DAVID GARIFF: Today, we talk
about pop art.
We're coming near to the end
of our series, two more talks
next week.
So we've been moving, as you
know, progressively
up through the East Building.
And now, we're up to the area
of art, for the most part,
in the late 50s and 60s, pop
art.
And for the most part,
we're going to be talking
about-- at least
what we have in our collection
is American pop art.
But of course, that's not where
pop art started.
Pop art is not
an American invention,
shall we say.
It's British.
And this is where it begins.
So in 1952, there's a group
of young English painters
and sculptors and architects
and critics, all of those areas
are represented, and they all
gathered at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts in London.
And they called themselves
the independent group.
And they were brought together,
essentially, by common interests
that they had.
And most
of those common interests
revolved
around contemporary popular
culture, so they were fascinated
with cinema, science fiction,
anything
to do with machines, technology,
television, the automobile,
all kinds
of domestic appliances, gadgets.
This is the stuff they loved.
And it brought them all together
from their respective fields.
So, no.
We had painters, sculptors,
architects, and critics.
We had it all kind of covered.
And they were particularly
interested in all
of these things.
They may have been British,
but they were particularly
interested in all
of these things
as they were being now utilized
and celebrated in the United
States.
So they were British,
but they actually thought
this stuff was more interesting
the way it was unfolding
in America.
They came together in 1952
at the ICA.
And then four years later,
in '56, they organized
the major exhibition,
the same group of people,
at the White Chapel Gallery
in London.
And it was titled
This Is Tomorrow.
So there's the poster
on the left, and there is
a catalog on the right
from 1956.
This was organized into 12
sections.
And each section
of the exhibition
was
a self-contained environment.
And each section was put
together by a team that included
a painter, a sculptor,
and an architect.
So it had
these large constructions
and installation.
You could walk in and things
like that.
I'm not going to get involved
in all that because it will take
too much time.
But what's most important,
or who was most important
at this exhibition,
and for British pop in general,
are two individuals.
The critic, Lawrence Alloway.
So now, yes, we've
got another critic.
He is
the comparable to Rosenberg,
Greenberg,
all the guys in America.
This is Lawrence Alloway here
on the left.
And then the most talented
and one of the most important
British artists
of the 20th century
is the man you see on the right.
And that is Richard Hamilton
in a photograph from 1963.
Hamilton was in group 3 in terms
of the 12 groups,
and he had his colleagues.
And he was asked--
they put together
an installation that reflected
a lot of interest
in American cinema, movies,
Hollywood, things like that.
But they felt that they needed--
each section felt they needed
their own poster, even
though there was one poster,
I just showed you,
for the whole show.
But each group wanted
their own individual poster,
so Hamilton was asked to create
the poster for his group.
And it's, of course, one
of the most famous images
in the 20th century.
This is the poster that Hamilton
created.
And the title of this poster
is Just What Is It That Makes
Today's Homes So Different, So--
[LAUGHTER]
I haven't finished.
Let me start again.
Just What Is It That Makes
Today's Home So Different,
So Appealing.
That's the title from 1956.
So he makes this poster,
and it's a collage, obviously.
And he and his wife
had gone through thousands
of magazines looking for just
the right sorts of images.
And essentially, what the poster
does, visually, is to answer
the question.
So just what is it that makes
today's homes so different, so
appealing?
Well, here's the answer,
everything that's in this image.
And, in fact, you see here,
for the first time in a work
of art, the word pop here.
And in fact, Laurence Alloway
is the first critic to ever use
that term, pop, in print
in 1958,
or not just the word
but the term pop art.
He coins that in 1958.
So all of this is happening
in England and in London.
So what is Hamilton's collage,
and why is it so important?
Well, it was essentially
a pictorial list of the things
that answered the question
that's asked in the title.
And even the title itself was
actually taken
from an actual advertisement.
So he didn't make up the title.
It actually came
from an actual advertisement
that he just used.
And here is what we have.
The answer to the question
is both tabular and pictorial,
and so it's a set
of prescribed interests
that most of the groups had.
And so here is the list
on the left that Hamilton came
up with-- woman, humanity,
history, man, food, newspapers,
cinema, TV, telephone, comics,
which is picture information,
words, which
is textual information, tape
recording, which
is oral information, cars,
domestic appliances, and space.
By space, they mean outer space.
Almost all those things, more
or less, deal
with communication, of course--
to a large extent with words,
printing, film, TV, telephone,
tape recording.
The thing to keep in mind
about this is that this is not
a Dada attack on these things.
They love this stuff.
So they're not trying
to ridicule it.
They're accepting it,
and they're, in fact,
celebrating it.
And what they're doing to come
up with this list
is they just look
around the world
that they're in and to define
these things that they feel
are not defining their time.
So again, in terms of art,
this is like surrealism,
futurism.
There's no such thing as pop art
yet.
It's these artists who are just
beginning to define this kind
of terminology.
Alloway later would use the term
pop art to refer to a movement,
but I'm not even sure you could
call it so much a movement
at this point.
Then on the right, there's
another list.
Hamilton wrote then a letter
to his colleague, the architect
Peter Smithson, in 1957.
And then he outlined further
what he thought pop art should
be using the term pop
art to refer to art that's
manufactured
for a mass audience.
And so then you see here that it
should be popular, designed
for a mass audience, transient--
short-term solution--
expendable, easily forgotten,
low co-- in other words,
no museums, low cost, mass
produced.
It should be young.
By that they meant it should be
aimed at a youthful audience--
witty, sexy, gimmicky,
glamorous, big business.
So you put these two lists
together and you have pretty
much everything that will
encompass
both British and American pop
art as it begins to develop
and unfold,
both in Great Britain
and also in the United States.
Now, let's look a little more
closely at the collage
and start to show you some
of the sources.
So here's the collage,
and this is the first source.
This is from Ladies Home
Journal, June 1955.
And it's an ad for Armstrong
Floors.
And the title of the ad, which I
don't think I have--
[INAUDIBLE]
The Modern Fashion In Floors.
So this became the space.
See?
This inspired the space here.
You'll notice here there's
a vacuum that's going up,
and a woman is vacuuming.
OK.
Well, that's a Hoover vacuum.
And this is the ad he saw.
So there's the vacuum,
and there's the staircase,
right?
So he cut all that out.
This is from Ladies Home
Journal.
It's the new Hoover
Constellation Vacuum.
Then we got this body builder.
This is not Charles Atlas,
but he's sort
of the British equivalent.
This guy's name is Irvin Szabo
[? Kazusky. ?] Sorry,
[? Kazusky. ?] Irwin
[? Szabo Kazusky. ?] He was
a bodybuilder.
He was a champion bodybuilder.
This is not this,
but this is the guy.
This was from a different ad.
But this is the man.
Here is his name right there.
And he was always on the cover
of this magazine called Strength
and Health.
This is from 1954 here.
Then you'll notice here there
is this woman reclining
with the lampshade on her head.
And that was actually cut out
from an ad
by-- that incorporated
the American model, Jo Baer.
This is Jo Baer here in 2005.
She was an American painter.
She was a hard-age painter,
part of the New York--
came out of New York.
But she was-- also to make
money, she was also a fashion
model and modeled for a lot
of ads.
And so she this is from an ad
that she was in.
But she didn't have that
on her ad in the original ad.
So that's her there in 2005.
I think she's still alive,
but I'd have to check that out,
check that again.
Now notice, you have to keep
in mind that tabular thing--
comics, TV, radio, because all
of these things
are being addressed here in each
of these objects.
