Page 43 - Studio International - July-August 1969

Hercules, but to Charlton Heston as Moses, group of professional comic strip artists who paintings of trees had not been exhibited or
The Weapon Shops of Isher, Vikki Dougan. If considered them very arty. They thought his written about in art journals when they were
these references are now obscure, it doesn't work old-fashioned in its flatness. Lichtenstein featured in Cheetah, a smart American teenage
matter any more than the exact identity of was transforming after all, though to art magazine. Lichtenstein made a cover for
the bad poets in Pope's Dunciad matter. They critics who did not know what comics looked Newsweek when the magazine ran a Pop Art
can be identified but, in any case, the twen- like, his work appeared at first as only copies. survey two years ago and Robert Rauschen-
tieth-century experience of overlapping and In fact, there was a surreptitious original in berg silk-screened a cover for Time on the
clustered sign-systems is Hamilton's organiz- the simulated copy. Pop Art is an icono- occasion of a story on Bonnie and Clyde. Here,
ing principle, which we can all recognize. graphical art, the sources of which persist artists who draw on the field of mass com-
Pop Art is neither abstract nor realistic, through their transformation; there is an inter- munications are themselves contributing to it.
though it has contacts in both directions. play of likeness and unlikeness. One way to Some of the best photographs of Edward
Peter Blake and Malcolm Morley, for instance, describe the situation might be to borrow a Kieholtz's environmental sculptures appear-
both British artists, have moved from Pop word from the 'military-industrial complex' : ed in a girlie magazine Night and Day and
Art to a photograph-based realism. In New commonality, which refers to equipment that the Sergeant Pepper disc of the Beatles has an
York, on the other hand, an artist like Roy can be used for different purposes. One piece elaborate Peter Blake sleeve (the next one is
Lichtenstein has been moving in the direction of hardware is common to different operations; by Richard Hamilton). As art is reproduced
of abstract art, not only by parodistic refer- similarly a sign or a set of signs can be com- in this way it becomes itself pop culture, just
ences to its old-fashioned geometric style, but mon to both popular culture and Pop Art. as Van Gogh and Picasso, through endless
by the formality of his own arrangements. The The meaning of a sign is changed by being reproduction, have become mass-produced
core of Pop Art, however, is at neither fron- recontextualized by the artist, but it is not items of popular culture. Van Gogh would
tier; it is, essentially, an art about signs and transformed in the sense of being corrected or have welcomed it because he had the greatest
sign-systems. Realism is, to offer a minimal improved or elaborated out of easy recog- respect for cliches, which he regarded as the
definition, concerned with the artist's per- nition. authorized expression of mankind, a kind of
ception of objects in space and their translation The success of Pop Art was not due to any common property that especially binds us
into iconic, or faithful, signs. However, Pop initial cordiality by art critics. On the con- together.
Art deals with material that already exists as trary, art critics in the fifties were in general Although the cliché is one of the most power-
signs : photographs, brand goods, comics, that hostile, and they still are. One reason for this ful resources of pop culture, and although we
is to say, with pre-coded material. The subject is worth recording because it is shared by all consume popular culture in one form or
matter of Pop Art, at one level, is known to Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, another, there are obstacles to its appreciation.
the spectator in advance of seeing the use the to name the supporters of irreconcilable earlier Its pervasiveness has caused it to be taken for
artist makes of it. Andy Warhol's Campbell modernisms. Greenberg with his attachment granted and all consumers of pop culture are
soup cans, Roy Lichtenstein's comic strips, to the pure colour surface and Rosenberg with rather specialized. Agatha Christie readers
are known, either by name, or by type, and his commitment to the process of art, are (yes, her books are still in print) are not Ian
their source remains legible in the work of art. interested only in art's unique identity. They Fleming's readers who, probably, put down
What happens when an artist uses a known locate this at different points, Greenberg in Donald Hamilton (he writes the Matt Helm
source in popular culture in his art is rather the end product and Rosenberg in the process spy stories), whose readers, in their turn,
complex. The subject of the work of art is of work, but Pop Art is not predicated on this could not possibly stand the tranquility of
doubled : if Roy Lichtenstein or Paolozzi uses quest for uniqueness. On the contrary, Pop Agatha Christie, and so on. However, it is
Mickey Mouse in his work, Mickey is not the Art reveals constantly a belief in the translat- necessary to take one area of pop culture away
sole subject. The original sign-system of which ability of the work of art. Pop Art proposes a from its specialists to indicate something of its
Mickey is a part is also present as subject. The field of exchangeable and repeatable imagery. possible sophistication. The reason for choos-
communication system of the twentieth cen- It is true that every act of communication, ing comic books is that the genre is in a
tury is, in a special sense, Pop Art's subject. including art, has an irreducible uniqueness; flourishing state of present, though the fact
Marilyn Monroe, as used by Andy Warhol it is equally true, that a great deal of any has not become a part of general knowledge
and Hamilton, is obviously referred to in both message or structure is translatable and homeo- yet.
men's art, but in addition, other forms of morphic. Cross-media exchanges and the con- In the United States there has been a revival
communication are referred to as well.Warhol vergence of multiple channels is the area of of the costume comic (such heroes as Batman
uses a photographic image that repeats like a Pop Art, in opposition to the pursuit of and Superman), with story lines frequently
sheet of contact prints and is coloured like the artistic purity. derived from the paranoid science fiction of
cheapest colour reproduction in a Spanish- Thus Pop Art is able to share, on the basis of pulp magazines of the forties, but updated in a
language American film magazine. The translatability and commonality, themes from bright baroque style, knowing and confident.
mechanically produced image of a beautiful popular culture. An analogue of Pop Art's There was a time-lag before Mod fashions
woman, known to be dead, is contrasted with translatability is the saturation of popular were accepted in the comics, just as in the
the handwritten annotations that deface the culture with current heroes of consumption, movies, but now the traditional story lines run
image of flesh, in Hamilton's My Marilyn. such as the Beatles who are on records and like secret rivers through a hip mise-en-scene.
There has been some doubt and discussion record sleeves, movies, magazines of all kinds, (Wonder Woman, for example, has just got a
about the extent to which the Pop artist trans- radio, boutiques, who have been widely imi- nineteen-sixties body and costume, in place of
forms his material. The first point to make is tated, although in America a new generation her nineteen-forties model, which looked as if
that selecting one thing rather than another is, of teeny boppers has already rejected them. it would stay forever without becoming classic.)
as Marcel Duchamp established, enough. Any event today has the potential of spreading In the forties, comic books were sexy but after
Beyond this, however, is the problem raised through society on a multiplicity of levels, the Korean war they were cleaned up, though
by Lichtenstein who used to say of his paint- carried by a fat anthology of signs. It is im- sex heroines may reappear at any minute
ings derived from comics: 'You never really possible to go into the full extent of the con- among the multi-levelled displays of words
take. Actually you are forming.' He wanted to nections between popular culture and Pop and images. Italian comic books, the fumetti,
compose, not to narrate, but this is precisely Art, but the extent of the situation can be indi- aimed at adults, are openly sadistic and sexual
what transformed his source. I showed early cated by a few representative cases. Robert but have a far less complex narrative style than
comic strip paintings by Lichtenstein to a Stanley's series of two-tone, black on white, American comics aimed at teeny boppers and