Editing Pop art (section)

==United States==
Although pop art began in the early 1950s, in America it was given its greatest impetus during the 1960s. The term "pop art" was officially introduced in December 1962; the occasion was a "Symposium on Pop Art" organized by the [[Museum of Modern Art]].<ref name="SchermanTony">Scherman, Tony. "When Pop Turned the Art World Upside Down." ''American Heritage'' 52.1 (February 2001), 68.</ref> By this time, American advertising had adopted many elements of modern art and functioned at a very sophisticated level. Consequently, American artists had to search deeper for dramatic styles that would distance art from the well-designed and clever commercial materials.<ref name="high" /> As the British viewed American popular culture imagery from a somewhat removed perspective, their views were often instilled with romantic, sentimental and humorous overtones. By contrast, American artists, bombarded every day with the diversity of mass-produced imagery, produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive.<ref name="mod" />
[[File:Roy Lichtenstein Drowning Girl.jpg|thumb|left|[[Roy Lichtenstein]], ''[[Drowning Girl]]'', 1963, on display at the [[Museum of Modern Art, New York]].|alt=A woman's crying face is overwhelmed by waves as she thinks, "I don't care! I'd rather sink than call Brad for help!"]]

According to historian, curator and critic [[Henry Geldzahler]], "[[Ray Johnson]]'s collages ''Elvis Presley No. 1'' and ''James Dean'' stand as the Plymouth Rock of the Pop movement."<ref>[[Henry Geldzahler|Geldzahler, Henry]] in ''Pop Art: 1955–1970'' catalogue, [[Art Gallery of New South Wales]], Sydney, 1985</ref> Author [[Lucy Lippard]] wrote that "The Elvis ... and Marilyn Monroe [collages] ... heralded Warholian Pop."<ref>Lippard, Lucy in Ray Johnson: Correspondences catalogue, Wexner Center/Whitney Museum, 2000</ref> Johnson worked as a graphic designer, met Andy Warhol by 1956 and both designed several book covers for New Directions and other publishers. Johnson began mailing out whimsical flyers advertising his design services printed via offset lithography. He later became known as the father of [[mail art]] as the founder of his "New York Correspondence School," working small by stuffing clippings and drawings into envelopes rather than working larger like his contemporaries.<ref>Bloch, Mark. [http://www.panmodern.com/Ray.html "An Illustrated Introduction to Ray Johnson 1927–1995"], 1995</ref> A note about the cover image in January 1958's ''Art News'' pointed out that "[Jasper] Johns' first one-man show ... places him with such better-known colleagues as Rauschenberg, Twombly, Kaprow and Ray Johnson".<ref>Author unknown. "(Table of contents, Untitled note about cover.)", Art News, vol. 56, no. 9, January 1958</ref>

Indeed, two other important artists in the establishment of America's pop art vocabulary were the painters [[Jasper Johns]] and [[Robert Rauschenberg]].<ref name="mod" /> Rauschenberg, who like Ray Johnson attended [[Black Mountain College]] in North Carolina after [[World War II]], was influenced by the earlier work of [[Kurt Schwitters]] and other [[Dada]] artists, and his belief that "painting relates to both art and life" challenged the dominant modernist perspective of his time.<ref>Rauschenberg, Robert; Miller, Dorothy C. (1959). [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/748990996 <nowiki>Sixteen Americans [exhibition]</nowiki>]. New York: Museum of Modern Art. p. 58. {{ISBN|978-0029156704}}. [[OCLC (identifier)|OCLC]] 748990996. "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)"</ref> His use of discarded readymade objects (in his [[Combine painting|Combines]]) and pop culture imagery (in his silkscreen paintings) connected his works to topical events in everyday America.<ref name="mod" /><ref>{{Cite magazine|date=1963-05-03|title=Art: Pop Art – Cult of the Commonplace|language=en-US|magazine=Time|url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828186,00.html|access-date=2020-07-07|issn=0040-781X|quote=Robert Rauschenberg, 37, remembers an art teacher who 'taught me to think, "Why not?"' Since Rauschenberg is considered to be a pioneer in pop art, this is probably where the movement went off on its particular tangent. Why not make art out of old newspapers, bits of clothing, Coke bottles, books, skates, clocks?}}</ref><ref>[[Irving Sandler|Sandler, Irving H.]] ''The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties,'' New York: Harper & Row, 1978. {{ISBN|0-06-438505-1}} pp. 174–195, ''Rauschenberg and Johns''; pp. 103–111, ''Rivers and the gestural realists''.</ref> The silkscreen paintings of 1962–64 combined expressive brushwork with silkscreened magazine clippings from ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]], [[Newsweek]],'' and ''[[National Geographic]].'' Johns' paintings of flags, targets, numbers, and maps of the U.S. as well three-dimensional depictions of ale cans drew attention to questions of representation in art.<ref name="Met">{{cite web |last=Rosenthal |first=Nan |author-link=Nan Rosenthal |date=October 2004 |title=Jasper Johns (born 1930) In ''Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History'' |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/john/hd_john.htm |access-date=2 May 2021 |website=The [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]}}</ref> Johns' and Rauschenberg's work of the 1950s is frequently referred to as [[Neo-Dada]], and is visually distinct from the prototypical American pop art which exploded in the early 1960s.<ref>Robert Rosenblum, "Jasper Johns" ''Art International'' (September 1960): 75.</ref><ref>Hapgood,  Susan, ''Neo-Dada: Redefining Art, 1958–62''. New York: Universe Books, 1994.</ref>

