For those of us who think that art is everywhere and there is no need to be Leonardo Da Vinci to be able to express yourself in the form of a painting, Pop Art is a breath of fresh air. One of the most important Pop Art collections in the world is coming to Paris this September and I can´t wait to be there. Read on to prepare yourself for the art show of the year here in Paris.
What Is Pop Art?
The Pop Art movement rose to the light in the 1950s after the World War II was over. The thought of art being ephemeral and mass-produced pushed the movement to become a mass-hit for at least two decades.
Abstract Expressionism
The world of arts was deeply submerged into Abstract Expressionism (Kandisky, Pollock) and for a couple of decades only the most elitist people could tell what each painting meant and represented. I´m not at all against Abstract Expressionism, I love The Guardians of the Secret, Lavender Mist, Pollock, Kooning and all those painters, but since the reality element was not the strongest one in their pictures, elitists would be the only qualified to speak about it.
Breakthrough Of Pop Art
Before Pop Art emerged there were some huge artists who were breaking away from the hegemony of Expressionism. We can talk about heavy weights like Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and my beloved Man Ray. Art was shifting to being a cultural expression for the masses again. The first known movement of Pop Art was The Independent Group founded in 1952 in the United Kingdom with people like Eduardo Paolozzi at the head of it. They were the ones who named the movement and printed the name “Pop Art” for the first time.
Hitting Big In America
With names like the utterly famous Andy Warhol and the not-so-famous but very influential Roy Lichtenstein, Pop Art opened up a new way of crafting, consuming and viewing art in the world. The philosophy of these two artists was to make mass-produced art that can sit in any museum or art gallery in the world as well as supermarkets.
One of Andy Warhol´s attempts was to be mass-consumed. And boy was he in the right path! He was already the best-paid commercial illustrator in the entire city of New York before even hanging a painting at a gallery. Eventually, his repetition figures (the classic Marilyn Monroe painting), stencil techniques and the injection of irony and humor in everyday images gave him a style of his own.
Closer to the radical Dadaism, Roy Lichtenstein was adding political messages and conveying more drama to his work, that remained mundane but had a deeper literal message than the shallower, intentionally banal work by Andy Warhol.
Why Go To The Exhibition?
I can think of a million reasons to go to the exhibition and seeing the work of Pop Art masters, let me narrow them to just two:
Uncanny Opportunity
The Collection held at the Whitney Museum of art is the lifetime effort of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who was one of the first ones to trust and value American art. She moved around the city for decades and even got rejected when trying to donate 500 pieces to the Metropolitan Museum. The curatorship she was able to do from the epicenter of the movement cannot be compared to any other. If you want to experience true New York Pop Art from within, this is an opportunity like no other.
All The Work In One Place
This will not just be a show for us painters and photographers, because the amazing collection of over sixty pieces that comes from the Whitney Museum contains sculptures, serigraphy pieces by Andy Warhol, huge canvases of Tom Wesselmann work, paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and plenty more. All the Pop Art most iconic artists will be present in just one spot. Curatorship will surely be flawless and for what it is said around, the disposition will follow periods, artists and will have plenty of explanations to enjoy what you see even more. If you have a heart for Pop Art and want to know everything to the deepest detail, you can´t miss this one.