por Pevsner, Giedion, Hitchcock e outros. Banham challenges this edited version of modernism,
however, according to its own criterion of how best to express the Machine Age (he too scorns all
historical revivalism, including, later, the postmodern version). Banham desafios desta versão editada
do modernismo, no entanto, de acordo com seu próprio critério a melhor forma de expressar a Idade
Machine (também ele despreza todos revivalismo históricos, incluindo, mais tarde, a versão pós-
moderna). According to Banham, Gropius and company imitate only the superficial image of the
machine, not its energistic principles: they mistake the simple forms and smooth surfaces of the
machine for the dynamic operation of technology. Segundo Banham, Gropius e companhia imitar
apenas a imagem superficial da máquina, e não seus princípios energistic: elas confundem as formas
simples e superfícies lisas da máquina para o funcionamento dinâmico da tecnologia. This vision is too
'selective'; it is also too orderly—a 'classical' aesthetic dressed up in the guise of the machine. Esta
visão é demasiado "selectiva", é também muito ordenado uma "estética clássica 'vestidas sob o disfarce
da máquina. Corbusier all but confesses this classicism-through-the-machine when he juxtaposes a
1921 Delage sports car with the Parthenon in his Vers une architecture (1923). Corbusier todos, mas
confessa este classicismo-through-the-máquina quando ele justapõe 1921 Delage um carro esporte com
o Partenon em sua Vers une architecture (1923). For Banham this is absurd: cars are Futurist 'vehicles
of desire', not Platonic type-objects, and only a subject who thrills to the machine as 'a source of
personal fulfilment and gratification' can embody its spirit. [4] Para Banham isso é absurdo: os carros
são os veículos futuristas "do desejo", não de tipo platónico-objetos, e apenas um sujeito que emoções
à máquina como "uma fonte de realização pessoal e gratificação 'pode encarnar o espírito. [4]

In this regard Banham the Pop prophet is not so at odds with Banham the revisionary modernist. A este
respeito, o profeta Banham Pop não é assim tão em desacordo com o modernista Banham revisionista.
Like others in the IG, he is raised on the popular culture of American comics and movies before the
war; this is what 'Pop' means after the war as well, not folk in the old sense or Pop in the current sense:
the former no longer exists for them, the latter does not yet exist for anyone. Tal como outros no IG, ele
é gerado sobre a cultura popular dos quadrinhos norte-americanos e filmes de antes da guerra, isto é o
que "significa Pop 'após a guerra, bem como, não popular, no sentido de idade ou Pop, no sentido em
curso: o ex - já não existe para eles, este último ainda não existe para ninguém. The IG is near enough
to this American culture to know it well, but far away enough to desire it still, especially in an austere
Britain short on attractive alternatives (the lofty civilization of Kenneth Clark, the mealy modernism of
Herbert Read, the worker folk world of Richard Hoggart). O IG está perto o bastante para essa cultura
americana de conhecê-la bem, mas longe o suficiente para desejá-lo ainda, especialmente em uma Grã-
Bretanha austera no curto alternativas atraentes (a civilização sublime de Kenneth Clark, o modernismo
mealy de Herbert Read, o povo trabalhador mundo de Richard Hoggart). The result is that the IG
doesn't question this culture much: hence the apparent paradox of a group that is pro-Left and pro-
American at once. O resultado é que o IG não põe em causa muita cultura: daí o paradoxo aparente de
um grupo que é pró-esquerda e pró-americano de uma vez. At this time a second, consumerist
Americanism supplants the first, Fordist Americanism that swept through Europe in the 1920s—an
Americanism of imagistic impact, sexy packaging, speedy turnover. Neste momento um segundo,
consumista americanismo suplanta a primeira, americanismo fordista que varreram a Europa na década
de 1920, um americanismo de impacto imagético, embalagem sexy volume de negócios, speedy. These
become the design criteria of the Pop Age for Banham, and they lead him to celebrate the 'plug-in'
architecture of Cedric Price and Archigram in the 1960s. Estas tornam-se os critérios de concepção da
Idade Pop para Banham, e levá-lo para comemorar o 'plug-in "arquitetura de Cedric Price e Archigram
na década de 1960.

His revision of modern architecture is thus not only academic; it is also a way to reclaim an 'aesthetic
of expendability', first proposed in Futurism, for the Pop Age, where 'standards hitched to permanency'
are no longer relevant. [5] In this experiment Banham has two laboratories: the IG, both its discussions
and its exhibitions, and his prolific essays where he applies to commercial products the iconographic
methods that he learns for high culture at the Courtauld Institute. Sua revisão da arquitetura moderna é,
portanto, não só acadêmico, mas é também uma forma de reivindicar uma "estética da
dispensabilidade", proposto pela primeira vez no futurismo, para a Era Pop, onde "normas engatado a
permanência 'não são mais relevantes. [5] Neste experimento Banham tem dois laboratórios: o IG,
tanto os seus trabalhos e suas exposições, seus ensaios e prolífico, onde se aplica a produtos
comerciais, os métodos iconográficos que ele aprende a alta cultura, no Instituto Courtauld. More than
any other figure, Banham leads design theory away from a modernist concern with abstract forms to a
Pop semiotics of cultural images, in a way that follows the shift from the architect as arbiter of machine
production to the stylist as instigator of consumerist desire. Mais do que qualquer outra figura, Banham
leva a teoria do projeto longe de uma preocupação modernista com formas abstratas para uma
semiótica Pop de imagens culturais, de forma que se segue à passagem do arquiteto como árbitro da
produção de máquinas para o estilista como instigador do desejo consumista. 'The foundation stone of
the previous intellectual structure of Design Theory has crumbled,' Banham writes in 1961, 'there is no
longer universal acceptance of Architecture as the universal analogy of design.' [6] In this scheme the
Book doesn't kill Architecture; the chrome fender and the plastic gizmo do. 'A pedra fundamental da
estrutura anterior intelectual da Teoria do Design se desintegrou,' Banham escreve em 1961, «já não há
aceitação universal da arquitetura como a analogia universal do projeto." [6] Neste regime, o livro não
matar Arquitetura; o pára-choque cromado eo plástico do aparelho. In different ways the Smithsons and
Price and Archigram take 'the measure of this intervention' in architecture; Hamilton does the same in
painting. De maneiras diferentes, o Smithsons, preço e Archigram tomar "a medida dessa intervenção"
na arquitetura; Hamilton faz o mesmo na pintura.