[[Roy Lichtenstein]] is of equal importance to American pop art. His work, and its use of [[parody]], probably defines the basic premise of pop art better than any other.<ref name="mod" /> Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while also parodying in a soft manner. Lichtenstein used [[Oil paint|oil]] and [[Magna paint]] in his best known works, such as ''[[Drowning Girl]]'' (1963), which was [[Appropriation (art)|appropriated]] from the lead story in [[DC Comics]]' ''Secret Hearts'' #83. (''Drowning Girl'' is part of the collection of the [[Museum of Modern Art]].)<ref name="rlf-Hendrickson31">{{cite book|last=Hendrickson|first=Janis|title=Roy Lichtenstein|year=1988|publisher=Benedikt Taschen|location=Cologne, Germany|isbn=3-8228-0281-6|page=31}}</ref> His work features thick outlines, bold colors and [[Ben-Day dots]] to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction. Lichtenstein said, "[abstract expressionists] put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kimmelman |first=Michael |date=30 September 1997 |title=Roy Lichtenstein, Pop Master, Dies at 73 |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B03E0DF103AF933A0575AC0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3 |access-date=12 November 2007}}</ref> Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art while injecting humor, irony, and recognizable imagery/content into the mix.

The paintings of Lichtenstein, like those of Andy Warhol, [[Tom Wesselmann]] and others, share a direct attachment to the commonplace image of American popular culture, but also treat the subject in an impersonal manner clearly illustrating the idealization of mass production.<ref name="mod" />

Andy Warhol is probably the most famous figure in pop art. In fact, art critic Arthur Danto once called Warhol "the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced".<ref name="SchermanTony" /> Warhol attempted to take pop beyond an artistic style to a life style, and his work often displays a lack of human affectation that dispenses with the irony and parody of many of his peers.<ref>Michelson, Annette, Buchloh, B. H. D. (eds) ''Andy Warhol'' (October Files), MIT Press, 2001.</ref><ref>Warhol, Andy. ''The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, from A to B and back again''. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975</ref>

===Early U.S. exhibitions===
[[File:Cheddar Cheese crop from Campbells Soup Cans MOMA.jpg|thumb|The ''Cheddar Cheese'' canvas from [[Andy Warhol]]'s ''[[Campbell's Soup Cans]]'', 1962.]]
[[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Jim Dine]] and [[Tom Wesselmann]] had their first shows in the [[Judson Memorial Church#Sponsorship of the arts|Judson Gallery]] in 1959 and 1960 and later in 1960 through 1964 along with [[James Rosenquist]], [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]] and others at the [[Green Gallery]] on 57th Street in Manhattan. In 1960, [[Martha Jackson]] showed [[Installation art|installations]] and [[Assemblage (art)|assemblages]], ''New Media – New Forms'' featured [[Hans Arp]], [[Kurt Schwitters]], [[Jasper Johns]], Claes Oldenburg, [[Robert Rauschenberg]], Jim Dine and [[May Wilson]]. 1961 was the year of [[Martha Jackson]]'s spring show, ''Environments, Situations, Spaces''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:E:4397&page_number=12&template_id=1&sort_order=1 |title=The Collection |website=MoMA.org |access-date=2015-12-30}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tfaoi.com/newsm1/n1m651.htm |title=The Great American Pop Art Store: Multiples of the Sixties |website=Tfaoi.com |access-date=2015-12-30}}</ref> Andy Warhol held his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in July 1962 at [[Ferus Gallery|Irving Blum's Ferus Gallery]], where he showed 32 paintings of Campbell's soup cans, one for every flavor. Warhol sold the set of paintings to Blum for $1,000; in 1996, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired it, the set was valued at $15 million.<ref name="SchermanTony" />