So you'll notice on the wall,
there's a poster of a romance
comic.
Well, here is the comic that
inspired it, A True Romance
or A Young Romance.
This is 1959.
Of course, there's a television.
And then in the television,
there is a woman
on the telephone.
So you've got telephone,
television in the same thing.
And here is-- this
is a Stromberg Carlson
ad for television over here
from '55, '56.
So you go through this collage--
maybe I should go back
for a second--
and you see all of the things
that were mentioned-- tape
recording, newspapers, cinema,
picture information,
automobiles.
That's the Ford thing.
This is a photograph.
This looks like the carpet here,
but what that actually is
is an aerial photograph
of a beach filled with people.
This is a picture of the Earth
that becomes outer space, that
becomes the ceiling here.
Old masters, so we have
pictorial information here, all
of the different things I just
mentioned back here.
You had the woman, of course,
on the thing--
humanity was the beach scene.
History was this history
painting.
Man, food.
Food, of course,
was the proverbial canned ham
here.
Newspapers, cinema, TV,
telephone, I showed you that.
Comics, I showed you that.
Words are everywhere.
Tape recording, cars,
domestic appliances.
We have to vacuum.
And then outer space as well.
So this is put together
by a British artist,
by Richard Hamilton,
for their exhibition at White
Chapel.
But of course, what
these British artists were so
intrigued with
was all of the stuff that was
happening in the United States.
So let's just bring that up to--
so I've just gone through
and picked out
some wonderful 40s
and 50s nostalgic illustrations
that essentially dealt with what
was being promoted in the 40s,
but especially in the 50s,
as the American dream, right?
Look, that's what I'm going
to have.
So she wants a new kitchen.
Let's just sit awhile
on our terrace.
We've been doing gardening,
and we'll have
a little something.
[INAUDIBLE] beer belongs.
Enjoy it.
Of course, let's all gather out
in the evening for a television
show here.
Now in 1947, looking at this ad
here, General Mills introduces
the first boxed cake mix.
It's for a ginger cake.
So now, we can-- we don't have
to slave over the kitchen.
We can have an instant cake mix
turn out a cake
and go out and have fun.
So in 1947, General Mills
introduces the first boxed cake
mix.
In 1948, Gerber Baby Foods
introduces the idea of baby food
in jars that can be given
to your child.
And in 1946, the American birth
rate jumps 20%
over the previous year.
So you started to see
the so-called baby boom right
after the war.
Of course, no American dream
would be complete without a car.
So these are Chrysler ads
from '56 and '57.
Power steering as first appears
in Chrysler-- in case you're
interested-- in the Chrysler
Crown Imperial in 1951.
My favorites though are
the kitchen ones.
Here on the left is the 1956 ad
for a Crosley
refrigerator-freezer.
If you want to talk about
the 50s now as an age
of abundance, we've got through
the war and now we're--
look at the food here.
You could feed an army here.
And not only that, but now you
need a freezer as well in
addition to the refrigerator.
So the ultimate in food
refrigerators
here was the Crosley Shelvador
Twins, this was called.
The Crosley Shelvador Twins.
They were side-by-side units,
and they would hold up
to 14 cubic feet of food.
And the all-freezer unit could
hold up to 470 pounds
of frozen food.
Of course, television ads.
On the right, RCA Victor
Television Supersets ad
from 1951.
By the end of '52,
there are more than 15 million
television sets in the United
States.
And that jumps by 4 million
from two years earlier.
So in two years, it increased
over four million.
Here again, look at all my food.
And we're not going to talk
about Richard Hamilton or some
of the others.
But of course, he really takes
off with this idea of the woman
as the queen of the kitchen.
Sometimes she is actually shown
with a crown.
And she's displaying her larder
here.
You have a refrigerator that has
a freezer, but then I might need
an entirely separate freezer
here.
TV dinners are invented.
We've got television.
We're going to stay home.
Who wants to cook now?
Me.
Let's throw in a ginger cake,
but, meh, we need an entree.
These are, of course,
created by Swanson Foods,
you see here, in '53, '54.
The first TV dinner
is the turkey TV dinner,
and that debuts in 1952.
Then that's followed-- that was
such a hit, they come out
with chicken in 1953,
and beef in 1954.
I'm late, but dinner won't be.
You're ready for him.
Yeah.
You got to love this stuff.
How about instant orange juice?
That comes out in 1955.
Minute Maid-- and this is an ad
for Minute Maid orange juice
on the left.
The Minute Maid modern orange
juice business starts in 1946.
The first shipments of Minute
Maid orange juice
that are shipped are--
orange juice made
from concentrate
is what I'm talking about,
concentrate.
And then of course,
we've got to wash our clothes.
And sometimes, it's nice to have
a pink washer.
This is a whirlpool ad from 1956
for a top-loading washing
machine.
The first top-loading washing
machine comes out in 1947.
You noticed, in the Richard
Hamilton collage looking
through the window,
you could see the cinema,
and you could see the marquee.
And with the film that it was
showing in the collage
was Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer.
So we have talkies, some movies
that come out.
Jazz Singer came out in October
6, 1927.
But you also saw, if you look
closely in that image, this term
Cinerama.
Because now, what you had--
because movies were losing
hordes of people
to television-- nobody
was going to the movies
anymore because they could sit
home and watch television,
have a TV dinner, have a ginger
cake, wash it down
with some beer and orange juice.
And then they were ready.
And then I am ready for you.
You are ready for me,
and let's go.
So to get people away
from the television set,
you had to have some bigger
effects in film.
So that introduced
these widescreen effects now--
Cinerama, Vista Vision,
CinemaScope.
You start getting these movies
where the screen is gigantic.
And certainly, that cannot be
duplicated on a television
screen.
Today, we've come so far,
and now we're watching
on a screen that is smaller
than a sheet of notebook paper.
But let's not get me started
on that.
The only thing worse than that
is talking
about colorized films,
and I'm not going to do that.
So this is the climate, the 50s.
You all know it.
Probably most of us
have lived through it.
And this is the backdrop that's
affecting the artists and--
these young artists, very
young--
in both England and the United
States.
So now, we can begin to look
a little more closely at how
this is reflected
in our permanent collection.
And so here's--
[INAUDIBLE]
And I'm showing you
Roy Lichtenstein's Look Mickey
from 1961,
one of our most important
paintings, not just pop art
paintings but one of our most
important paintings
in the National Gallery.
And I'm going to talk about that
a little bit later.
I'm just introducing it to you
now.
Certainly, this is the influence
of comic books and illustration.
All of these artists
were interested in things
like that.
And that was already alluded to
in the Hamilton collage.
Again, this room has already
changed, so not everything,
the way you see it here,
is the way it is now.
But this is Claes
Oldenburg's Clarinet Bridge ,
[? Weighing ?] [? T-Bows, ?]
Cakes.
This is the Lichtenstein I just
showed you.
This is James [INAUDIBLE].
This wall is devoted--
but again, I think that wall has
now changed to Jasper Johns,
who, by the way,
is not a pop artist,
and nor is Robert Rauschenberg.
So, please, for my sake,
don't really--
they're important to pop art,
but they're not pop artists.
Jasper Johns and Robert
Rauschenberg are Jasper Johns
and Robert Rauschenberg.
They are separate.
So here is Raymond Saunders' A
Red Star.
That came to us through
the Corcoran, so did the Warhol,
[INAUDIBLE]--
A Boy For Meg, Marilyn Monroe.
