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Politics of Pop Art in Public
• Pop Art as a response to the changing urban environment
• 1st case study: Claes OLDENBURG’s exhibition ‘Ray Gun’ (1960)• Ray Gun and The Street as response to the abstraction of art
and the city
• 2nd case study: the WATTS TOWERS in the 1950s and 1960s• Re-imagining LA as ‘capital’ of popular culture • The double meanings of the Towers as American cultural
heritage and as hallmark for a local community
Old New York
• Mainly low rise development• Active street life• ’Congestion’• Diverse functions
• Slums and poor living conditions• Overcrowding
• Not a unique situation
Why this dramatic transformation of cityscape?
• Old city deemed impractical
• Slum clearance
• Symbolic discprecancy
New York Renewal Scheme
• Most violent during 50’s and 60’s• Robert Moses• Vision of a modern(ist) New York City• Inspiration from Europe and Le Corbusier• Sweden a good parallel
Stockholms City
Stockholm renewal scheme finalized 1949Changed and moderated during 1960’sLess focus on highways and traffic
Hötorgshusen1956-62
This is Claes Oldenburg’s New YorkThis is the New York of Ray Gun (1960)
Construction/destruction of Lincoln Center1955-65
Conceptually, what can we say about the modern(ist) city?• Rational
• Abstracted
• Legible
• Total
• Sculptural
• AhistoricLe CorbusierPlan Voisin, 1925
Ray Gun, 1960
• Judson Gallery at Judson Memorial Church
• Young local artists
• Oldenburg’s ’installation’ The Street’ included
• Also series of happenings in relation to it. ’Snapshots From the City’.
• A ’childish’ and dadaesque reaction against renewal scheme
• Critique often focused on picturesque and romantic elements of old city. E.g. Jane Jacobs
• Oldenburg’s The Street is very different
• “I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap”
• An appreciation and love for the irrationalities and filth of the city
• Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York. Congestion
• “ I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does somethingother than sit on its ass in a museum.”
• An alternative vision of New York.
• An irrational, inconsistent, illogical and chaotic New York.
• “Carnivalesque delight in disorder and nonsense”
• ‘Snapshots From the City’
• A praise of life over abstraction
Rubens Gallery and rebirths
• Reborn a few weeks after
• New space
• Crisper, cleaner, clearer
• Sense of narrative