33
Hamilton shares many of the Pop-Futurist enthusiasms of Banham. Hamilton muitas partes do Pop-
entusiasmos futurista de Banham. He too sees the machine as exemplary by dint not of its functional
'fitness' but of its fantasmatic power, its mythic force. Ele também vê a máquina como exemplar, não
por força da sua aptidão funcional ", mas do seu poder fantasmático, sua força mítica. In his
introduction to 'Man, Machine and Motion' of 1955, a gridded display of over 200 images of
mechanomorphs under sea, on land, in the sky and in outer space, Hamilton even recycles the old
Marinetti trope of a man-machine 'centaur' from the first Manifesto of Futurism. [7] Yet his archive of
images is largely obsolete, his mechanical centaurs are almost campy, and this cannot but render the
techno-futurism on offer here somewhat absurd. Em sua introdução de "homem, máquina e
Movimento" de 1955, um display de grade de mais de 200 imagens de mechanomorphs no mar, em
terra, no céu e no espaço, Hamilton ainda recicla o tropo Marinetti velha de um homem-máquina "
centauro 'do primeiro Manifesto do Futurismo. [7] No entanto, seu arquivo de imagens é obsoleta, sua
centauros mecânicos são quase exagerado, e isso não pode deixar de render a tecno-futurismo na oferta
aqui um pouco absurdo. Never as 'gonzo' as Banham, Hamilton practises an 'ironism of affirmation'
toward Pop culture (he borrows the phrase from his mentor Duchamp) or, in his own words, a 'peculiar
mixture of reverence and cynicism'. [8] Nunca como gonzo 'como Banham, Hamilton pratica um'
ironismo de afirmação "em relação à cultura Pop (ele toma emprestado a expressão de seu mentor
Duchamp), ou, em suas próprias palavras, uma" mistura peculiar de reverência e cinismo '. [8]

In 'This is Tomorrow' of 1956 Hamilton is grouped with John Voelcker and John McHale, and 'ironism
of affirmation' is again in play. Em "This is Tomorrow" de 1956 Hamilton é agrupada com John
McHale e John Voelcker, e 'ironismo de afirmação "é mais uma vez no jogo. His team decides that new
kinds of 'imagery and perception' require new strategies of representation, and Hamilton constructs his
little collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? , to the first end—to
tabulate the emergent Pop iconography of 'Man, Woman, Humanity, History, Food, Newspapers,
Cinema, TV, Telephone, Comics (picture information), Words (textual information), Tape recording
(aural information), Cars, Domestic appliances, Space.' Sua equipe decide que novos tipos de imagens
e percepção "exigem novas estratégias de representação, e Hamilton constrói sua colagem pouco, só o
que é que faz casas tão diferente de hoje, tão atraente?, Para o primeiro fim-de tabular os emergentes
Pop iconografia de 'Homem, Mulher, a Humanidade, História, Alimentação, jornais, cinema, TV,
Telefone, Comics (informações da imagem), Words (informação textual), fita de gravação (informação
fonética), carros, aparelhos domésticos, Space. Although indebted to Paolozzi's 'Bunk', Just what is it?
initiates his distinctive version of the Pop image, a space of pumped or primped figures, commodity
images and media emblems that, in his own description, is 'tabular as well as pictorial'. [9] Apesar de
endividado para Paolozzi de "beliche", o que é isso? Inicia sua versão distinta da imagem Pop, um
espaço de bombeamento ou figuras primped, imagens de commodities e emblemas de mídia que, em
sua própria descrição, é "tabular, bem como pictórica ' . [9]
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Two months later, in a January 1957 letter to the Smithsons, Hamilton sums up IG research to date:
'technological imagery' (explored in 'Man, Machine and Motion'), 'automobile styling' (discussed by
Banham), 'ad images' (credited to Paolozzi, McHale and the Smithsons), 'Pop attitudes in industrial
design' (exemplified by the House of the Future of the Smithsons), and 'the Pop Art/Technology
background' (the entire IG, 'This is Tomorrow'). [10] These interests will inform his tabular pictures to
come, in particular a suite of three, Hommage à Chrysler Corp. (1957), Hers is a lush situation (1958),
and $he (1958–61). Dois meses depois, em janeiro 1957 uma carta ao Smithsons, resume Hamilton IG
investigação até à data: "imaginário tecnológico" (explorado em 'homem, máquina e Movimento'),
'styling automóvel "(discutido por Banham), imagens" ad "(creditados Paolozzi, McHale e Smithsons),
as atitudes 'Pop em desenho industrial" (exemplificado pela Casa do Futuro da Smithsons), e' A Arte
Pop / background Technology '(o IG inteira "This is Tomorrow '). [10] Esses interesses devem
informar os seus quadros tabular para vir, em especial um conjunto de três, Hommage à Chrysler Corp
(1957), a dela é uma situação exuberante (1958), e US $ ele (1958-61). I want to review them briefly
now—to come to terms with this type of picture and to speculate about some of its implications. Quero
revê-las brevemente agora chegar a um acordo com este tipo de imagem e de especular sobre algumas
de suas implicações.