And then now let us praise
famous men, the Warhol that's
based on the portrait, family
portrait,
of Robert Rauschenberg.
Again, Boy For Meg, Robert
Indiana, Jesus Saves.
So these works are up and down,
and others are replacing them,
again, because even
with the new gallery space,
we don't have room
for everything
that we would like to put up.
Now, I want to come back
and review or repeat quickly
some of the things we were
talking about last time,
because it--
we're going to have to spend
a little more time talking
about critics and criticism.
You'll recall that I mentioned
last time
that
after abstract expressionism had
been on the scene
for a decade or so,
everybody started to think,
well, OK, I think that's run
its course.
As I said last time,
you can't be avant garde
forever.
So there were all these points
of view being put forward
as to what should be
the successor
to abstract expressionism.
I mentioned some of these here,
because most of this played out
through the writings of critics
and through curatorial decisions
made at major museums.
And most especially, the museum
that was most important for this
was MoMA in New York.
So I mentioned new images
of man.
This was Peter Zelz's show
at MoMA, where he was advocating
for a return to figuration.
William Seitz was a curator
at MoMA.
He did a show called Assemblage,
The Art Of Assemblage.
He was advocating for that.
Seitz also then did a show on op
art called The Responsive Eye.
These were all '59, '61,
and '65,
so it's right in this period.
Everybody is debating.
It's a very, very fertile
and very exciting,
in many ways, a time
to be discussing these things.
That's not something we do much
anymore.
Each of these movements
had a champion.
So Thomas Hess, remember,
was writing for Art News.
And Hess was actually saying,
no, no, no, no, no,
abstract expressionism is not
dead.
It's being now given over
and taken over by a very
talented group
of second generation
abstract expressionists.
And the one that he favored
the most was Joan Mitchell.
He said, no, there's still a lot
of great, original, younger
abstract expressionists.
So he was of that ilk.
Hilton Kramer was writing
for Art's Magazine at the time.
And I'll come back to him
in a second.
Kramer hated everything,
so any--
all of this stuff was junk here.
We talked about Clement
Greenberg.
Of course, he had chosen the DC
artist, so that's his thing.
Harold Rosenberg had said,
no, no, no.
I remember
abstract expressionism isn't
about purity.
It's about the actual act
of painting, the arena,
the action, and that.
So he was championing things
that now return to a kind
of visceral, real, action
and happenings.
And eventually, in fact, it's
Rosenberg's track that will lead
us to pop art.
Somebody we didn't mention
last time, and now we are going
to mention because he's
important, is Leo Steinberg.
So I know we got Clement
Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg,
and Leo Steinberg.
And Leo Steinberg is very
important.
He's not a trained--
I don't mean to say he's not
trained.
But he is less a critic and more
an art historian.
And he's different.
Because he is trained as an art
historian,
he's different than Clement
Greenberg,
and he's different than Harold
Rosenberg.
And he is going pretty much
say, no, abstract expressionism
is dead.
But where art is going now
is towards two guys,
Rauschenberg and Johns.
That's where the future lies.
So we have that.
Let me just mention-- go back
to Hilton Kramer
because that's a name you
probably know.
He was the most conservative
of all these critics.
And as I said, pretty much, he
hated just about everything.
So he hated action painting.
He didn't like the--
really the New York school.
He hated pop art,
conceptual art.
He hated all post-modern art.
He is essentially the defender
of high culture.
So art should stay
in its traditions
or reflect art history.
It should be about craft
and technique, the art
of the museums essentially.
It should be something tried
and tested.
He wrote for Arts Magazine.
Then he was the critic
for The Nation.
Then he was the chief art critic
for The New York Times
for a number of years.
And at the Times, especially,
he was very--
because that's a pretty big
platform--
he was very much against what he
would sometimes refer
to as artistic nihilism, all
these people putting junk
together and going out
and having happenings.
And this is all, my god,
I'm going to die.
And that actually got him
into trouble at times
with the Times,
so he resigned from the Times
in 1982.
But then he co-founded,
with Seymour Lipman, a very
conservative journal that
is still around, The New
Criterion.
Today, that's the most
conservative art journal
that you can read.
So here is Joan Mitchell.
We saw her before.
This is in her Paris Studio
in '56.
This is Clement Greenberg
talking to Thomas Hess.
So Hess was at the Met,
and Hess was advocating,
contrary to Greenberg of course,
that, no, no, no, no,
we don't have to go
to Washington.
There's
a great second generation
of abstract expressionists
who are worthy of our attention,
most especially Joan Mitchell--
was the artist that he
championed.
And you'll recall when we saw
our painting, the title
of this painting
was [? Salut, ?] Tom.
It was a tribute to her friend,
Thomas Hess,
because he had championed
her art.
He had died suddenly,
I told you, of a heart attack
at the Met.
He died right at his desk
at the age of 57 in '78.
So Joan Mitchell
did this large painting that we
own as a tribute to Thomas Hess.
Then we've got the dynamic due
that we've already talked about
and their particular points
of view--
Greenberg, purity, only that
which refers to the art itself.
In the case of painting,
flatness and color.
And of course, Rosenburg talking
about the act of painting,
the process, the arena.
So let's follow-- we know where
the Greenberg goes,
because that's DC.
We talked about that.
But where really does
the Rosenburg train take us?
Well, one of the places
it takes us is to happenings.
So let's just briefly, if I may,
talk a little bit
about happenings,
because they were a big part
of this
in the 50s and early 60s.
Happenings tend to emerge
in the 50s.
They are this kind
of raucous, frivolous, crazy,
provocative, nutty kinds
of series of uncensored events.
You would be invited
to a gallery, and the artist
would have orchestrated
and choreographed and put
on a kind of a happening.
He would have asked
other artists to participate.
It could be a scripted thing.
And we have the scripts
sometimes.
So it's like a--
it's a performance.
And it's usually not
a particularly well-crafted
thing.
It's very spontaneous
and the seat of your pants type
of thing.
Happenings though are part
of a worldwide phenomenon.
They were especially popular
also in Paris and other places
throughout Europe after the war,
because we had come
through this horrific war.
And humanity had emerged
from all of this deprivation
and scarcity of materials.
And now, all of a sudden,
it's the 50s,
and we've got TV dinners
and television sets
and all of this stuff.
So there was an abundance.
There is this kind
of a self-confidence
about things, maybe, now
in the 50s.
And so it's seen as a kind
of celebration in some ways.
So let's break out now.
We suffered through all
of this hardship.
Let's now just get crazy,
essentially.
And that's essentially what
happens.
So Happenings are born
in this period of transition,
really, that we're talking
about right now,
between abstract expressionism
and pop art.
They fit right in in that place.
In New York, the major artists
involved with happenings
are Alan Kaprow--
K-A-P-R-O-W-- Jim Dine
the artist, Robert Whitman, Red
Grooms.
But the most important one
is the one you probably know,
and that's Claes Oldenburg.
So this is a photograph here.
It's a cast photo, on the left,
of the work that was happening,
that was created by Klaus
Oldenburg that took place
at the Reuben Gallery
in New York City on February
21 of 1961.
And the work is called Circus.
Than it's subtitled, because it
has two parts--
Circus Part 1, Ironworks, Part
2, Photo Death.
Those are the two sections.
This is Klaus Oldenburg right
here.
So these are all of his friends.
I bet, in fact, there are tons
of people here that you know.
Tom Wesselmann was in this group
here.
And there are others.
So what I started thinking
about, how could I tell you what
this was about?
I did try.
I sat down, and I started, OK,
to summarize.
