Pop Art broke the ice - shazam!!!!!
Ken Friedman wrote:
> Pop Art was never as simple or unified a phenomenon as it sometimes seems.
> There were at least four traditions of Pop Art. One was British, one was
> American, one was German, and one was international. Each had its virtues
> and its drawbacks.
And then there was regional Pop - changed art in the San
Francisco Bay Area in a huge way in the '60s. (Well, I guess you
were there, Ken) Ffor one, the California Pop ceramics movement
came into being - enter Robert Arneson, etal., and the paintings
and assemblages of William Wyley - after Clyfford Still and the
boys (sturm and drang). (things took on more of a "let's not get
serious" attitude)
> American Pop is often seen as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism. This
> iscorrect in artistic terms. The development of American Pop was also a
> market issue. Paintings by the Pollock generation were simply becoming too
> expensive for the growing art market. Pop Art was in part a response to the
> changing needs of the art market.
It was also a response to economics in general - a country that
was becoming euphoric about its economic state and rejected the
solemnity of abstract expressionism and the serious intent of
the artists - Pop Art was immediately recognizable and had a
slick quality about it - no more thick, dark brush strokes and
splatters. No more trying to understand those stern, involved
artists. And it celebrated consumerism - the ubiquitous forms of
America's buying public. And American galleries and collectors
felt it gave them a huge
status quo, for a change, over Europe.
Oh, and the media, as set forth below - all those art magazines
and critics that emerged to ooooh and aaaah in Americaaaahhhhh.
Oh, and let's not forget the formation of the NEA and corporate
tax breaks for public art and such.
> American Pop was bold, brash, and up-front. It had a quick take and a sharp
> focus that made it easy to digest and easier still to remember. It explored
> the effects of media and paid attention to them. At the same time, it
> replaced consciousness with media attention.
What Pop Art did for the West Coast was to set it free, let art
have fun, give it room to move and invent and give recognition to
the artists that mixed Pop and Neo-Dada with individual
twists....brought forth the Funk movement....and most notably the
clay & sculpture folks; Peter Voulkos, Ron Nagle, Harold Paris,
Stephen de Staebler, and the assemblage movement, which led in
turn to Bay Area conceputalism in the late 60s....Aktual Art
International, and the First Surrealist Congress of
America.....hmmmmmmm.....
Pop Art may have had its drawbacks, but its repercussions had a
notable affect on art in general and especially on the regional
art of the West Coast of the U.S.
Thanks for your great post, Ken.
Best, Patricia
