Page 44 - Studio International - January 1966

Won't somebody please answer that picture?

Review article by Norbert Lynton

* Pop as Art, by Mario Amaya Mario Amaya, in one of the two books on pop art* that have just terrible statement of Rauschenberg's about trying to act in the gap
10x 7 1/4 in.
148 pp + xvi colour plates appeared, tells of the opening of a Tom Wesselmann show which between art and life. 'Art', Amaya reminds us, 'has become
(London Studio Vista.) £2 5s. included a picture incorporating a ringing telephone. One of the separated, divorced from life', and he quotes Oldenburg's claim
visitors was heard to exclaim, 'Won't somebody please answer to have produced something 'halfway between art and life . .
Pop Art, by John Rublowsky
10 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. that picture?' Amaya doesn't record in what spirit the man called nothing is interesting to me unless it is halfway'. If such phrases
180 pp. + xli colour plates out. For me his words express that exasperation I have been have any meaning—and surely it is the duty of the authors, if not
(London Nelson.) £3 3s.
feeling with the whole business of Pop—or rather, that mixture of artists, to elucidate them—they must be applicable to any art
of impatience and affection one so often feels in the company of that claims a signficant relationship with reality, and it would be
lively children. difficult to think of any trend in the art of the last hundred years
Here is an art that inherently and extrinsically keeps on demand- that has not claimed to bring art closer to life in one sense or
ing our attention : it largely derives from images and methods another. As far as the non-art public is concerned a Lichtenstein
devised to make us notice them, it shouts and gesticulates, and painting based on a comic strip is further removed from its notion
generally it gets at us through its own devices and through the of life than is the comic strip itself or than a romantic painting on
publicity it so inevitably gets. Yet who knows what it is all about? a similar theme would be, just as an Oldenburg hamburger is
This is not a rhetorical question. Pop holds the record for sheer further from life than even a straight painting of a hamburger, let
duplicity. Not one of the artists involved can be pointed to as the alone the thing itself.
true and essential representative of Pop : several of them would There are many incidental things to criticise in both books,
reject the label altogether. Some admit a debt to Abstract Expres- besides what seems to me their fundamental failure to think the
sionism, some accept the parentage of Duchamp, Schwitters and whole thing through. Did Indiana really say, 'I don't want to be
Dada in general, some refute all possible ties with the past. Some a machine like Warhol, but I would not hesitate using a machine',
of their productions appear to be celebrating the mass-media and, if so, did Phillips really say, 'I don't want to be a machine
world from which most of them get their visual material. Others like Warhol, but I love the idea of using one', as Amaya tells us?
seem to be mocking this world in effigy, but the normal thing is Is there any truth in Rublowsky's statement that 'With the Pop
that one isn't sure one way or the other. A lot of Pop productions movement, American art becomes truly American for the first
work unashamedly on and from feelings of nostalgia; others time and thus becomes universal', and if so what does it mean?
concern themselves exclusively with the present and thus Amaya's book looks rushed and has a number of errors in it, yet
confirm the volatility of their art so often implied in their it is a good deal more thoughtful than Rublowsky's. His biggest
techniques. mistake is that of confronting us with another name for the move-
What has been said and written about Pop does not help much ment, 'New Super Realism'; let's stick to the name that's stuck
either. Commentators have divided, at the drop of a hamburger, to the thing itself. Rublowsky's is in several respects the smoother
into irate antagonists who cannot see Pop as art at all or at least production, and it has the additional advantage of offering _a
deny that Pop has made any contribution to modern art, and into collection of amusing photographs of American Pop artists in
complaisant fellow-travellers, satisfied with the kicks that Pop their lairs, done by Ken Heyman. But this is so blatantly a PR job
undoubtedly offers and happy to have so jolly a subject to that one's spirits, depressed by the foreword, never manage to
journalize after all the solemnity of Abstract Expressionism, rise again. Its blend of narrowness and bright superficiality is more
Hard-edge Constructivism, etc. suited to a general magazine than to the permanence of a book.
Neither Amaya's book, which deals with British and American Both these books, and for that matter just about all writing on
Pop art and mentions a few Continental practitioners as well, nor Pop, are ultimately invalidated by a mistaken assumption. We are
John Rublowsky's, which is limited to the Americans, goes much not going to get a meaningful assessment of the Pop movement
further than this. Both authors show their enthusiasm for because the Pop movement does not exist. I know that all 'isms'
Pop through the fact of their authorship and through some and groupings, as well as their names, have been attacked at
occasionally rather high-flying language, but neither of them some point from inside or out as misleading. But in the case of
step back from the phenomena sufficiently to see them as part of Pop we have a vast diversity of art being produced by a variety of
the to and fro of modern art and to come to any conclusion as to people who feel little connection with each other and who have
Pop's meaning and value. They are content to offer, often without been compressed into a pseudo-movement by the various organs
comment, the evaluations and explanations of others and to give of publicity. What is the link between Richard Smith and Peter
primary importance to the artists' own often contradictory and Blake, R. B. Kitaj and Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein and
rarely disinterested statements. Allen Jones, David Hockney and Claes Oldenburg? There is
Among the borrowed interpretations quite the most enticing is nothing we can say about all these artists that is both true and
that of Dore Ashton (quoted by Amaya), presumably conceived worth saying. Better to forget the grouping and look at them as
in answer to those who deny Pop's validity as art on the grounds individuals producing work that varies not only in kind and
of insufficient transforming of the visual material it uses. Miss intention but also very much in quality.
Ashton, who brings a very fine intuition to writing about art, sees
certain manifestations of Pop as the 'simple game of naming
things—one at a time'. This would be the ultimate in primitivism,
and implies a before-the-Fall innocence that neither the artists
nor their works have, yet it does at least have a partial relevance
to the literal side of Pop, the more or less direct imitating and
repeating favoured by Warhol and Segal and used, as one
factor among others, by Oldenburg (trans-substantiations by Tom
Thumb), Dine, Wesselmann and, at one time, Hockney.
The least satisfactory assessment of Pop is that iterated and
reiterated by Samuel Adams Green of the Philadelphia Institute
for Contemporary Art, in a foreword presumably intended to lend
authority to Rublowsky's chatty accounts of the artists (first
printed in the New Yorker) : Pop's use of mass imagery 'reflects
the mirth and joy of today's scene', and therefore Pop has met
with 'astonishing public acceptance', not to mention 'world-wide
popularity'. Just as it is wishful thinking to see in Pop the long-
desired bridge between art and the populace, so also is it naive
to see nothing but 'mirth and joy' in even the jolliest Pop con-
coctions (let alone in today's scene), and I personally fail to
notice even the slightest glint of joy in, say, Rosenquist or
Phillips.
Most of the other discussions about Pop hover around that