44
Hommage à Chrysler Corp. begins his intrigue with the automobile as core commodity and design-
object of the 20th century (that is, until the PC), and for Hamilton it is more metamorphic 'vehicle of
desire' à la Banham than Platonic type-object à la Corbusier. Hommage à Chrysler Corp começa sua
intriga com o automóvel como mercadoria núcleo e objeto de design do século 20 (isto é, até o PC) e
para o Hamilton é mais metamórficas "veículo do desejo" à la Banham do tipo platónico - objeto à la
Corbusier. 'It adopts its symbols from many fields and contributes to the stylistic language of all
consumer goods', he writes in 1962. "Adota os seus símbolos de muitos campos e contribui para a
linguagem estilística de todos os bens de consumo", escreve ele em 1962. 'It is presented to us by the
ad-man in a rounded picture of urban living: a dream world, but the dream is deep and true—the
collective desire of a culture translated into an image of fulfilment. "É-nos apresentado pelo ad-homem
em uma visão maior da vida urbana: um mundo de sonho, mas o sonho é profundo e verdadeiro desejo
coletivo de uma cultura traduzida em uma imagem de realização. Can it be assimilated into the fine art
consciousness?' [11] Hommage is his first attempt to meet this IG mandate, and here his ironism of
affirmation is not paradoxical, for Hamilton is so affirmative of automobile imaging at mid-century, so
mimetic of its moves, that he is led to ironize its fetishistic logic: that is, to expose the break-up of each
body on display—the new Chrysler in the foreground and the vestigial showgirl behind it—into sexy
details whose production is obscure. Pode ser assimilados pela consciência de arte? "[11] Hommage é a
sua primeira tentativa de responder a este mandato IG, e aqui o seu ironismo de afirmação não é
paradoxal, porque Hamilton é tão positiva da imagem do automóvel em meados do século, de forma
mimética dos seus movimentos, que ele é levado para ironizar a sua lógica fetichista, ou seja, para
expor a ruptura de cada corpo-a em exposição nova Chrysler no primeiro plano eo artista vestigial por
trás dela, em detalhes sexy cuja produção é obscura. Not only does Hamilton associate the body parts
of each by analogy (the breast, say, with the headlight), but in so doing he demonstrates a conflation of
commodity fetishism with sexual fetishism, as the two bodies exchange properties, even parts (à la
Marx) in a way that invests them with erotic force (à la Freud). Não só Hamilton associar as partes do
corpo de cada um, por analogia (da mama, por exemplo, com o farol), mas ao fazê-lo, ele demonstra
uma fusão do fetichismo da mercadoria com o fetichismo sexual, como as duas propriedades de corpos
de câmbio, até mesmo partes (à la Marx) de uma forma que os investe com força erótica (à la Freud).
Perhaps this conflation of fetishisms is historically new to this moment: though foreseen in Surrealism,
it is only foregrounded in Pop, which acts out this super-fetishism in ways that are excessive but
demonstrative. Talvez essa fusão de fetichismos é historicamente novo para este momento: embora
previstos no surrealismo, é apenas o primeiro plano no Pop, que atua fora este fetichismo super-nas
maneiras que são excessivas, mas demonstrativa.
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Signal characteristics of the tabular picture are already apparent in Hommage . Características do sinal
da imagem tabular já são evidentes em Hommage. First, the composition is, in his own words, 'a
compilation of themes derived from the glossies'—several images for the car, the woman, and the
showroom each. [12] Fragmented, the body of the car is also rotated for display (this happens to female
figures in other pictures like $he , as if the skill of Old Master drawing had become a technique of
semi-pornographic surveying). Primeiro, a composição é, em suas próprias palavras, "uma compilação
de temas derivados da glossies'-várias imagens para o carro, a mulher, e cada sala de exposições. [12]
fragmentado, o corpo do carro também é girado para display (isso acontece com figuras femininas em
outros quadros como $ ele, como se a habilidade do desenho Old Master tinha se tornado uma técnica
de levantamento semi-pornográfica). I read the headlight and bumper as the front, the fin and fender as
the rear. Eu li o farol e pára-choques como a frente, a fin e pára-choque como a traseira. Fetishistically
specific (like Banham, Hamilton is a detail buff: 'pieces are taken from Chrysler's Plymouth and
Imperial ads; there is some General Motors material and a bit of Pontiac'), these parts are also
smoothened into near abstraction: if the woman caresses the car in the painting, so too does Hamilton
caress its image in paint. Fetichista específico (como Banham, Hamilton é um lustre detalhe: 'peças são
retiradas de Plymouth Chrysler Imperial e anúncios; há algum material General Motors e um pouco de
Pontiac), estas peças são também flexibilizados para a abstração de: se a mulher acaricia o carro na
pintura, também há Hamilton acariciar sua imagem na pintura. The woman is also reduced to charged
parts within a curvaceous outline, to breast and lips, which Freud counted among 'the secondary sexual
characteristics'—here represented by an 'Exquisite Form Bra' and the pout of one 'Volupta', a star of a
late-night American TV show of the time. A mulher também é reduzido para peças carregadas dentro
de um contorno curvilíneo, de peito e lábios, que Freud contado entre "o characteristics' sexuais
secundárias, aqui representada por um" Exquisite Form Bra "eo pout de um 'Volupta', uma estrela uma
tarde-noite de programa de TV americano da época. This is representation as fetishization, an almost
campy version of what Benjamin called 'the sex appeal of the inorganic'. [13] Such is the fetishistic
chiasmus of this tabulation—a car is (like) a female body, a body is (like) a car—and the two
commingle in this chiasmus as if naturally. Esta é a representação como fetichização, uma versão quase
exagerado do que Benjamin chamou "o sex appeal do inorgânico". [13] Tal é o quiasma fetichista deste
apuramento, um carro é (como) um corpo feminino, é um corpo (como ) a-car e misturar os dois, neste
quiasma como se naturalmente. (This is also borne out by the sexist lingo of the day: 'nice chassis',
'great headlights', and so on.) (Esta é também corroborada pela linguagem sexista do dia: "chassis nice
',' faróis grandes", e assim por diante.)

Everything here is already mediated for display: 'The main motif, the vehicle, breaks down into an
anthology of presentation techniques', Hamilton tells us, and he does highlight in paint the print
versions of glossy colour and shiny chrome, all previously screened by the lens, as if there were no
other mode of appearance. Tudo aqui já é negociada para exibição: "O motivo principal, o veículo,
divide-se em uma antologia das técnicas de apresentação", Hamilton diz-nos, e ele faz destacar na
pintura o versões impressas de cores brilhantes e cromo brilhante, todos previamente selecionados por
a lente, como se não houvesse outro modo de aparência. Space is also thus transformed: it has become
display-space tout court , here a showroom based on 'the International Style represented by a token
suggestion of Mondrian and Saarinen'. [14] Foucault remarks that with Manet the art museum becomes
the frame of painting, and Benjamin that its primary value becomes exhibition value; with Hamilton
this frame is more purely one of exhibition—the showroom—and exhibition value is pushed toward
consumption value. [15] O espaço é também assim transformada: tem espaço mostrar-se-tout court,
aqui um showroom com base na "Estilo Internacional representada por sugestão de um símbolo de
Mondrian e Saarinen. [14] Foucault observa que, com Manet, o museu de arte torna-se o quadro de
pintura, e Benjamin, que o seu valor primário torna-se o valor de exposição, com Hamilton este quadro
é mais apenas uma exposição de-salão de exposição e valor de exposição é empurrada para o valor do
consumo. [15]

Hamilton also speaks elliptically of 'a quotation from Marcel Duchamp', whose Green Box of notes for
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even ( The Large Glass , 1915–23) already obsesses him at
the time of Hommage (he publishes his typographic translation of the Green Box in 1960). Hamilton
também fala elíptica de "uma citação de Marcel Duchamp", cujo "Caixa Verde" de notas de The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (O Grande Vidro, 1915-23) já obceca no momento da
Hommage (ele publica seu tipográficas tradução da Caixa Verde em 1960). Perhaps he has in mind
another note that speaks of 'the interrogation of the shop window' and 'the coition through the glass
pane'. [16] If so, this interrogation is now the enticement of the showroom where not only have
traditional line, colour and modeling become means of product display, but aspects of modernist art
and architecture—'Mondrian and Saarinen', diagrammatic signs and geometric bands—have also
become devices of commercial exhibition. Talvez ele tem em mente uma outra nota que fala de "o
interrogatório da vitrine 'e' o coito através da vidraça '. [16] Se assim for, o interrogatório é agora o
aliciamento do showroom onde não só tem linha tradicional, colour and modeling become means of
product display, but aspects of modernist art and architecture—'Mondrian and Saarinen', diagrammatic
signs and geometric bands—have also become devices of commercial exhibition. (This is another
distinctive insight of Pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein, who shows us modernism mediated through
comics.) Or perhaps the allusion to Duchamp is more general—that, like the Large Glass , this
conjunction of Chrysler and showgirl is a kind of Bachelor Machine. But which is the bachelor and
which the bride? Unlike Duchamp, Hamilton lets the two meet; the shop window is dissolved, desire is
transformed.

