A Taste For Pop

Book: Cécile WhitingBy Loren McDonald

Contents:

• Sections covered Wesselmann and Pop at Home:

• The Economy of Domesticity.• Postwar Cultural Hierarchies.• Collapsing Cultural Hierarchies.• Recoding Cultural Hierarchies.• Masculinity at Home.

What is Pop Art?

Pop Art is…

Art based on Popular Culture influenced by the Mass Media.

Critical and Ironic views on Traditional Fine Art Values from the medium use.

Emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in America.

Pop Art is about Consumerism and Celebrities also about Bright Colours and comic like values.

Pop Art influenced home decoration and Gender also it influenced fame.

Using Advertising and Mass Culture, Comic Books, and Abstract Expressionism to inform colours.

Similar to Dada.

Pop Art and Minimalism.

Product Labelling and Logos.

Wesselmann and Pop at Home. • ‘Early 1960s art collector Leon Kraushar bought Tom Wesselmann’s

Bathtub Collage #1 1963 and hung it up on the wall of his home the display and valued work converted the owner’s financial success in to a certain cultural capital Wesselmann’s Collage’. To gain a social status behind this art movement and earn a stand to living to be valued as a person and to know what art is around the home and domestic life of living.

Original colour offset Lithograph postcard 1991 Bathtub Collage #1

Introducing the home and rooms of a home to feel domesticated and to introducing this art for the home.

Domestic uses for Pop Art• Post-war American domestic economy, and collectors in turn incorporated

works by Wesselmann and other Pop artists in to their homes.• Two strands of taste.• The aesthetic taste of artist and collector and consumerism taste of the

female homemaker faced off but also intermingled with each other.• This gained a class of gender and also concerning the control of American

domesticity occurred and emerged throughout homes in Britain and America.

Mrs. Kraushar in Her Bathroom with the piece by Wesselmann to the right of the image hanging on the wall.

The Economy of Domesticity.• Many of Wesselmann’s images exposed the private sanctums

of the home projecting a openly outcome to gender and nudity of the body which projected every room to display a publicity and a family orientated space for no shame of his artwork.

• Increased Goods, Efficiency and Practicality, The Kitchen Debate on gender influences, Media and Magazines are equal to good taste, Taste served as the standard for defining the middle class.

• To define media and mass production through the uses of this movement.

American Way of Life.• The embodiment of American Success and the economy of public

posturing on the advantages of capitalism over the Soviet Union during the Cold War was introduced by the ‘Kitchen Debate’ this was between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959 this has recently highlighted the importance of the domestic sphere to demonstrate superiority in the American Way of Life due to the U.S. governments efforts over the communist system.

When Nixon met Khrushchev during their tour of an American Exhibition in Moscow 1959.

Wealth and Poverty.• The myth was said of economic egalitarianism depended

upon ignoring all ways of life, this was established by urban wealth or rural poverty that then deviated from the strict middle class norm.

• Influencing a social standing and a standing of higher class from wealth but also putting a stand on poverty and how this played the effect of Pop Art in our homes during this era and how it became mass produced in every home.

Social Standing.• The suburbs did become a popularity during the 1950s with

many families who purchased accounted for the soaring consumptions of mass produced goods but in fact Roland Marchand has claimed that only households among the top 40 percent in the family income could afford this lifestyle.

• Social standing of Higher Class, Middle Class and Poorer communities would be affected by the mass production of art and goods which performed in the Pop Art era since everybody was purchasing almost everybody would want this in their home to carry on the trend of the movement.

The Interior Design of Pop Art.• ‘Quote from House and Garden’s Complete Guide to Interior

Design: Stated in the introduction’: “Our aim in this book is not only to supply you with knowledge… but also to encourage you to express your personal taste freely in the decoration of your own home.”

• Suggesting a sense of style within the movement but not only to buy artwork but to freely experiment with creativity within the home with the guidance from the book above to encourage a social standing and elegance within this movement.

Pop Art to Modern.

Modernisation.• The industry has moved on vast from the ways of the Pop Art

movement because of the vast technology and many technology improvements towards the home but the art industry still flourishes with much more modern art, but many people still love this style of Pop Art but with the vast technology of smart phones and technical life changes to the home many people would stick with the modernised kitchen now.

Modern Art from Pop Art. Metal Art contemporary Sculpture Home Décor Modern Huge Explosion Original Metal Art.

Some people still like Pop Art today because of the retro interior design feel and still carry on to use it with modern technology combining the home in this manner.

Postwar Cultural Hierarchies.

• Wesselmann’s representations of the suburban interiors such as Still Life #30 embraced the middle class economy of domesticity and it’s standard or consumer taste, they would be objects easily scorned and rejected by critics committed to preserving the sanctity of high-art modernism.

• From mass production to modernism the critics frowned upon this new generation of art during the Postwar many critics did in the 1960s did dismiss Wesselmann in the pages of art in Magazines.

Consumerism.• Cultural Critics worried about the growth and the impact of

consumer culture which was endorsed by high-art modernism as a means to reaffirm the standards of value and thereby counter and reputed brutalizing the effects of consumer culture.

• Would stock of certain design or products become popular to

buy or unpopular to by because of how the Pop Art industry used popular culture in this way. Would this be original using consumer products in order for art, in my opinion I didn’t think it was original I think the imagination of art is original.