Donald Factor, the son of [[Max Factor Jr.]], and an art collector and co-editor of [[avant-garde]] [[literary magazine]] [[Nomad (magazine)|''Nomad'']], wrote an essay in the magazine's last issue, ''Nomad/New York''. The essay was one of the first on what would become known as pop art, though Factor did not use the term. The essay, "Four Artists", focused on Roy Lichtenstein, [[James Rosenquist]], Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenburg.<ref name="Diggory">Diggory (2013).</ref>

In the 1960s, Oldenburg, who became associated with the pop art movement, created many ''[[happening]]s'', which were [[performance art]]-related productions of that time. The name he gave to his own productions was "Ray Gun Theater". The cast of colleagues in his performances included: artists [[Lucas Samaras]], [[Tom Wesselmann]], [[Carolee Schneemann]], [[Öyvind Fahlström]] and [[Richard Artschwager]]; dealer Annina Nosei; [[art critic]] [[Barbara Rose]]; and screenwriter [[Rudy Wurlitzer]].<ref name="Los Angeles Times">Kristine McKenna (2 July 1995), [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-02-ca-19310-story.html When Bigger Is Better: Claes Oldenburg has spent the past 35 years blowing up and redefining everyday objects, all in the name of getting art off its pedestal] ''[[Los Angeles Times]]''.</ref> His first wife, Patty Mucha, who sewed many of his early soft sculptures, was a constant performer in his happenings. This brash, often humorous, approach to art was at great odds with the prevailing sensibility that, by its nature, art dealt with "profound" expressions or ideas. In December 1961, he rented a store on Manhattan's [[Lower East Side]] to house ''The Store'', a month-long installation he had first presented at the [[Martha Jackson]] Gallery in New York, stocked with sculptures roughly in the form of consumer goods.<ref name="Los Angeles Times" />

Opening in 1962, [[Willem de Kooning]]'s New York art dealer, the [[Sidney Janis]] Gallery, organized the groundbreaking ''International Exhibition of the New Realists'', a survey of new-to-the-scene American, French, Swiss, Italian ''[[New Realism]]'', and British pop art. The fifty-four artists shown included [[Richard Lindner (painter)|Richard Lindner]], [[Wayne Thiebaud]], Roy Lichtenstein (and his painting [[Blam (Roy Lichtenstein)|Blam]]), Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, [[James Rosenquist]], Jim Dine, [[Robert Indiana]], [[Tom Wesselmann]], [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]], Peter Phillips, Peter Blake (''The Love Wall'' from 1961), [[Öyvind Fahlström]], [[Yves Klein]], [[Arman]], [[Daniel Spoerri]], [[Christo]] and [[Mimmo Rotella]]. The show was seen by Europeans [[Martial Raysse]], [[Niki de Saint Phalle]] and [[Jean Tinguely]] in New York, who were stunned by the size and look of the American artwork. Also shown were [[Marisol Escobar|Marisol]], [[Mario Schifano]], [[Enrico Baj]] and [[Öyvind Fahlström]]. Janis lost some of his abstract expressionist artists when [[Mark Rothko]], [[Robert Motherwell]], [[Adolph Gottlieb]] and [[Philip Guston]] quit the gallery, but gained Dine, Oldenburg, Segal and Wesselmann.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hLgyznMrORsC&q=New+Realism+at+Sidney+Janis&pg=PA83 |title=Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s |author=Reva Wolf |page=83 |date= 1997-11-24|publisher=University of Chicago Press |access-date=2015-12-30|isbn=9780226904931 }}</ref> At an opening-night soiree thrown by collector Burton Tremaine, Willem de Kooning appeared and was turned away by Tremaine, who ironically owned a number of de Kooning's works. Rosenquist recalled: "at that moment I thought, something in the art world has definitely changed".<ref name="SchermanTony" /> Turning away a respected abstract artist proved that, as early as 1962, the pop art movement had begun to dominate art culture in New York.