And then to a certain point,
I just gave up, and I was going
to just say,
you had to be there.
So let me read you a little bit
of what I wrote.
But then it just makes no sense.
So the audience is seated
in a conventional theater.
And those people who couldn't be
seated came, and they were
standing.
There's a deep square stage that
was in front of them.
There are these four light bulbs
that are hanging on just
the chords.
So the effect is very dingy,
a little bit spooky.
There will be 34 events
in the circus.
It's going to be a long night.
And they're divided into seven
sets.
Four of the sets deal
with this theme of iron works.
And three deal with this theme
of photo death.
The audience, of course, in all
that happens,
is meant to participate.
So once you get carried away
enough, you can just start doing
whatever the hell you want
to do.
Max Baker was an artist.
He was controlling the lights.
There is a guy, comes in
with a bag.
And all the actors come
in from the back of the stage.
And they start doing some really
chaotic, cacophonous things.
This is where I stopped writing.
So this is one group.
One of the great happenings
is this one on the right.
This is called American Moon.
And it was performed
at the Rubin Gallery in New
York, November 29
through December 4, 1960.
And it was put together
by Robert Whitman, who
is the guy in the trapeze here.
Again, I gave it a shot.
There are six big paper tunnels
that come outward
from a central core.
And the audience sits
in the tunnels,
so you're actually
in the tunnels.
And there are these curtains
with grids of paper,
that you see here, that come
down.
And then the performers start
moving and swinging
and their trapezes.
And then everything starts
moving.
And the actors and the people--
you're in a tunnel,
you want to get out
of the tunnel.
So you have to go somewhere
else.
And it's like, you might get hit
by a guy on a trapeze.
It just gets really-- there's
a giant plastic balloon that's
rolled around.
All of this has a soundtrack
of a vacuum cleaner.
This one was-- what was
the desire here, as Whitman
said,
was to try to create a three
ring circus,
just have all this stuff going
on.
So those are happenings.
It's a rich history.
And the history of happenings,
of course, takes you well
beyond into things like fluxes
and other things that will then
become very important
in both European art
and American art.
So this tradition certainly
doesn't die here.
But now, we have to talk
about Leo, Leo Steinberg.
And here he is, a younger
photograph on the right.
He is very important.
He is every bit as important
as Greenberg or Rosenburg,
but he is trained as an art
historian.
The others were not.
They are pure critics.
So Steinberg spent most
of his teaching career
at the University
of Pennsylvania.
He was there from basically 1975
onwards.
But before that, he had taught
at Hunter College, and CUNY.
He had taught at Columbia,
at Harvard, University of Texas
at Austin.
He was a critic, so he wrote
for all the journals--
Commentary, The Partisan Review,
Art News, Art Forum, October.
What would he champion?
Well, he would champion
the next generation of artists
who he felt were leaving
behind all
that painterly, theatrical stuff
of the abstract expressionists,
all that ego, angst,
existentialists kind of stuff,
for something that was going
to be cooler, more
detached, more
intellectual, more cerebral.
He said at one point
in a lecture he gave in St.
Louis in 1960--
he said quote,
abstract expressionism was
history and that the next wave
had come in with Rauschenberg
and Jasper Johns.
What was needed
in the mid-sixties
was resistance to Clement
Greenberg.
These guys are actually--
they're going right
at each other.
So his desire was to steer
things away from the formalism
of Clement Greenberg,
because Greenberg was so
into purity that he didn't take
into consideration anything
else--
the biography of the artist,
the social contacts, culture,
anything else that produced it.
And for an art historian,
like Steinberg, that seemed
silly.
So actually, Steinberg was born
in Moscow, then his family
emigrated to Berlin.
Then they fled the Nazis.
He moved to England.
He was educated at the Slade
School, initially.
Then he came to New York City
after the war, he was-- got
his art history degree
at the Institute of Fine Arts
at NYU.
And people forget what he wrote
his dissertation on.
He didn't write his dissertation
on anything modern.
He wrote on Francesco Borromini,
the Baroque architect who was
Bernini's great rival.
Steinberg is brilliant.
And he shows this kind
of ability to go between modern
and more historical.
His writings should be read, not
just the ones
on contemporary art.
This is a famous Steinbeck
quote.
If a work of art or a new style
disturbs you, then it
is probably good work.
If you hate it, it's probably
great.
One of the most important books
that everybody reads--
it's a collection of his essays
that was put together in 1972--
is this book
called Other Criteria,
Confrontations With 20th Century
Art.
The book got published in '72,
but the essays in the book
go back to the 60s.
And there are particularly
important passages and ideas
here.
I'm showing you a picture
of Rauschenberg and Johns
at a very young age.
This is 1954, there in John's
studio on Pearl Street.
So one of the great moments
in Other Criteria
is when Steinberg says this.
I'm quoting now.
Something happened in painting
around 1950, most conspicuously,
at least within my experience,
in the work of Robert
Rauschenberg and [INAUDIBLE].
We can still hang their pictures
just as we tack up mops
and architectural plans,
or nail a horseshoe to the wall
for good luck.
Yet these pictures no longer
simulate vertical fields
but opaque, flatbed horizontals.
Notice the term flatbed, right?
That comes from a printing
press, right?
They no more depend
on a head-to-toe correspondence
with human posture
than a newspaper does.
The flatbed picture plane makes
its symbolic allusion
to hard surfaces
such as tabletops, studio
floors, charts, bulletin boards,
any receptor surface on which
objects are scattered,
on which data is entered,
on which information may be
received, printed, impressed,
whether coherently
or in confusion.
The pictures of the last 15
to 20 years
insist on a radically new
orientation in which the painted
surface is no longer the analog
of a visual experience
of nature,
but of operational processes.
Now, what he is saying here
is that there is
a fundamental shift,
and it begins with--
he thinks especially
Rauschenberg, but also Johns--
in shifting the idea
of a surface, a canvas, that has
always been some kind
of illusionistic idea of nature
and that has worked as a kind
of field, right?
So now the idea that a surface,
a canvas surface,
is just a support
is just the thing to hang
other things, right?
That's what painting is about.
And who does that better than
Rauschenberg, right?
Just hang stuff on here, right?
The other thing he's saying here
is about this--
no longer this visual experience
of nature.
He's saying that when
these works are created,
there is a fundamental shift
from nature--
from nature to culture.
In other words, an artist is no
longer looking at nature
and saying, I'm going to paint
a tree.
Robert Rauschenberg is,
or anybody of this period,
is looking at culture and says,
I'm going to put up a cereal
box.
I'm going to put
a stuffed eagle.
I'm going to put a pillow.
I'm going to put stuff--
so it's culture.
It's not nature anymore.
See what I'm saying?
OK.
That's pretty important.
So in essence, for example,
when you look at Rauschenberg
and Johns, what does some
of this mean?
I think there are four things
that Steinberg is advancing
here, and then Rauschenberg
is the guy who runs with this.
First is that an artist is not
just ego.
We're doing away with Jackson
Pollock and all these guys who
are existentialists.
Oh my god, my anxiety.
And my brushstroke
is my tension.
I'm Jungian, I'm Freudian.
So that's gone.
An artist is not just ego.
He's part of a cultural context.
And because he's part
of a cultural context,
we can all bring meaning
to the work.
I don't know.
An oatmeal box might mean
something to me.
It might mean something
different to you.
Secondly-- kind of relates
to what I just said-- society
will play a role in establishing
meaning and value.
We have a role.
For example, Rauschenberg does
a series of paintings in dirt.