55
In his next tabular picture, Hers is a lush situation (1958), Hamilton pushes the association of body
parts of car and woman beyond formal analogy to actual commingling: the lines of bumper, headlight,
fin, windshield, and wheel become one with the curves of the implicit driver. Another tabulation of
images from the glossies, the painting is generated from a line in an Industrial Design review of a
recent Buick: 'The driver sits at the dead calm center of all this motion: hers is a lush situation'. [17]
Perhaps this is the next stage in his Pop evolution of the Bachelor Machine, one that brings Hamilton
into the Bataillean orbit of Hans Bellmer: Hers is a lush situation as a graphic updating of Machine
Gunneress in a State of Grace (1937), where Bellmer renders woman and weapon one. But what is still
perverse, even obscene in Bellmer has become somehow normative, almost beautiful here: a lush
situation, not a surreal threat. Although Hamilton worked to assimilate design into 'fine art
consciousness', here the flow is in the opposite direction, and it is far along: the genre of the Odalisque
is subsumed in an ad for a Buick (all that remains of the nude, as with the Cheshire cat, is her smile);
or, better, a De Kooning drawing is not erased by Rauschenberg but reworked by an automobile stylist.
In the process, line, which is still individual and expressive in De Kooning, a medium of contact
between artist and model (or nature), appears for all its lushness almost engineered and statistical: 'line'
becomes 'the right line' for 'the new line' of Buick—a suturing device between ad-man and consumer.
And if line is revalued here, so is plasticity, in a way that makes animation and reification difficult to
distinguish. This old Futurist dream, which first came true in fascist culture, comes true again, in a
different way, in consumerist culture. 'More than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite
transformation', Barthes writes in Mythologies just a year or two before Hers is a lush situation is
painted—'the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself . . . .' [18]

Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

66
'Sex is everywhere,' Hamilton writes in 1962, 'symbolized in the glamour of mass-produced luxury—
the interplay of fleshy plastic and smooth, fleshier metal'. [19] This erotic plasticity is not only
fetishistic, a matter of charged details, but also sublimatory, a matter of abstractive displacements—it is
as if Hamilton tracks the desirous eye in its saccadic jumps across associated forms. Together these two
operations, fetishistic detailing and sublimatory sliding, inform the hybrid space of his tabular pictures
—at once specific and sketchy in content, broken and seamless in facture, collagist and painterly in
medium.
 Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

This combination is also at work in $he (1958–61), his tabular summa, which Hamilton describes as
another 'sieved reflection of the ad-man's paraphrase of the consumer's dream'. [20] If the magazine
image of a Chrysler provides the layout of Hommage , here it is a shot of a Frigidaire—apparently there
is no end of the showroom, not even (especially not) at home. Hamilton lists no less than ten sources,
all credited to particular designers and brands, for the fridge, the woman, and the hybrid of toaster and
vacuum cleaner below: like Banham he is a mad iconographer of Pop representations of everyday life
—that is, in this case, of domestic work. Like Hommage , $he exploits the advertising genre of the
woman-wife caressing the vehicle-appliance, yet here it is the commodity that seems to offer the
human for sale (this is also signalled by the dollar-sign in the title). Once more the woman is reduced to
an erotic 'essence', not breast and lips as in Hommage , but eye and hips. As in Hers is a lush situation ,
the hips are in whitened relief, while the eye is a plastic one taped into position: like painting, relief and
collage are exploited for fetishistic effect, not the opposite. The eye opens and closes like the fridge,
turns on and off like the toaster. Apparently in the Pop world of animated things it is not only sardine
cans that look back at us; and far from a threat as in Lacan, this gaze is a winking come-on. [21]
77
Maybe now I can spell out, however telegraphically, a few implications of the tabular picture. To start
with the word (Hamilton is as particular about terms as he is about images), 'tabular' derives from
tabula , Latin for table, but also for writing-tablet, in which, in ancient use, both painting and printing
figure as modes of inscription. Surely this association appeals to Hamilton, who uses both techniques in
his own practice in large part because he finds them, already so imbricated, in the media. 'Tabular' also
invokes writing, which Hamilton involves through his generative lists and descriptive titles; moreover,
his pictures register the traces of the visual-verbal hybrid characteristic of the magazine spread or the
tabloid layout (perhaps 'tabular' connotes 'tabloid' as well), a hybrid that anticipates the visual-verbal
sign (call it a bit or a bite) that dominates electronic media space today, an often lush image that carries
an often insistent directive ('click here', 'buy this', 'don't worry be happy'). [22]

Again, some of his pictures are tabular in another sense: generated by a table of terms, as with Just
what is it? ; or of images, as in Hommage and $he ; or of journalistic jingles, as in Hers is a lush
situation or Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends in men's wear and accessories (1962–
3; the title derives from a Playboy review of male fashion). More directly, 'to tabulate' is 'to set down in
a systematic form', and Hamilton is often concerned, as he says, with an 'overlapping of presentation
styles and methods': styles and methods that are commercial (as in the various display techniques that
he evokes); modernist (as in the various abstract signs that he cites); and modernist-turned-commercial.
(The last is most suggestive: Pop receives the 'reconciliation' of avant-garde and mass as given.) In his
own words, 'photograph becomes diagram, diagram flows into text', and all is transformed by painting.
At the same time he wants 'the plastic entities [to] retain their identity as tokens', and so uses 'different
plastic dialects', such as photography, relief, collage, 'within the unified whole' of painting. [23] Like an
ad-man, then, Hamilton tabulates—as in correlates—different media and messages, and tabulates—as
in calculates—this correlation in terms of visual appeal and psychological effect.

Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

In Pop it is not often clear when this redoubling is analytical and when it is charmed; this is especially
so in Hamilton. Em Pop muitas vezes não é clara quando este redobrando é analítica e quando ele fica
encantado, isto é especialmente verdade em Hamilton. Yet one thing seems clear enough: his pastiche
(which is not a negative term for him) is not disruptively random, as it is, say, in many collages of
Berlin Dada. Another insight of Pop—or 'Son of Dada' as Hamilton calls it—is that 'randomizing' has
become a feature of the media, print and otherwise; a logic within the repertoire of the culture industry.
[24] Sometimes he pushes this logic of the random to a demonstrative extreme. At other times his
tabular pictures are logical in another sense, that is, almost typological, as in the suite of images
Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends . . . . Hamilton describes them as a 'preliminary
investigation into specific concepts of masculinity', here typified by President Kennedy, a Wall Street
broker cum football player, a weightlifter cum track athlete, and astronaut John Glenn, each shown
wired to a particular mechanism of sport, entertainment or media—that is, to a spectacle-device. [25]
Perhaps more than any of his images, these recall the mediated collages of Rauschenberg; yet the
tabular picture should not be confused with the 'flat-bed picture plane' of his American contemporary
(as Leo Steinberg named it in 'Other Criteria'). [26] Both are 'horizontal' operations, it is true, maybe in
the practical sense of how they are assembled in the studio, sometimes tabulated on the floor, certainly
in the cultural sense that they both scan across 'the fine/pop art continuum'. [27] Nevertheless, as
Hamilton states as early as Just what is it? , the tabular image is also pictorial : for all its horizontal
tabulation of semi-found images, it remains a vertical picture of a semi-illusionistic space—even
though this orientation is associated with the magazine layout or the media screen as much as the
painting rectangle; Benjamin once called it 'the dictatorial perpendicular'. [28] The tabular picture is
also iconographic in a way that Rauschenberg is not (despite the attempts of art historians to track his
sources as if he were Hieronymus Bosch); and in keeping with the IG, let alone the design industry, it
is also communicative, almost pedagogical—again as Rauschenberg is not. The tabular picture is also
more a research model than an 'anomic archive' as suggested with regard to Gerhard Richter. [29]
There is no American or European equivalent that I know.