A bit earlier, on the [[West Coast of the United States|West Coast]], Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine and Andy Warhol from New York City; [[Phillip Hefferton]] and [[Robert Dowd (artist)|Robert Dowd]] from Detroit; [[Edward Ruscha]] and [[Joe Goode]] from Oklahoma City; and Wayne Thiebaud from California were included in the ''[[New Painting of Common Objects]]'' show. This first pop art museum exhibition in America was curated by [[Walter Hopps]] at the [[Pasadena Art Museum]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nortonsimon.org/about/history.aspx |title=Museum History » Norton Simon Museum |website=Nortonsimon.org |access-date=2015-12-30}}</ref> Pop art was ready to change the art world. New York followed Pasadena in 1963, when the [[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum|Guggenheim Museum]] exhibited ''Six Painters and the Object'', curated by [[Lawrence Alloway]]. The artists were Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol.<ref>{{cite book|title=Six painters and the object. Lawrence Alloway [curator, conceived and prepared this exhibition and the catalogue] (Computer file) |date=2009-07-24 |oclc = 360205683}}</ref> Another pivotal early exhibition was ''The American Supermarket'' organised by the Bianchini Gallery in 1964. The show was presented as a typical small supermarket environment, except that everything in it—the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc.—was created by prominent pop artists of the time, including Apple, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wesselmann, Oldenburg, and Johns. This project was recreated in 2002 as part of the [[Tate Gallery]]'s ''Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture''.<ref>{{cite web|last=Gayford|first=Martin|title=Still life at the check-out|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3587307/Still-life-at-the-check-out.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3587307/Still-life-at-the-check-out.html |archive-date=2022-01-11 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|work=The Telegraph|publisher=Telegraph Media Group Ltd|access-date=28 November 2012|date=2002-12-19}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

By 1962, pop artists started exhibiting in commercial galleries in New York and Los Angeles; for some, it was their first commercial one-man show. The [[Ferus Gallery]] presented Andy Warhol in Los Angeles (and [[Ed Ruscha]] in 1963). In New York, the [[Green Gallery]] showed Rosenquist, Segal, Oldenburg, and Wesselmann. The [[Stable Gallery]] showed R. Indiana and Warhol (in his first New York show). The [[Leo Castelli|Leo Castelli Gallery]] presented Rauschenberg, Johns, and Lichtenstein. [[Martha Jackson]] showed Jim Dine and Allen Stone showed Wayne Thiebaud. By 1966, after the Green Gallery and the Ferus Gallery closed, the Leo Castelli Gallery represented Rosenquist, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein and Ruscha. The Sidney Janis Gallery represented Oldenburg, Segal, Dine, Wesselmann and Marisol, while Allen Stone continued to represent Thiebaud, and [[Martha Jackson]] continued representing Robert Indiana.<ref>''Pop Artists: Andy Warhol, Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Peter Max, Erró, David Hockney, Wally Hedrick, Michael Leavitt'' (20 May 2010) Reprinted: 2010, General Books, Memphis, Tennessee, USA, {{ISBN|978-1-155-48349-8}}, {{ISBN|1-155-48349-9}}.</ref>

In 1968, the ''[[São Paulo Art Biennial|São Paulo 9 Exhibition – Environment U.S.A.: 1957–1967]]'' featured the "Who's Who" of pop art. Considered as a summation of the ''classical phase'' of the American pop art period, the exhibit was curated by William Seitz. The artists were [[Edward Hopper]], [[James Gill (artist)|James Gill]], [[Robert Indiana]], [[Jasper Johns]], [[Roy Lichtenstein]], [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Robert Rauschenberg]], [[Andy Warhol]] and [[Tom Wesselmann]].<ref>Jim Edwards, William Emboden, David McCarthy: ''Uncommonplaces: The Art of James Francis Gill'', 2005, p.54</ref>