Page 27 - Studio International - May 1966

Pop Art and Surrealism

by David Irwin
The 'realism' of Pop art, and the extent to which this art ling with pencil and painting it with colours, and although
has transformed banal subjects, have often been over- the material of the quilt is colourful, it is made more so
stressed. The realism is further misleadingly emphasized by Rauschenberg's painterly splashes and dribbles. The
by photographing artist's source material and printing resulting composition is strangely unreal, and was quite
the resulting photographs beside the paintings and sculp- at ease in the context of other such works in the Surrealist
tures themselves, supposedly indicating their close simi- exhibition in Paris in the winter of 1959-60. The same
larity. I believe these comparisons and emphases are to exhibition included Jasper Johns's Target, which incor-
some extent false, being based on too great a concern porates small compartments with plaster casts of different
with the mundane character of the advertisement hoard- parts of the male body.
ings, shop windows and supermarket displays themselves, A great deal has been written about Johns's subject-
and not sufficiently on the actual metamorphosis of this matter, particularly in connexion with the flags and the
material into a work of art. targets, which have been interpreted in two entirely
What is chosen from the world of mass culture, and how different ways. One school of thought sees them as the
is it used? What resemblance is there between the artist's work of an artist who wishes to force the spectator to look
created image and the original 'real' object? In attempt- at objects with fresh eyes; the other school believes that
ing to answer these questions, I hope to show that behind the deliberately obvious subject-matter was chosen so
this New Realism lies a strong element of Surrealism. For that the viewer would look beyond it to a pure, painterly
clarity of argument different themes from Surrealism experience (as in a Rothko). The truth probably lies
itself have been chosen, and will be related to the work somewhere between the two extremes. This transposition
of some—but not all—Pop artists, mostly American. Not of the familiar (a bed, a target) to the unfamiliar (hang-
all Pop works show Surrealist influence; even those that ing on a wall with other works of art), thus transforming
do are not influenced by the same aspects or artists. the purpose of the original objects, can be paralleled by
A familiar object torn out of context and seen in un- many a surrealist objet trouvé. Surrealism inherited such
expected isolation is one of the most familiar visual sur- works from Dada, but exploited the idea more fully, with
prises of Surrealism. A bed quilt and pillow displayed the significant difference that the surrealist material re-
as a picture on a wall is itself an incongruous enough mains intentionally recognizable, whereas the Dada
Surrealist image. But Rauschenberg went further with (with some exceptions) does not.
his Bed in 1955, painting the pillow white before scribb- Although the supermarket is often cited as a source of
inspiration for Pop artists, very few of them in fact have
reassembled products from such stores in their own work
in a way which evokes their source. Even when they are
Martial Raysse
Rite of spring 1963 reassembled, rather on the lines of commercial displays—
Mixed media and collage by Martial Raysse, for example—the resulting image has
Collection: Edward Kienholz
Photograph courtesy Dwan far more of the incongruity of a surrealist objet. The first
Gallery, Los Angeles large museum showing of his work in Europe—at the
Stedelijk, Amsterdam, a few months ago—included many
examples of detergent packets, hairbrushes, bath caps
and beach equipment assembled often into neat, geo-
metric arrangements, but resulting in a surreal quality
exactly comparable to the bed and the target. The same
could be said of Raysse's more recent use of neon lights,
especially his America, America, included in the Current Art
show last spring in Philadelphia: an eight-and-a-half feet
high blue hand holds a red star, with obvious allusions
to the Statue of Liberty. Directly inspired by the most
vulgar and brash form of modern advertising techniques,
particularly in America, in its materials, its forms and
the flashing on and off of lights, Raysse's image has a
reality relatable to an everyday familiarity, but when
transposed to an art gallery pedestal takes on the night-
marish quality of fairground fantasy.
Perhaps the most disconcerting of all images in isolation
is the human one, particularly when relatable to a manne-
quin. A recent book on Pop art reproduces a photograph
of an ordinary shop window full of undressed manne-
quins which, rather than highlighting the reality of Pop,
emphasizes the eery and unreal. It is a very short step
from the surrealist lifesize sculpture of a woman seated
at a table by Giacometti (1933), and the mannequins
dressed up in different costumes by various Surrealists for
their 1938 Paris exhibition, to a white plaster lifesize
image of a collector of Pop art standing behind a (real)
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