88
In the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin once remarked, 'literacy' must include the decoding of
captioned photographs. [30] Additionally in the Pop age, Hamilton suggests, it must entail a
deconstructing of the mediated image-word bite that hails us from magazines, billboards, television,
and now computers too. This 'literacy' is fundamental to postwar self-fashioning, which has to do far
less with any canon of art and literature than with a host of media-apparitions and commodity-signs.
(The recent Canon Wars in the academy obscured the fact that the primary canon today consists of
television shows, blockbuster movies, sports trivia, celebrity gossip.) Suggestively, the word 'tabular'
refers not only to graphic inscription; in ancient use it also connotes 'a body of laws inscribed on a
tablet'. Might these tabular pictures be construed as pedagogical investigations of a 'new body of laws',
a new subjective inscription, a new symbolic order, of Pop society?

Hamilton is self-aware about the preconditions of this new order (if that is what it is). As an artist he is
committed to nature, but knows that it is 'second-hand': 'In the 50s we became aware of the possibility
of seeing the whole world, at once, through the great visual matrix that surrounds us; a synthetic,
“instant” view. Cinema, television, magazines, newspapers immersed the artist in a total environment
and this new visual ambience was photographic'. He is also committed to the figure—his Collected
Words ends with this statement: 'I have never made a painting which does not show an intense
awareness of the human figure'—but knows that it too is transformed, not only rearticulated by
machines and confused with commodities (this is not news) but also now designed-and-redesigned as
an image-product. [31]
 Click here to open a larger version of this picture in a new window

Consumer society, Hamilton writes in 'Persuading Image', a paper first delivered in 1959, depends on
the manufacturing of desire through design, on an artificial, accelerated obsolescence of image, form
and style. In the process (which he assumes, not critically but also not moralistically) the consumer is
also 'manufactured', designed to the product. 'Is it me? ', he remarks of the commodities in $he ,
miming the ad-man miming the buyer: 'the appliance is “designed with you in mind”'. [32] It is this
condition that his tabular pictures work over: not only the fetishistic conflation of different objects and
aims, but also the interpellation of the subject in the image, as an image. Today this process has
become internal to the subject, who serves as designer and designed in one, a kind of servomechanism
of consummated consumption. When Hamilton turns to his version of the great Pop icon in My
Marilyn (1965), he adapts, in painting, a negative sheet from a photo shoot with her own editorial
marks: which images to cut (she is merciless), where to crop—in short, how to look, to appear, to be .
His Marilyn is still a star, but less as an erotic object than as a model designer, as the master artist of
her own powerful iconicity. How different, perhaps more pointed, than the anxiety of a de Kooning or
the thraldom of a Warhol. [33]

99
Just as the product is in excess of function, Hamilton suggests in 'Persuading Image', so demand is in
excess of need. In effect he sketches a consumerist formula of Demand minus Need equals Desire that
is not too distant from the formula of desire that Lacan also develops in the 1950s. [34] Lacanians will
scorn this speculation, but might his definition of desire be historically grounded as well, a theory of
desire inflected by consumerism? Certainly the tabular pictures seem to share the Lacanian sense of
desire as a metonymic slippage, at once fetishistic and sublimatory, from image to image, a refinding of
the same object in ever new guises. Again, they seem to (re)trace the saccadic jumps of the scopophilic
subject.

Thus the tabular picture not only anthologizes 'presentation techniques', it also mimes the distracted
attention of the desirous viewer-consumer. In this light its painterly subsumption of photography, relief
and collage seems warranted not regressive—regressive, say, in relation to a transgressive standard of
Dada (about which Hamilton is sceptical in any case, especially when it comes to readings of
Duchamp). Again, he assumes the fetishistic effects of painting (condemned long ago by the Russian
Constructivists), not to mention of other devices, both modernist (relief and collage) and commercial
(the magazine layout). He recognizes that all these forms are now reworked in the image of a general
fetishism (commodity, sexual and semiotic), and he moves to exploit this new order—which is one of
semblance as well as of exchange—and, in so doing, sometimes to deconstruct it too. [35] Painting
allows for the requisite mixing not only of charged details with blended anatomies, but also of the
optical jumpiness of the subject with the erotic smoothness of the object; it is this unresolved
combination that makes his early paintings both pull apart and hold together.

How does this effect jibe with traditional painting; that is, how does the tabular relate to the tableau? 'In
the mainstream of Western painting (since the Greeks, anyway),' Hamilton writes in 1970, 'it has been
taken for granted that a painting is to be experienced as a totality seen and understood all at once before
its components are examined'. 'Some twentieth-century artists questioned this premise', he adds, with
the heteroglossic pictures of Klee and the proto-tabular Large Glass of Duchamp in mind. [36] Clearly
Hamilton is affined with this minor line. Yet by his own time the dominant line of the tableau—which
runs perhaps from the Greeks, as he says, but certainly from Renaissance perspective through the
neoclassical tableau to modernist painting as defined by Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried; that is,
painting 'as a totality seen and understood all at once'—has crossed with his own genealogy. The
tableau and the tabular can no longer be held apart as distinctive forms. In 'Other Criteria' Steinberg
argues that, for all its claim to autonomy, late-modernist abstraction (eg, the stripe paintings of Kenneth
Noland and Frank Stella) appears driven by a logic of design, in fact by the very logic of Detroit styling
so admired by Banham and Hamilton: imagistic impact, fast lines, speedy turnover. In other words, he
suggests that an ironic identity is forged, under the historical pressure of consumer society, between
modernist painting and its other, whether this other is called 'kitsch' (Greenberg), 'theatricality' (Fried),
or 'design'.

In this regard what Greenberg and Fried theorize as a 'strictly optical' space of pure painting, Hamilton
pictures as a strictly scopophilic space of pure design; and what Greenberg and Fried theorize as a
modernist subject, fully autonomous and 'morally alert', Hamilton projects as its apparent opposite, a
fetishistic subject openly desirous. [37] This is another Pop insight that Hamilton shares with
Lichtenstein in particular: that today, in both compositional order and subjective effect, there is often
no great difference between a good comic or ad and a grand painting. Importantly, however, this
demonstration of the decay of a totality unique to painting is made within painting (perhaps only there
is it fully articulate). Paradoxically, then, this demonstration sustains painting even as it shows painting
to be deconstructed, within and without, by historical forces. In 1865 Baudelaire writes to Manet, in an
ambiguous compliment, that he is the first in the 'decrepitude' of his art. [38] Over one hundred years
later (and counting) Hamilton carries this fine tradition of popular decrepitude along.