And then he does another series
of paintings in gold leaf.
Now, who determined, in society,
that gold is precious
and dirt is not?
Somebody did.
Somewhere that got established,
long before we were around,
right?
So Rauschenberg did these works,
and he predicted that all
of the gold leaf paintings
would sell and none of the dirt
ones would.
And he was absolutely right.
This third point I've already
mentioned,
and that is the canvas
of a painting is not a surface,
like Greenberg kept going on
about.
But it's a literal support.
It's just something to hang
other stuff on.
So you'll see a Rauschenberg
or a Johns painting, they'll
be hooks on it.
Something will be hanging.
Our hat is on there.
An arm is on there-- this, that,
and the other thing.
And then the other point is now
that a canvas is no longer
an emotive field, like it was
for the abstract expressionism.
Like I was just saying,
I'm putting my guts and my ego
and my Id and everything else
here on the surface.
It's just a physical fact.
It's just a physical fact.
It's not some emotive field.
It's a thing made up
of other things.
That's it.
OK?
So that's what is important now
when we start to look
at Rauschenberg and Johns,
and why they are separate.
The pop artists owe a lot
to the things they do,
but their ideas are different.
Now, I want to mention something
in this regard
about this relationship
to the abstract expressionists,
and Steinberg saying, OK,
that's over.
I think Rauschenberg and Johns
are the guys.
You'll recall, Rauschenberg
starts with these guys.
He starts
as an abstract expressionist.
He has a series
of early paintings.
Remember I told you
he is at the Cedar Bar?
He is sitting there,
and these guys are clubbing
each other
and fighting everything.
He said, my god, I've
got to find a different bar,
because he--
I don't have anything in common
with these guys.
They're just way over
on a different planet.
So this is, on the left,
a very famous, iconic work.
By the way, this is a very good
slide.
[LAUGHTER]
Because this-- the formal title
of this work on the left
is Erased de Kooning Drawing
from 1953.
So what Rauschenberg did, as he
is figuring out, who am I--
and of course, he's figuring
this out with Jasper Johns.
And they're realizing,
I don't think we should go
to the Cedar Bar.
We might get killed.
And we just have to go somewhere
else and find our own voice.
So Rauschenberg admires
the abstract expressionists.
It's not that he thinks--
he knows.
My god, these guys are iconic.
And how can I ever get out
from their shadow?
He greatly admires de Kooning.
He thinks de Kooning is, like,
the greatest of the great.
And they know each other.
Their friends, basically.
So one day, Rauschenberg takes
a bottle of scotch,
and he goes to de Kooning's
studio.
And he knocks on the door.
And as soon as you got a bottle
of scotch, you're allowed
to come in.
So they come in.
They start talking, drinking.
And then Rauschenberg says, I
want to ask you something.
And he said, what I'd like
to then now-- just hear me out
before you--
and he said, I'd like to take
one of your drawings,
and I'd like to erase it.
First, he said, I would like
to have one of your drawings.
And de Kooning was very
flattered.
He said, oh well, yeah, sure.
OK.
And then Rauschenberg realized
he had to tell them the truth.
And he said, but wait a minute,
I got to tell you, actually.
He said, if you give me
your drawing, I'm going to erase
it.
There is this moment of silence.
And de Kooning is thinking,
I don't know.
I kind of like this kid, but--
he said, well, OK.
So de Kooning pulls out
some portfolios.
He starts flipping
through things.
And he pulls out like five
or six drawings.
And Rauschenberg is looking
at them.
And then de Kooning
says something interesting.
He said, no, no, no, no.
He said, none of these.
And he puts them back.
He says, if you're going to do
this, he says, then I have
to give you a drawing that I
would be sad to lose.
I have to give you a drawing
that means something to me,
not something that I don't care
about.
So he went
to a different portfolio
of things, and he pulled out
a drawing.
And he said, here, this is
the one I'm going to give you.
And this one does mean something
to me, because it was related
to the Woman series.
So Rauschenberg takes it, goes
back to his studio.
And over about two to three
weeks, using a dozen
different kinds of erasers--
because it was harder than hell
to get this thing erased--
he erases it.
And he said, it was harder
than a lot of the work
that he had ever done,
to erase this thing.
It had been a mixed media
drawing, and he had to use
different erasers.
He kept experimenting.
And he really did not get it
all off.
There are some traces still
on the drawing.
When he finished it, he showed
it to Jasper Johns and said,
well, I'm done.
And then they decided--
Jasper Johns, actually, decided
that we should frame it,
and we should put a tag on it.
So this is all done by Jasper
Johns, not by the museum.
And it's titled down here,
Erased de Kooning Drawing,
Robert Rauschenberg, 1953.
Now, this drawing today
is in the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art.
And it's out.
I would say it's
sensitive to light, but--
[LAUGHTER]
But I'm not sure it is.
I'm not sure it's
all light sensitive.
So this is a--
this is a really provocative,
conceptual thing here,
because you have to wonder,
is this an act of homage
on the part of Rauschenberg?
Provocation?
Humor?
Is it destructive?
Is it nihilistic?
Rauschenberg, at one time,
said it was a celebration.
And again, he certainly admired
de Kooning.
In any case, we were never sure
what the drawing was.
de Kooning couldn't remember,
and this and that.
And in 2010, 2010, the museum
took the drawing out,
and they subjected it
to a digital imaging effort,
using an infrared scan
and a whole bunch of science
that I really don't understand,
to see if they could see what
had been there when he had been
given the drawing.
And this is the result.
So this does not exist.
This was this as far as we can
tell.
And it was part of this woman
figure-- it's very important--
here.
So this is what we think
the drawing was that de Kooning
gave Rauschenberg.
I was going to say something
else.
Oh, yes, the other thing
about it that was difficult
is that de Kooning himself would
often use an eraser when he was
working.
He would draw and then he would
erase.
So sometimes you're not sure
if the eraser was
Rauschenberg's or if it was de
Kooning's.
In any case, you can think
about this in a lot
of different ways.
And something I said to you
a long time ago, for example,
when all of the Americans,
the abstract expressionists
and everything, you've got,
like, kill Picasso, right?
You've got to go
through Picasso.
And so it's like this idea--
I know it's Friday,
but you got to kill your father
before you can be free.
And so some people see this
in that context.
I'm not sure it was
for Rauschenberg.
But certainly, it's a commentary
about where art was going.
And then with works like this--
this is Rauschenberg's Canyon
from 1959,
one of the great combines,
and Jasper Johns' Target
With Plaster Casts from '55.
Now, you see literally,
it's just the support.
We've got sheet metal.
We've got an eagle.
We've got a pillow.
We've got plaster casts.
We got little doors you can open
and close here.
All of this
is now a very different kind
of surface.
The term combine is a term
that Rauschenberg invents
to describe works that he felt
were a combination of painting
and sculpture,
and that they were somewhere--
they existed somewhere
between art and life.
They weren't art.
They weren't life.
But he said, I work in between.
I work in the crack
in between art and life.
And so that's what a combine was
supposed to be.
They can hang on the wall.
They can be free-standing.
They can be on the floor.
If they hang on the wall,
you definitely sense this idea
of hanging things.
Now, who is instrumental
and who's inspirational
for Rauschenberg and Johns?
It's not so much
the American abstract
expressionists.
It's one guy, and that's Marcel
Duchamp.
Duchamp is the guy
that these two are totally
in love with.
And this is a work
by Rauschenberg on the left
called Trophy Number 2,
subtitled
For Teeny and Marcel Duchamp.
