Page 20 - Studio International - November 1965

Britain and the manifestations of pop art 7 Jones One reason for the prevalence of popular
Smith I think pop art is most likely to come from an imagery in England is that it may be related to her
urban environment and Britain is a very urban country. closeness to America that comes from the sharing of
Although we may have been born in the countryside a common language and our traditional alliance. And I
most of us have spent our lives in the towns, and there think the lack of a language barrier shouldn't be under­
is where one would be exposed to the raw material rated. It's natural that something happening in one
of pop art. and then, more inclined to use it. place would be communicated all the more rapidly if
Glaser But many painters have lived in towns before, the exchange were easier, so that it is quite probable
the Impressionists in Paris, the Abstract-Expressionists that many of the forces that produced popular imagery
in New York, though one can probably trace a line of in American art were similarly felt in the air in England.
descent from them through the content of their work, Smith It's interesting to see how language barriers
to current art. and therefore greater cultural barriers affect the trans­
portation of ordinary things such as American movies,
when they are seen, say, in France. They become so
Peter Phillips photographed by Tony Evans exotic according to the way French movie critics inter­
pret them. I remember having a French book on monster
movies that included everything from ladies with
unicorns on medieval tapestries to Fay Wray and King
Kong and presumed to see a connection throughout.
Comparing that with a British movie magazine like
Movie, you could see that American movies were not
exotic to us. You take them straight. and this is mostly
due to language. I think that's probably why the French
can't produce the same kind of pop art that the English­
speaking people do. And also, the best commercial
art. from which pop comes, is American.
Glaser You return to the movies again. a favourite
popular medium, and it reminds me that Peter mentioned
before his fascination with the Bowery Boys. Possibly
one can find a place in the pop genealogy for this kind
of film. Certainly the banality, silliness and absurdity
of the Bowery Boys and the Marx Brothers, among
other movie favourites. find an echo in aspects of the
pop aesthetic. Perhaps one can find the links more
directly in England in the Goon Show of the 1950's,
which I think was a counterpart of this sort of thing.
Did those radio programmes have any kind of meaning
or significance for you apart from being funny 7
Smith I think it was more than funny because there
was a time when the Goon Show seemed to involve
everybody. I remember everybody talked in Goon
language.
Phillips It involved us all, but it didn't really play any
part in our painting.
Jones It was about a year after it collapsed that the
BBC Third Programme started to have a discussion on
the Goon Show and its significance.
Glaser That obviously was a confirmation of its death.
Nevertheless, some critics have suggested parallels in
English painting today and the Goon Show. Specific­
ally, Jonathan Miller referred to the confusion or the
ambiguity that resulted from the use of replications on
the program, and he felt that these same devices were
translated into the works of the younger painters.
Jones I think any association between some aspects
of the Goon Show and current painting merely demon­
strates Miller's own creative streak. The idea of collage,
which I presume is what he is talking about. and which
the Goons certainly took advantage of in the way they
chopped up and made odd juxtapositions with sane
or normal patterns of conversation to make something
new and funny, is pretty old now. One can find those
ideas in Picasso from fifty years ago. As a matter of
fact. if the term pop art applies in any way to the three
of us sitting at this table, and it seems to be so all­
embracing as to cover more than half the practising
artists today, I would say that from a philosophical
point of view we still differ radically from other
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