[1] Alison and Peter Smithson, 'But Today We Collect Ads', Ark , no. 18, November 1956. On modern
architecture and mass media see Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity , Cambridge, MA 1994. This
paper was written for a conference at Princeton University, 'Art, Architecture, and Film in the First Pop
Age', 16 November 2002, and appears here as given then. It is also an hommage to Richard Hamilton
on the occasion of his retrospective in Barcelona and Cologne.

[2] Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age , London 1960, p. 11. 11.

[3] See Franco Moretti, 'MoMA 2000: The Capitulation', NLR 4, July–August 2000.

[4] Reyner Banham, 'Vehicles of Desire', Art , no. 1, 1 September 1955, p. 3. 3. Also see Nigel
Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future , Cambridge, MA 2002.

[5] Banham, 'Vehicles of Desire'.

[6] Banham, 'Design by Choice', The Architectural Review 130, July 1961, p. 44. 44. Whiteley is again
instructive on this point.

[7] Richard Hamilton, Collected Words 1953–82 , London 1982, p. 19; hereafter abbreviated cw. The
Hamilton literature is large and various; I have benefited most from the texts in the 1992 Tate Gallery
catalogue and in the special issue of October 94, devoted to the Independent Group, especially Julian
Myers, 'The Future as Fetish', and William R. Kaizen, 'Richard Hamilton's Tabular Image'.

[8] CW, p. 78. 78.

[9] CW, p. 24. 24.

[10] CW, p. 28. 28.

[11] CW, p. 35. 35.

[12] CW, p. 31. 31.

[13] Walter Benjamin, 'Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century' (1935), in The Arcades Project ,
Cambridge, MA 1999, p. 8. 8.

[14] CW, p. 32. 32.

[15] Michel Foucault, 'Fantasia of the Library' (1967), in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice , Ithaca
1977, p. 92. 92. Benjamin writes of 'exhibition value', of course, in the Artwork Essay, and alludes to
'consumption value' in other notes.

[16] Marcel Duchamp, The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp , London 1975, p. 74. 74. 'When
one undergoes the examination of the shop window, one also pronounces one's own sentence. In fact,
one's choice is “round trip” . . . . . No obstinacy, ad absurdum, of hiding the coition through a glass
pane with one or many objects of the shop window. The penalty consists in cutting the pane and in
feeling regret as soon as possession is consummated. QED.'

[17] CW, p. [17] CW, p. 32. 32.

[18] Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957), New York 1972, p. 99. 99.

[19] CW, p. 36. 36.

[20] CW, p. 36. 36.

[21] I refer to the famous anecdote in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1973), New
York 1981.

[22] See TJ Clark, 'Modernism, Postmodernism, and Steam', October 100, Winter 2002. Early on
Hamilton calls this hybrid 'a poster': CW, p. 104. 104.

[23] CW, p. 38. 38.

[24] As William Turnbull recalls in 1983: 'Magazines were an incredible way of randomizing one's
thinking (one thing the Independent Group was interested in was breaking down logical thinking)—
food on one page, pyramids in the desert on the next, a good-looking girl on the next; they were like
collages'; in David Robbins, ed., The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of
Plenty , Cambridge, MA 1989, p. 21. 21.

[25] CW, p. 46. 46.

[26] Included in Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria , New York 1972. In this shift to the horizontal site of
cultural images Steinberg saw a break with traditional paradigms of the window and the mirror as well
as the modernist model of the abstract surface, all oriented to the vertical and still associated with the
natural—a break that he termed 'postmodernist'.

[27] This is a term advanced by Lawrence Alloway in 'The Long Front of Culture', Cambridge Opinion
, no. 17, 1959, and adopted by Hamilton.

[28] See Walter Benjamin, 'One-Way Street' (1928), in Selected Writings Volume 1 , Cambridge, MA
1996, p. 456. 456. Benjamin writes here of script: 'If centuries ago it began gradually to lie down,
passing from the upright inscription to the manuscript resting on sloping desks before finally taking
itself to bed in the printed book, it now begins just as slowly to rise again from the ground. The
newspaper is read more in the vertical than in the horizontal plane, while film and advertisement force
the printed word entirely into the dictatorial perpendicular.' I recall this term here to complicate the
overvaluation, in much contemporary art and criticism, of the horizontal and the base—as if they could
somehow overwhelm the dictatorial perpendicular on their own.

[29] See Benjamin Buchloh, 'Gerhard Richter's Atlas : The Anomic Archive', October 88, Spring 1999.

[30] See Walter Benjamin, 'A Little History of Photography' (1931), in Selected Writings Volume 2 ,
Cambridge, MA 1999.

[31] CW, pp. 64, 269.

[32] CW, p. 36. 36.

[33] On this iconicity see my 'Death in America', in Annette Michelson, ed., Warhol , Cambridge, MA
2001; and on consumerist interpellation see my Design and Crime (and other diatribes) , London 2002.

[34] See, for example, 'The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud' (1957), in
Ecrits , New York 1977.

[35] On semiotic fetishism see Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign ,
St. Louis 1973.

[36] CW, p. 104. 104.

[37] See especially Michael Fried, 'Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank
Stella' (1965), in Art and Objecthood , Chicago 1998.

[38] Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance , Paris 1973, vol. 2, p. 2, p. 497. 497.

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Art Agonistes

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No Whitney
Hal Foster Hal Foster
In the early 1950s I was awakened by the photographs of Walker Evans and the movies of John Ford,
especially Grapes of Wrath where the poor 'Okies' go to California with mattresses on their cars rather
than stay in Oklahoma and starve. No início de 1950 fui acordado com as fotografias de Walker Evans
e os filmes de John Ford, especialmente Grapes of Wrath, onde os pobres "Okies 'ir para a Califórnia
com colchões em seus carros, em vez de ficar em Oklahoma e fome. I faced a sort of black-and-white
cinematic identity crisis myself in this respect . . . Eu enfrentei uma espécie de preto-e-branca crise de
identidade cinematográfica me a este respeito... a little like trading dust for oranges. um pouco como a
poeira de negociação para as laranjas. On the way to California I discovered the importance of gas
stations. No caminho para a Califórnia, eu descobri a importância dos postos de gasolina. They are like
trees because they are there . Eles são como árvores porque elas estão lá.