Teeny was Marcel Duchamp's wife,
For Teeny and Marcel Duchamp,
1960.
Some of the things that are
on-- this is a combine.
Some of the things that are oil
paint, charcoal, paper, fabric,
printed paper,
printed reproductions,
a necktie, sheet metal, a metal
spring, a metal spring, a chain,
a spoon,
and a water-filled plastic
drinking glass on wood.
So that's the media.
This is at the Walker today
in Minneapolis, the Walker Art
Center.
And then Jasper Johns' Field
Painting that we have
an extended loan from
the artist.
This belongs to the collection
of Jasper Johns, but he lets it
reside here.
Field Painting 1963-64.
If you have, everybody needs
to give everybody a label.
If you have to give these guys
a label, it's not, it's not pop
art.
I would say they are neo Dada.
That they are reflecting
and inspired by many
of the concepts that had already
been explored by Duchamp
about the nature of art, what
determines what is art, who
determines it, how is it
determined, et cetera.
So in the Field Painting,
for example, this
is a great, great painting.
You'll notice, Rauschenberg
and Johns are different.
Rauschenberg is very
much into this material idea
of working in this sort of crack
between art and life.
Johns is much more cerebral.
Johns is so smart, and so
intellectual.
Johns is, of course,
in my estimation, America's
greatest living artist.
He's in his, I don't know, 80s
now.
And he's still alive.
But he's America's greatest
living painter.
And this guy's so smart and so
intellectual and so cerebral,
like Marcel Duchamp.
You have to, half the time it's
all going over your head
until you really sit and think
about it.
For example, in the Field
Painting,
it's this two-paneled work.
There's a furrow here where it
doesn't quite join.
And there are these letters.
And these letters are all
on little hinges,
so they can move.
There's a footprint.
I can't even see, there's
a footprint.
That's Jasper Johns' footprint.
There's a little switch.
Because the switch is important,
because unfortunately,
in this photograph you don't see
it.
There is an R. That's a neon
R that can be illuminated
by the switch.
You'll notice it's titled Field
Painting.
So first off, field.
We think of Greenberg.
The flat surface is a field.
Right?
Rothko, the field, right?
OK.
We think of a field
though, there's a field out
in nature.
And if you plow a field,
you might kick up things that
are in, when you make a furrow
with your plow, you kick up
dirt, and that dirt might reveal
little artifacts that get kicked
up.
Notice the difference
between the two halves
of this painting.
This is all expressive,
lots of brush strokes.
So clearly, this
is some reference perhaps
to the abstract expressionists.
This is very plain.
Much more conservative and
understated.
But this is the side where we
have Johns' footprint.
There's a letter that it
illuminates, and that's an R,
and here's the switch.
Right?
This painting is certainly
autobiographical.
There's a Ballantine can
and there's a Savarin can.
These refer to Johns'
own the work, when he casts
these in bronze and paints them,
you know?
Painted beer cans, painted
coffee can.
These are the real cans though.
So it's autobiographical.
But what's very interesting
is, the difference in the two
halves.
This expressive side, this more
modest, discreet side.
But that's the side
with his footprint.
This is probably also
a reference to his relationship
with Rauschenberg.
This is Rauschenberg.
This is Johns.
Rauschenberg was known to be
so wonderfully
gregarious and outgoing
and charming and social and
witty.
Everybody loved Rauschenberg.
Johns was very, is very quiet,
very humble, very,
didn't like crowds.
I mean, he was very different
personality.
Very low key.
And the further evidence of this
or point that might relate
to this is the switch and the R,
because Johns can turn
on Rauschenberg.
[LAUGHTER]
When he flips the switch,
he's turning on Rauschenberg
in a number of different ways.
Because, of course,
they are having a relationship
as well.
This is the kind of stuff that
goes on in Johns.
You just, your head starts
exploding, because he's
so smart about how he deals
with things.
Just these little drips where
he's making a comment
about a painting
by an abstract expressionist.
So this is a great painting
from the '60s.
Then we have a later Johns.
This one, Perilous Night
from 1982.
So this is well in the '80s.
And here you see hanging things.
This is an incredibly complex
painting.
I don't have time to really go
through it all.
These are casts of Johns' arms.
This is a reference
to the handkerchief that's
in a Picasso painting
called Weeping Woman.
When you actually look closely
at this treatment of the grain,
that goes actually all the way
across here and it's almost
impossible to see,
unless you know what you're
looking for.
It's a reference to one
of the figures in Latius
Grunvald's it's an alter piece.
One of the guards that's falling
back during the Resurrection.
This panel's actually the grain
from his front door
of his house.
The reference Perilous Night
is to a song by John Cage.
And of course, the three
individuals who are so
important for Johns
and Rauschenberg
are Marcel Duchamp, Merce
Cunningham and John Cage.
Because they're doing
the same thing.
For Cunningham, all motion
is dance.
For Cage, all sound or lack
of sound, is music.
And Rauschenberg and Cage
and Cunningham are all at Black
Mountain College together.
I mean, so this, those are
the progenitors of Rauschenberg
and Johns.
Duchamp, Cunningham and Cage.
And they'll all, they'll all
collaborate as well.
Johns did finally meet Duchamp,
something he had wanted to do.
They met in 1960.
And right after that meeting,
he purchased, there's a work
by Marcel Duchamp called
the Green Box.
It's from 1934.
And it contains Duchamp, all
of his notes
for the Large Glass.
Remember that work I showed you?
So Johns bought one of those.
And at the same time,
Rauschenberg bought one
of the replicas of the Bottle
Rack, you know,
one of the ready-mades.
And he asked Duchamp to sign it
for him.
And Duchamp wrote in French, it
is impossible to remember
the original title.
That was his, that was
his signature.
Perilous Night though,
is a profound work in many ways.
But again, it's, Johns likes
codes.
He likes encryption.
He likes embedding things.
He doesn't want to be obvious.
He's not going to put his heart
and soul out there.
You're going to have to do
some work.
And when you do, it's really
quite magnificent.
Now he's a part, this is Johns.
Here's Rauschenberg, here's Andy
Warhol.
Wesselmann and Oldenburg,
they're all here now.
These guys will be taken on
by Leo Castelli.
So now he'll be the gallery
dealer in New York who will
promote the works of all
these individuals.
And this is a photograph that
was taken in 1982.
It was at a lunch to celebrate
the fifth anniversary
of Castelli's gallery.
It was at a restaurant in New
York City.
So I think I said this was
Oldenburg.
This is Ellsworth Kelly.
Kelly, Dan Flavin is here.
You can see Warhol,
Rauschenberg.
This is Leo Castelli right
in the center.
James Rosenquist is off
to the right down here.
So now, these are the artists
that we associate
with the pure pop art, not
Rauschenberg and Johns,
although certainly you have
to talk about them.
But they're
in a little different place.
So Warhol, Lichtenstein,
Rosenquist, these are the people
that were more,
we think of as more purely pop.
So Warhol is at the top
of the chart
really, because this is a work
called, these are works we have.
A Boy for Meg,
1962, which is an oil and egg
emulsion painting on canvas.
And Green Marilyn on the right
from '62.
It's acrylic and silkscreen
on linen.
Of course, we all know Warhol
in so many ways.
He embodies the spirit
of American popular culture,
consumerism, many of the things
we talked about
with the British pop art.
He's, Warhol is difficult too,
in the sense that he's
easy to dismiss if you don't
take time to think about what he
does,
and how he becomes an incredibly
important commentator on America
in the '50s and in the '60s,
and what he confronts us with.
