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07/10 The fifth vrf style from the swinging sixties 07/10 The fifth vrf style from the swinging sixties
GETTNG N THE GROOVE
The Sixties still resonate
today: Andy Warhol remains
popular and Austen Powers
makes everyone feel that
they know about the Sixties.
Can you add to these ten
words and phrases that
identify the most important
aspects of this period?
the mini car, the pill, carnaby street,
end of censorship, hippies, the cold
war, psychedelia, pop music, the
mini skirt, Vietnam, the space race,
feminism, homosexuality, drugs,
flares, the A-bomb, JFK, TV..
A SNAPSHOT OF
POP 1
Pop Art: this describes events in
Britain, then America and Europe,
from 1955 to 1968
Generation Gaps:
1. teenagers, rebelling against the
boredom of the 1950s, and
2. young artists, breaking away
from the old style and image of
Abstract Expressionism
PopuIar CuIture: Pop Art wanted
art from teenage passions - rock
and roll, TV, advertising and all
things American - high and Iow
cuIture get mixed up.
SNAPSHOT 2
PopuIarity: this is a modern
style that is popular with a
general public.. they
welcomed a figurative style
that had humour and
recognisable subjects
EmbIematic: all these
qualities seemed to make
Pop Art representative of the
Swinging Sixties scene: it
was a part of the 09089
for artists, pop stars,
designers and the media
2
SXTES' OPTMSM AND ENTHUSASM
Optimism and enthusiasm make you ready for change and novelty
- in your life, your dress, in art and in music: here are five factors
working behind 60s optimism and enthusiasm:
1
POSTVE
CHANGES
n end to rationing and
unemployment + many scientific
and technological inventions -
'tomorrow's world today'
2
GOOD
LVNG
STANDARDS
The new consumer society
emerges, bringing affordable and
modern goods to everyone
3
NEW WAYS
OF SEENG
The growth of a new media world
in music, cinema and television -
the first 'TV Generation'
4
NEW LOOK
TO THE
WORLD
new street life emerges in neon
signs, shop displays, signageand
high street advertising
5
NEW YOUTH
CULTURE
merican popular culture arrives
via movies, rock and roll, fashion,
cars and youth-oriented products -
'the teenager is born'
New or Old ? Pop Art's Ancestry
Pop Art seemed very new when
it became the sensation of
1962 but today it seems to
recall Dada and Surrealism -
was it new or was it worthless ?
(more on this later)
Many of our Pop keywords,
therefore, can also be assigned
to the earlier styles:
figurative bright
teenage sexy
transient glamorous
mass produced multimedia
modern materials low culture
gimmicky humorous
GALLERY: Three Pop Features
The following slides illustrate
three key characteristics to be
found in Pop Art
Each of them has implications
for today's Postmodernism,
and therefore Pop's continuing
importance
Each was reacting against the
dominant ethos of Abstract
Expressionism - its high art
status and its painterly,
personal and monumental
values - Pop represented a
shocking change therefore:
"you're killing art" (De Kooning)
GALLERY 1: Any Style Goes
Pop artists employ a great many methods, use a great range of
media and incorporate lots of different subject matter
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GALLERY 2: High + Low Culture
Popular and everyday things (low culture) now find themselves a
part of Art (high culture) - they are celebrated and examined in Pop
GALLERY 3: Design into Art
Pop takes over and uses the methods of advertisers and designers
for their own ends, it exploits the implications of these blurred
boundaries and it leads to artists working as designers etc..
UK and USA
Pop Art isn't really 'America in
the Sixties'- it appeared
spontaneously everywhere as a
response to the new consumer
culture - creating bewilderment
then astonishment, and then
amusement
The UK and then the US were
first off the mark and two
'schools' appear with different
characteristics - we have three
examples from each country
USA 1: Andy Warhol
Pop's enigmatic multiples man: Dali admirer, Factory entrepreneur,
multi-media practitioner, designer and celebrity
A successful young designer who intuitively
selected the right imagery and then handed it
over the process in his Factory via commercial
photo-silkscreen printing
He baited the Abstract Expressionists with want
to be a machine and love the New York School
but could never do it.its so easy
mpersonal and repetitive, he believed in the
artistic power of everyday objects: when you
think about it, department stores are kind of like
museums
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USA 2: Roy Lichtenstein
The comic book man: professorial, master of the stereotype,
making the familiar ominous or humorous, using irony and parody
USA 3: Claus Oldenberg
Begins in the world of happenings and art events (selling crudely
made facsimiles of products on sale in shops) and then moves on
to the world of the everyday objects made large, soft and strange
UK 1: Richard Hamilton
The godfather of Pop, defining its features in the 50s, investigating
popular culture (CA), using new medias; always cool and critical
UK 2: Peter Blake
Music lover and sentimentalist, explores the (low culture) worlds of
circus, wrestling and pin ups: open to the new but always traditional
5
UK 3: David Hockney
From Bradford to Beverly Hills, swinging London and gay culture
depicted in a cool colour supplement style, yet always moving on
Analysis: UK
v USA
Marilyn Monroe, an iconic
and popular fifties film
star, was depicted in
many different ways by
pop artists
These two, from the UK
and the US, seem to
show both their national
differences and the two
faces of Pop Art, the
celebratory and the
analytical/critical
The end of Pop ?
Pop began in 1956 with
Hamilton's definition that it was
popular, transient,
expendable, low-cost, mass
produced, young (aimed at
youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky,
glamorous, big business"
Ever since, though, this has
made it seem that Pop was
merely fun but not really
important
When Warhol was shot in
1968 , therefore, many were
predicting the end of Pop
Pop Art as a Turning Point ?
Forty years later, however,
Pop Art was celebrated at
the RA as the Continuing
Story of Pop (see clip)
We now view it as a water-
shed, the end of Modern Art
no less, and the start of
Postmodernism
t was the moment when
figurative art returned and
when modern life, after a
hundred years, became
once again the subject of art
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Pop nto Postmodernism
Many of the features of Postmodernism seem to have their roots in
Pop and the changing world that inspired it. Here are five of these:
Media
Obsession
1
The continued examination of the
media + how our sense of reality is
based upon media representation
(mediated reality)
Multimedia
Diversity
2
More mixing and matching, ignoring
old categories and producing more
and more hybrids (cf music's mash
ups)
Appropriation
of the Past
3
Recycling part styles becomes cool
(cf remixes in music) and old art is
quoted/recycled - so you can't not
know the past
Humour and
rony
4
Pop's youthful irreverence becomes
the norm and its irony the way to
deal with a more complex world
Hybrids and
Fusion
5
Post Pop, designers and artists go
even further in adapting new and odd
materials to their own ends
1
2
3
4
5
Crossover - Film and Photography
Pop's emblematic and populist status meant that creative people
from all areas were drawn to it and so Pop seemed to become a
part of Sixties life, it was everywhere for a while:
Crossover - Graphics, Typography Crossover - nteriors and Applied Arts
View more examples in the Online lectures