In telling this story, ex-Okie Ed Ruscha offers several clues to his enigmatic art: a style that partakes of
both documentary photographs and Hollywood yarns; an identity stamped by such images, too; a
sensibility that, equal parts Midwest straight and California slick (dust and oranges), regards the weird
vernacular of postwar America as totally natural (gas stations as trees); and an inaugural move to LA,
not New York, let alone Europe. Ao contar essa história, ex-Okie Ed Ruscha oferece várias pistas para
sua arte enigmática: um estilo que participa de ambas as fotografias documentais e fios de Hollywood;
uma identidade carimbada por essas imagens, também, uma sensibilidade que, em partes iguais
Midwest reto e liso Califórnia (poeira e laranjas), que respeita o vernáculo estranho da América do pós-
guerra como totalmente naturais (estações de gás como árvores) e um movimento inaugural de LA, não
Nova York, para não falar da Europa. (Ruscha did travel to Europe in 1961, at the age of 23, only to
return with photos which suggest that Paris really is in Texas.) He is a singular artist, at once folk,
Conceptual and Pop, an unlikely son of Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp and James Dean. (Ruscha
não viajar para a Europa em 1961, na idade de 23, só para retornar com as fotos que sugerem que Paris
é realmente no Texas.) Ele é um artista singular, uma vez folk, conceitual e pop, um pouco filho de
Edward Hopper , Marcel Duchamp e James Dean. Two retrospectives – a small show of photographs, a
large one of drawings – are at the Whitney Museum until 26 September (the drawings will travel to
Washington and LA over the next year); a collection of notes and interviews, Leave Any Information at
the Signal , was recently published, too. [*] Duas retrospectivas - uma pequena mostra de fotografias,
uma grande quantidade de desenhos - estão no Whitney Museum até 26 de setembro (os desenhos irão
viajar para Washington e Los Angeles durante o próximo ano), uma coleção de notas e entrevistas,
omite qualquer informação na sinal, foi publicado recentemente, também. [*]

Trained like some Pop artists in commercial design, Ruscha worked early in LA on ads, book covers
and magazine layouts (including Artforum from 1965 to 1967). Treinado como alguns artistas da Pop
Art no design comercial, Ruscha trabalhou no início de LA em anúncios, capas de livros e layouts de
revista (incluindo Artforum entre 1965 e 1967). While other Pops used only fragments of print sources,
Ruscha brought an entire graphic look to his early paintings, which juxtapose abstract fields of colour
with appropriated fonts from consumer products and comic books. Enquanto outros POP utilizado
apenas fragmentos das fontes de impressão, Ruscha trouxe um olhar inteiro gráfico para suas primeiras
pinturas, que justapõem campos abstrata de cores com fontes apropriadas de produtos de consumo e
histórias em quadrinhos. Bringing together alien visual cultures was a characteristic Pop move, and
Ruscha made it look easy. Reunindo culturas exóticas visual foi um movimento Pop característica, e
Ruscha fez parecer fácil. As the curator Margit Rowell argues in the catalogue, [†] he also reworked
drawing, usually a personal form, through the impersonal medium of photography: his marks, often
applied in gunpowder with Q-tips, are super-precise, and his words, at once odd and everyday, unfold
in the deep spaces of his misty colours like so many liquid ribbons or elliptical credits at the end of a
movie. Como o curador Margit Rowell argumenta no catálogo, [†] ele também reformulado desenho,
geralmente um formulário pessoal, por meio impessoal da fotografia: suas marcas, muitas vezes
aplicados em pólvora com Q-dicas, estão super-precisos, e suas palavras , ao mesmo tempo estranha e
todos os dias, se desenrolam no espaço profundo de suas cores nebulosas como tantas fitas créditos
líquidos ou elíptico no final de um filme. In his procedure, however, there is no such immediacy:
'Abstract Expressionism collapsed the whole art process into one act,' Ruscha has remarked (he is one
of the last generation of art students who had to confront this beast). Em seu procedimento, no entanto,
não há tanta proximidade: "Expressionismo Abstrato desmoronou todo o processo de arte em um ato",
observou Ruscha (ele é um de última geração de estudantes de arte que teve de enfrentar essa fera). 'I
wanted to break it into stages, which is what I do now.' "Eu queria dividi-lo em fases, que é o que eu
faço agora."

All of his work is premeditated, especially the cult photo-books, which, in good Warholian fashion, are
as advertised: Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), Every
Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967), Nine Swimming
Pools and a Broken Glass (1968), Real Estate Opportunities (1970) and so on. Toda a sua obra é
premeditado, especialmente o culto foto-livros, que, na moda Warholian bons, são anunciados como:
Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Alguns Apartamentos Los Angeles (1965), cada edifício no Sunset
Strip (1966), Lotes Thirtyfour estacionamento em Los Angeles (1967), Nove Piscinas e um vidro
quebrado (1968), Oportunidades Imobiliárias (1970) e assim por diante. 'I don't even look at it as
photography,' Ruscha has said, 'they're just images to fill a book,' the parameters of which are set
beforehand. "Eu nem sequer olhar para ele como a fotografia," Ruscha, disse, "eles são apenas imagens
para encher um livro," os parâmetros que estão definidos de antemão. Several books survey typical
spaces of LA, and the presentation is as 'neuter gender' as possible: 'They're a collection of "facts” . . . a
collection of "readymades".' Vários livros inquérito espaços típicos de Los Angeles, ea apresentação é
como "gênero neutro" quanto possível: "Eles são uma coleção de" fatos "... Uma coleção de" ready-
made ". Like many Duchampian artists from Jasper Johns (an early influence) to Gerhard Richter,
Ruscha has dampened his art in a way that nonetheless allows it to be distinctive: a deadpan-ness –
funny, desolate, sometimes both – is conveyed in his homely shots of solitary gas stations or aerial
images of empty parking lots; and the apparently arbitrary numbers (why nine pools?) only add to the
blank absurdity. Como muitos artistas duchampiana de Jasper Johns (uma influência precoce) de
Gerhard Richter, Ruscha moderou sua arte de uma forma que ainda assim permite que ele seja
diferente: um inexpressivo-ness - engraçado, desolado, às vezes ambos - é transmitida em seus tiros
caseira de postos de gasolina solitários ou imagens aéreas de estacionamentos vazios e os números
aparentemente arbitrárias (porque nove piscinas?) apenas acrescentar ao absurdo em branco.

Despite the studied moves, a vague ambiguity emerges from many works, a flat enigma that Ruscha
calls 'a kind of "huh?”' (here again one feels the connection to Johns). Often it stems from his words,
which, as in a misspelled grocery sign or an onomatopoeic utterance ('Oof', 'Ding'), appear both
everyday and incorrect. Yet, like Magritte (he was once called 'the Magritte of the American
Highway'), Ruscha can also produce this noise through his images alone. And, when juxtaposed, his
words and images do not often support one another, but stand apart or are even antagonistic, in
crossings that cross up the viewer as well. Frequently the words are suspended in sense as they are in
space (one reason Ruscha likes to depict them is that they 'exist in a world of no size'). More than once
he has borrowed Claudius's 'words without thoughts never to heaven go.' Apesar dos movimentos
estudados, uma vaga ambiguidade surge muitas obras, um enigma apartamento desse tipo chama
Ruscha 'de "hein?" (Também aqui se sente a conexão com Johns). Muitas vezes, decorre de suas
palavras, que, como no um sinal de mercearia com erros ortográficos ou uma expressão onomatopaica (
'Oh', 'Ding'), ambos aparecem todos os dias e incorretas. Contudo, como Magritte (ele já foi chamado
de "o Magritte do American Highway '), Ruscha também podem produzir este ruído através de suas
imagens sozinho. E, quando justapostas, as suas palavras e imagens muitas vezes não suportam um ao
outro, mas estar distante ou mesmo antagônicas, em travessias que atravessam o espectador também.
freqüentes as palavras são suspensas no sentido em que estão no espaço (uma razão Ruscha gosta de
descrevê-los é que "existe em um mundo sem tamanho"). Mais do que uma vez ele foi emprestado "de
Cláudio palavras sem pensamentos nunca vão para o céu." It could be his motto. (There might be an
allegory of American political speech here, too – faux-sincere and false-populist – as practised, for
example, by our gifted president.) Poderia ser o seu lema. (Não pode ser uma alegoria do discurso
político americano aqui, também - faux-sincero e falso-populista - tal como é praticada, por exemplo, o
nosso presidente talentoso.)