Because, of course,
he speaks in a kind
of cryptic Warholian gibberish.
And he could, because of course,
he doesn't really want to reveal
a lot of things.
And he tries to sort of avoid
that.
At one point though,
he does say this, quote, "What's
great about this country is
that America started
the tradition where the richest
consumers buy essentially
the same things as the poorest.
You can be watching TV
and see Coca-Cola and you know
that the president drinks
Coca-Cola."
He said that, I'm not making
this up.
He doesn't say Diet Coke,
he says Coca-Cola.
[LAUGHTER]
"And you know that the president
drinks Coca-Cola.
Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola.
And just think, you can drink
Coca-Cola too.
A Coke is a Coke and no amount
of money can get you a better
Coke than the one the bum
on the corner is drinking.
All the Cokes are the same.
And all the Cokes are good.
Liz Taylor know it.
The president knows it.
The bum knows it.
And you know it."
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah, it's mass produced.
It's not like, oh,
this is a great vintage Coke.
And I can only, I can afford
that, but you have to drink
some other kind of, the dregs,
this
is from a different vineyard.
Or something like that.
So he's right.
There's a leveling.
You know, Campbell's Soup
is Campbell's Soup.
I mean in terms of consumption.
The way he treats celebrity
and the idea
of the fleeting nature
of celebrity
and the cult of celebrity
of the royal family, Marilyn
Monroe, Liz Taylor.
All of these are incredibly
sophisticated in many ways,
commentaries on the times
that we're talking about here
in the '60s especially.
This is a work on the left that
relates to Robert Rauschenberg.
The title of the work
is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
It's subtitled The Rauschenberg
Family, from 1962.
It's a silkscreen on canvas.
He made a number of portraits
of Robert Rauschenberg.
They were obviously
good friends.
He did this in the '60s.
Warhol had started
as a commercial artist.
He had done designs
for catalogs, for shoes
and things like that, purses
and shoes.
Johns and Rauschenberg had done
window displays
for various department stores.
So they had a kind
of commercial background
in many, in many ways.
It was really, looking
at Rauschenberg and Johns,
when Warhol began to think,
maybe I don't have to just
be a commercial artist.
Maybe, these guys seem to be
getting some traction.
Maybe I should think more
seriously about it.
So he took, he decided to take
a picture that Rauschenberg,
he asked Rauschenberg
for a family photo.
And the one that Rauschenberg
gave him was this one, when
Rauschenberg, in fact, is just
a little child in this picture.
It was a picture that had been
taken during the days
of the Depression.
Rauschenberg's family came
from Texas and they had gone
through the Depression.
And they had been a very
essentially poor family.
They were tenant farmers.
The title relates to James Agee.
It relates to the Bible,
of course, as well.
It relates to Walker Evans,
that great book by Walker Evans
and James Agee that showed
pictures of all the tenant
farmers, et cetera,
throughout the South.
But Warhol,
in its typical fashion,
then replicates this some 80
times.
Many of them are sepia.
A few though, are silvery.
So the sepia ones kind of refer
to the old age
of the photograph.
The silver and black ones
more to the idea
of modern photography.
Again, it's
through its replication,
through its relationship
the Rauschenberg,
it creates a number
of different ways of thinking
about the artist, about life,
about America.
This is nowhere better seen
than in the images of Jackie
Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy.
Especially at the time
of the assassination.
This is where I think Warhol is
at its best in some ways.
This is such a traumatic event
for the country.
And the way he deals with it
through a series of images.
This is we don't have some
of the great series.
This is one we do have.
This is a print.
It's a silkscreen, screen print
and silver on woven paper
from 1966.
It's called Jacqueline Kennedy
I. But there's, this is,
of course, in Dallas when they
first arrived.
She's wearing that very famous
dress and the pillbox hat.
There Jack Kennedy back there.
They're in the motorcade.
And it's bright sunlight.
And she almost looks like she's
winking at us.
There's the sight, the light
is so bright.
It's almost like she's winking.
And then you start thinking,
gosh it's like you're winking,
like I have a secret,
I know something.
You know, maybe I know
my husband is going to get shot.
You know, there are all
these things.
But where it's most dramatic
in Warhol, is when he juxtaposes
this image of the arrival
in Dallas against her
at the president's coffin,
casket.
And she's veiled.
Remember that?
And what these juxtapositions
are, when he does things
like that, he shows you what,
he's really showing you
how quickly life can change.
One minute you're happy,
you're with your husband,
it's sunlight,
you're, everybody's celebrating
this guy, the next minute he's
shot and my life is forever
changed.
That kind of drama.
You know, Andy Warhol, a woman
attempted to kill Warhol
and he was hit
with several bullets.
These kinds of things.
So Warhol isn't, he's, I always
had problems with Warhol.
He's, oh, I don't know,
he doesn't do much for me.
But then when you really start
to think about the under current
of his thought, then you
come around and see.
His movies as well.
If you want to read something
about his films,
I wrote the film notes when we
had the Warhol exhibition here,
we did a film series,
and I wrote the film notes.
Those are online
and you can go to the film
programs, click on the archives
and you'll see all my film
notes, and you'll see the notes
that I wrote about Warhol
as a filmmaker.
Claes Oldenburg.
Again, he's a major figure.
A number of works that we have.
This one is up, these two
are not.
On the left is Standing Mitt
with Ball, half scale, six feet.
It's a first baseman's mitt
from 1973.
It's made out of lead, steel
and laminated wood.
This is up, the little flag.
This is called USA Flag, 1960.
It's made of muslin, plaster,
tempera and wire.
This is off view.
Soft Drainpipe,
the red hot version from 1967.
This is vinyl lined with canvas
filled with polystyrene chips,
and then on a painted metal
stand.
Oldenburg is very important
first, through the happenings.
He's a major protagonist
in creation of happenings.
I already talked about that.
He comes up with one
of the greatest quotes,
comparable to what the tabular
quote of Richard Hamilton
was in England,
but it's an American version.
And what the Oldenburg says
about where he finds
his inspiration
and what he's in favor of.
He says quote, "I am for Kool
art."
Kool with a K, the cigarettes.
"I am for Kool art, 7-Up art,
Pepsi art, sunshine art, $0.39
art, $0.15 art, [? Vatronal ?]
art, drop bomb art, Vam art,
menthol art, L&M art, Ex-Lax
art, Vanita art, Heaven Hill
art, [? Pameral ?] art.
These are all products.
None of, many of which
don't exist anymore.
[? Sanomed ?] art, Rex art,
$9.99 art, now art, new art, how
art, fire art sale, last chance
art, only art, diamond art,
tomorrow's art,
[? frame's ?] art, ducks art,
Meat-a-Rama art."
So he's going to take everything
from contemporary culture,
consumerism.
And one of his most famous
events is when he creates a New
York City on East Second Street,
the famous store.
So here he is sitting
in his store.
And he's created everything
in this store.
This is in December of 1961.
And he made everything here.
It's both comestibles.
So it's foodstuffs, you know,
pies and hot dogs and hamburgers
and whatever.
But also like, sneakers.
There's a pair of sneakers
and things like that.
We have, related to
it, this work in our collection.
This is Glass Case with Pies,
subtitled, Assorted Buys
in a Case.
[LAUGHTER]
From 1962.
And the materials here
in our pies, are burlap soaked
in plaster, painted with enamel
with real pie tins in glass
and metal case.
So here he is at the store.
And he opens the store in 1961.
