Page 40 - Studio International - January 1968

Wall explosion II 1965
enamel on steel
88 x 60 in.
Coll: Leon Kraushar,
Long Island
Far right
Seascape 1965
oil and acrylic on canvas
68 x 48 in.
Coll: Mme Helene
Bokanowsky, Paris

of the differences; it omits Oldenburg and Dine, who, in picture-making. Our responsibility, if we think that
their early work, were not at all anti-Expressionist, and Lichtenstein produces art, is to protect it from such
we noted Lichtenstein's affinity with happenings on the clichés. One way to do this, perhaps, is to look more
basis of their urban content. We can add to urban con- closely at the process of transfer, the steps of transforma-
tent another factor which has been little remarked, but tion, in which all his work is engaged.
one that is at least as comprehensive as the argument When Lichtenstein was asked in 1958, if Pop Art would
from technique. That is the revival in early Pop Art of have the far-reaching influence of Abstract Expression-
the tradition of Ut pictura poesis, the linking of words and ism, his reply was characteristically restrained. 'I don't
images. Almost all the artists called Pop have, in various know. I doubt it. It seems too particular—too much the
ways, used words in their paintings, in violation of the expression of a few personalities'.8 It is clear now, how-
pure pictorial requirements of prevailing American art ever, that Pop Art reached further than this. The history
theory. Lichtenstein, for example, has done comics of the word reveals as clearly as anything what has
almost swamped in verbal matter, and others in which the happened. When the term began to be used in England
words are definitely withheld, despite the expectation ten years ago, it referred to the communication systems
raised by the comics form. of industrialism, to the comics, say, not to paintings in
The more we bring Lichtenstein into art from the amor- which comics were referred to. About 1961, as Pop Art
phous world of 'non-are', the more we are in a position to spread, the term was narrowed until it meant the art
see what his work is about. On the other hand, there is, derived from originals in the mass media. In the last two
also, the risk of taking such work out of the arena of the years, however, the word has expanded again and is
problematic and the discussed, labelling it 'art' with applied, pretty indiscriminately, to art, films, fashion,
nothing to do but get more expensive. That the risk is a dances, artefacts, customs. Thus, Lichtenstein's wariness
real one can be seen from the application to him of about the diffusion of Pop Art seems a definition of the
existing verbal formulae. One writer has compared second meaning of Pop Art, but not of the third and
Lichtenstein to Seurat and Léger, suggesting that all present usage.
three use 'the subject and style of a modern mechanized The shifts in the meaning of the term, its contraction
world as the vehicles for creating a more impersonal and its re-expansion, are indicative of a problem in our
artistic order'. Another writer proposes that the 'real society. Culture, as the concept is used by art and literary
subject' of Lichtenstein's landscapes 'is not nature but a critics, almost always refers to a highly restricted area, a
way of creating artistic tension'. The former writer applies very special activity. By this definition, art is one of the
the exhausted classicism of the machine aesthetic and the constants of culture as narrowly defined. On the other
latter cuts the new work down to an exercise in abstract hand, culture as defined by anthropologists, has (despite