This interest in odd words began as an appreciation of common things: the early Ruscha focused on
products such as Spam and Sun-Maid Raisins. Este interesse em palavras estranhas começaram como
uma apreciação das coisas em comum: o Ruscha cedo focada em produtos como o Spam e Sun-Maid
Passas. Warhol once suggested 'Commonist' as a substitute for 'Pop', as if a collective might still be
wrested from consumerism, and the common in Ruscha hesitates between the folk and the Pop –
certainly he came to it at a time when it was getting ever more commodified. Warhol sugeriu uma vez
'Commonist "como um substituto para o' pop ', como se uma coletiva ainda pode ser arrancada do
consumismo, eo comum em Ruscha hesita entre o folk eo Pop - certamente veio a ele em um momento
em que foi ficando cada vez mais mercantilizado. Like other Pop artists, he also plays with reified
language, with slogans and jingles: drawn to terms on the threshold of cliché, he sometimes pulls them
back via ambiguity, and sometimes pushes them over, once and for all, into the status of brand or logo
(early on he depicted such trademarks as 'Standard' and '20th Century Fox'). Como outros artistas pop,
ele também brinca com a linguagem reificada, com slogans e jingles: atenção para termos, no limiar do
clichê, às vezes ele puxa-los de volta através de ambigüidade, e, por vezes, empurra-los, uma vez por
todas, para o status de marca ou (logo no início ele descreveu marcas como "standard" e '20th Century
Fox '). Occasionally, too, he underscores the paradoxical animation that such fetish-terms can possess,
presenting them keyed up like special effects, as if they were the only public figures left to portray, the
truly dominant features of the landscape (the Hollywood sign that presides over the city is another
element in his work). Ocasionalmente, também, ele ressalta a animação paradoxal que fetiche tais
termos podem possuir, apresentando-se como keyed efeitos especiais, como se fossem os únicos dados
públicos deixou de retratar, as características verdadeiramente dominante da paisagem (o sinal de
Hollywood, que preside sobre a cidade é outro elemento em sua obra). Finally, in some photo-books
Ruscha renders landscape as so much real estate, gridded and numbered as such: Some Los Angeles
Apartments , Every Building on the Sunset Strip . Finalmente, em alguns foto-books paisagem torna
Ruscha como tanto imobiliário, grade e numeradas como tal: Alguns Los Angeles apartamentos, cada
prédio no Sunset Strip.

For Ruscha, 'Los Angeles is like a series of storefront planes that are all vertical from the street,' and
this flat frontality is reflected everywhere in his art. Para Ruscha, "Los Angeles é como uma série de
planos que são todos vitrine vertical da rua", e esta frontalidade apartamento se reflete em toda a sua
arte. His city is one of billboards, too, and his paintings in particular evoke these giant screens
suspended in the landscape. Sua cidade é um dos cartazes, também, e suas pinturas em especial evocar
estas telas gigantes suspensas na paisagem. This dual focus on storefronts and billboards implies an
automotive point of view, and the windscreen is indeed the unseen frame of many of his pictures,
especially those of signs captured at different scales amid broad horizons and vast skies. Esse duplo
foco em fachadas e outdoors implica um ponto de vista do automóvel, e os pára-brisas é de fato o
quadro invisível de muitos dos seus quadros, especialmente dos sinais capturados em diferentes escalas
entre horizontes largos e vastos céus. Just as important is the design culture of LA: more than one of
his images announces that 'Hollywood is a Verb.' Tão importante é a cultura do design de Los Angeles:
mais do que uma de suas imagens anuncia que "Hollywood é um verbo." 'They do it with automobiles,'
Ruscha adds, 'they do it with everything that we manufacture.' "Eles fazem isso com os automóveis",
acrescenta Ruscha, "eles fazem isso com tudo o que nós fabricamos. Of course, 'they do it' with movies
above all, and he also evokes the 'celluloid gloss' and panoramic expanse of cinema. Claro, "eles fazem
isso", com filmes acima de tudo, e ele também evoca o "celulóide brilho e extensão panorâmica do
cinema. At once deep and flat, space in movies is all surface, and vice versa, and words (again as in
credits) appear in the same register as images. Ao mesmo tempo profunda e plana, o espaço nos filmes
é tudo superficial, e vice-versa, e as palavras (mais uma vez como em créditos) aparecem no mesmo
registro como imagens. Ruscha often intimates the filmic screen of projected light, which he calls a
'deeply Californian version of infinity'. Ruscha, muitas vezes íntimas da tela cinematográfica da luz
projetada, que ele chama de "uma versão californiana profundamente do infinito".

'Close your eyes and what does it mean, visually?' "Feche os olhos e que significa isso, visualmente?
Ruscha asks about this Hollywood Sublime. Ruscha pergunta sobre este Sublime Hollywood. 'It means
a way of light.' "Significa uma forma de luz." As he processes it in his pictures, this light is true and
illusory at once, the hallucinated (or medicated) stuff of Hollywood dreams that offers a 'feeling of
concrete immortality'. Como ele processa-lo em seus quadros, esta luz é verdadeiro e ilusório de uma
vez, o alucinado (ou medicamentoso) material de sonhos de Hollywood que oferece um "sentimento de
imortalidade concretas". At the same time, Ruscha presents this dream-space as thin and fragile (one of
his keyed-up sunsets contains the words 'eternal amnesia' in small print at the bottom), and sometimes
there is a hint of catastrophe, a sick glow beyond the usual smog, a touch of Nathaniel West or Joan
Didion. Ao mesmo tempo, Ruscha apresenta este sonho espaço tão fina e frágil (uma de suas keyed-up-
do-sol amnésia contém as palavras "eterna", em letras pequenas na parte inferior), e, por vezes, há uma
sugestão de uma catástrofe, um brilho doente além do "smog" é habitual, um toque de Nathaniel West
ou Joan Didion. Though he is a believer to the end, Ruscha suggests that Los Angeles might be a
mirage and California a myth – a façade about to crumble into the desert, a set about to liquefy into the
sea. Embora ele é um crente até o fim, Ruscha sugere que Los Angeles pode ser uma miragem e
Califórnia um mito - uma fachada sobre a desintegrar-se para o deserto, um conjunto de cerca de
liquefazer para o mar.