Aesthetic and Consumerism.• Herb Gehr, High-brow, Low-brow and Middle-brow, Life 26 Russel Lyne’s

opinions on how he guided the reader of these artistic pieces by Herb Gehr to their place on the social ladder according to their preferences in both art and consumer goods. According to Lynes preference the highbrow was favoured paintings by Picasso, Eames Furniture and French Omelettes made with sweet butter, whereas the lower middlebrow preferred hunting prints, reproduction and Sheraton furniture and barbecues these men shared class which had preference to them and seemly natural preference for these visual images to suit their social standing, decision on the body type and clothes used. A highbrow in tweed contemplates a Picasso, a middlebrow observes a reproduction of Grant Wood’s American Gothic while a heavyset lowbrow in shirtsleeves stands below a poster of a showgirl and these terms highbrow and middlebrow and lowbrow which Lynes used to label a social classes by the criterion of taste became popular in the opposition between modernism and consumer culture.

Social Standing.

Collapsing Culture Hierarchies.• From the perspective of critics according to the culture

hierarchies of the 1950s, Wesselmann’s pictures must have seemed to eliminate the difference between high-art painting and consumer culture using the defence between Fine Art and Consumerism the theories of social and consumer point of views to civilisation.

Originality in Consumerism.• “How to Live with Taste” in House and Garden for instance

hangs the example of European modern art above sofas the texts on interior and a reproduction rarely acknowledged the difference between an original and a reproduction.

• Showing Originality and not mass production of consumerism which is thought to be ‘One of a kind’ during the criticism between originality between Fine Artists which thought highly of this instead of the consumerism views upon the hold of art.

Originality in Consumerism.

Consumerism within Art.• The painting most texts agreed with the most, should serve as

the focal view of the room and at the same time it need to match the colour of the furnishings.

• This would then act as value and social standing when a piece of valuable art is seen in a person’s house this acts as wealth and aristocracy when people can afford high and expensive pieces of artwork but also but also by consumer culture by having a aesthetic value.

Recoding Cultural Hierarchies.• Wesselmann’s images conflated highbrow and middlebrow

taste, they maintained a difference between high art and consumer culture by distinguishing between two forms of gendered taste.

• This became a lot more open because of Pop Art and the consumerism between mass production and taste bringing genders with similar tastes to suit the interior design of their home or even sexuality of themselves.

Great American Nude.• Great American Nude by Tom Wesselmann:

Bringing the gender and more publicly seen nudity within art more well known and more openly shown. Bringing the nude body in to a piece of artwork which then became in to popular culture and which then became popular so this wasn’t frowned upon in Pop Art.

Masculinity at Home.• Viewers would have seen Wesselmann’s collages and their

reformulation of the prerogative of high art over consumer culture first within the institutional spaces of high art such as the gallery or museum; in such contexts, Pop Art affirmed the priority of high art over domesticity, but never really challenged domesticity on its home turf.

• Pop collectors fitted their artworks into a specific type of domesticity and domestic space: the high design modern interior, these layouts revealed that collectors not only packed their homes with Pop Art but that they also adopted Pop’s aesthetic principles to organize their domestic spaces.

Masculinity at Home.

• Invariably apparent is a respect and appreciation for architectural materials such as Marble, Wood, Glass, Stone and Metal which are played against each other for interesting textural contrasts in backgrounds and low-slung, linear furniture. The arrangements of furniture and accessories are studiedly asymmetrical, colour is used to weight small areas with brightness or lightness as a balance to large, darker masses, much as an abstract painter might compose a canvas.

In conclusion.• In respect to Popular Culture and Modernism during this era these two

have opposite barriers towards the Modern Home to the more Popular Culture home and technology has changed this and gender and age has also changed this and this is what time does change within the art sector and this bringing nudity more found and openly which we’re all used to in this day and age so the legacy still does live. Within the interior design and living during the Postwar this definitely has the massive effects on time and technology within art and also what suited what and how mediums where used and manipulated to make a good piece of artwork. This relates to me as a creative thinker because of Andy Warhol and his ways of making this culture to my taste with consumerism and using mass produced products as artwork even though I don’t find this original I still like his way of working.

Bibliography.• Internet:

• Author: University of California, Irvine• Year of Publication: 10/03/2013• Title of Webpage: Faculty Profile System University of California, Irvine [Internet]• Available from: http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4939 • Accessed: 22nd February 2014

• Author: Wikipedia• Year of Publication: Modified 20th February 2014 at 11:42• Title of Webpage: Pop art [Internet]• Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art • Accessed: 22nd February 2014

• Author: Live Auctioneers• Year of Publication: 9th December 2012, 8:00 AM• Title of Webpage: Live Auctioneers Bidders [Internet]• Available from: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/14410408_tom-wesselmann-original-color-offset-lithograph • Accessed on: 22nd February 2014

Bibliography.• Author: Ezine Articles/ Matt Steel• Year of Publication: 21st June 2009• Title of Webpage: Pop Art Canvas- Riding With the Waves of Art Modernisation [Internet]• Available from: http://ezinearticles.com/?Pop-Art-Canvas---Riding-With-the-Waves-of-Art-Modernisation&id=6238917 • Accessed on: 22nd February 2014

• Author: Infurn Lounge• Year of Publication: 30th June• Title of Webpage: Add a little Pop Art to your home décor! [Internet]• Available from: http://www.infurn.com/blog/add-a-little-pop-art-to-your-home-decor/ • Accessed on: 22nd February 2014

• Book:

• Author: Cécile Whiting (Whiting.C)• Date: 1958• Book title: A Taste For Pop• Place of Publication: Cambridge Studies in American Visual Culture