It's a real store, I mean,
with a real location on East
Second Street.
And he sold all of these plaster
and various materials,
replicas of both clothing,
shoes, foodstuffs.
And people would come and buy it
and he would sell it.
And if he ran out, this was also
his studio, he'd go back
and he'd make another one.
And he'd put it back out, just
like he was going to go bake
another loaf of bread.
There are all these crudely
painted services.
They're obviously a parody
of abstract expressionism.
Replicas of all
these foodstuffs.
So that he had things
like pastries, shirts,
hamburgers, sneakers,
very famous women's panties,
all kinds of stuff.
And he talked about the store
and he said it was, quote,
talking about what its purpose
was, quote, "This store will be
constantly supplied
with new objects, which I will
create out of plaster
and other materials
in the rear half of the place.
The objects will be for sale
in the store.
The store will be open every day
at hours I will post.
The hours when I will be
able to be in the store, which
is also, of course, my studio."
So this was a very famous,
it was sort of another version
of a happening in some ways.
We have a later work,
the Clarinet?
Bridge on the right, 1992.
This is not
the current installation.
We apparently haven't
photographed this
in the current state,
so this is an old photograph.
This is not the room that you'll
see.
And then these are two studies
for the Clarinet Bridge.
Those are Clarinet Bridge two
positions from 1992.
These are charcoal on paper
from the Menil Drawing institute
in Houston.
So we have the Clarinet Bridge,
and most of these, almost all
of these things
are projects
for large public sculptures
or literally, like bridges
and things.
What would it
be like to actually have
a bridge that's like a clarinet
going across a river?
The famous one for the Thames
was they have,
you know that ball that goes
in your toilet that floats?
The old toilets.
That was going to be a monument
in London.
There are other things that he
did complete,
like the Clothespin and stuff
like that that are all
around the world.
There's the Spoonbridge
in Minneapolis that has
the cherry on top
of the big spoon.
All of these things.
So this was going to be
a similar thing, but it never
got beyond this sort of model
stage here.
He plays with materials, as you
know.
So there's very often taking
something that we know
is a hard, in real life, is hard
metallic, whatever.
And then he does it
in a soft kind
of droopy polyurethane kind
of plastic, so that it droops
or it sags.
So that when you start thinking
about how would I use this,
for example, the soft toilet,
how would I actually sit
on this toilet?
It's not going to work,
because it's all just sagging
to the ground.
So he's he delights
in disrupting the functionality
of things, how it would function
in real life,
now being shown
in a different way.
We have the great eraser,
of course, out in the sculpture
garden.
So the full complete title
of the work,
that's on the far right,
is Typewriter Eraser Scale X,
Model 1998.
That's the full title.
And then it's fabricated
in 1999.
Now, of course, he works
with, he worked
for a long period of time
with his wife,
Coosje van Bruggen. She passed
away, I think it was 2008 or so,
I'm not quite sure.
Or 2009 maybe.
So these are
collaborative things.
He worked a lot with his wife.
They had similar approaches
to things.
This is a drawing, colored
pencil and watercolor
from the Whitney
that shows the soft, the idea
of the eraser
that we have typewriter.
Of course, today I always have
to explain what this is
like, because if you're talking
anybody under I don't know, 50,
they don't know.
And then this is one that's
a smaller model that's at the LA
County Museum.
A Typewriter Eraser, 1970,
that's made from vinyl, canvas,
cardboard, painted with spray
and enamel.
This is about 21 inches tall,
so it sits on, sort of
on a table.
The Typewriter Eraser has a very
fascinating history.
Oldenburg's father was
a Swedish Consul General.
He was posted to Chicago.
And as a child, Oldenburg used
to hang out at his office
when his father was doing
a lot of paperwork.
And he would play with all
the different machines
his father had.
You know, the added machine,
the typewriter.
And his father had this kind
of eraser in the office.
So he loved the office supplies.
He just thought, you know,
they're so banal, you know,
I mean.
And so they become
this rich inspiration
in his art.
They lead to everything, kinds
of sculptures, drawings, public,
plans for public monuments,
typewriters, scissors,
the Typewriter Eraser, all
these things.
He thinks when he puts something
up like this, not laying down,
he's almost always thinking
about a human figure,
that it relates to a concept
of configuration in that sense.
Like this is the spiked hair
of the top of the figure.
He's very often thinking
about that.
There's one,
I lived in Cleveland
for a number of years,
and there's a beautiful one
there that's called the Free
Stamp.
It's a, you know,
the stamp that you use to stamp
things, that again, nobody uses
anymore.
And that was interesting,
because I was there when he came
to think about doing that work
and where it was going to be
placed.
And in Public Square
in Cleveland is the headquarters
of BP America.
And originally, it was meant
to be in front of that building.
And if you go to that building
today, there's a planter that
has plants in it.
That was supposed to be the pad,
the ink pad.
And the Free Stamp was supposed
to stand straight
up like it was in its ink pad.
But when the BP America.
corporate people
saw that they were going to have
a rubber stamp in front
of their building, they started
thinking, well, wait a minute,
that's like a symbol
of bureaucracy
and this and that,
so they refused to allow it
to be there.
So then there was
a huge controversy in Cleveland.
I was teaching at Cleveland
State at the time.
The work went into storage.
A bunch of us,
it was a number of professors,
critics, people, we all
got together and signed a,
and created or circulated
a petition.
And what the petition
essentially said, look,
if you're not going to install
this in Cleveland, then give it
to somebody else.
Give it to another city.
Don't just have it sit
in a warehouse for the rest
of its life.
So that started
this whole movement.
He came back to Cleveland
with Coosje van Bruggen.
And we took him around in a car
throughout the city to see if we
could find another location.
And the location he chose
was near where the Cleveland
Stadium is, where the Browns
play.
But it's also near a bunch
of the civic buildings of City
Hall.
And so he changed things.
Originally the stamp would be
in the ink pad.
You wouldn't see the bottom
of the stamp.
And then he said, well, I think
we should put it in this park,
but now I don't, we're not going
to have a stamp pad.
We're going to look,
it's going to look like it was
thrown out of the window
by some bureaucrat.
[LAUGHTER]
Which means you're going to see
the bottom of it.
So then it, well then, what are
we going to put on the bottom?
So he Coosje van Bruggen talked
about it and then they decided
we'll put the word free.
Just the opposite
of bureaucracy, right?
So, and then he said
we're going to have to cut,
because this had been
fabricated.
And then he said, but we're
going to have to cut, go back
the fabrication
and cut part of the handle,
so that it sits down
into the ground.
So they made those changes,
they installed it,
it's one of the most popular
things in Cleveland.
But, and nobody knows when you
go to the BP building, why do
they have that planter there?
Because that was supposed to be
initially what he thought
it was going to be upright.
This idea like a human figure.
But then he changed it entirely.
Lots of stories like that
with public monuments,
not just Oldenburg, but a lot
of other people
where this thing would probably
still be in a warehouse
somewhere.
Liechtenstein, of course, one
of our favorites,
and one of the greatest
paintings by Lichtenstein,
because it's
so pivotal in his career,
is the Look Mickey painting
on the right from 1961.
And this is the source of that.
This is a page from The Golden
Book for children called "Donald
Duck Lost and Found" from 1960.
This is the book he was reading
and looked at.
It was illustrated by Bob Grant
and Bob Totten.
He was actually reading
to his children
and he had a bunch
of these Golden Books.
You know that book, right?
The little.
Yeah.
We're all of a certain age.
[LAUGHTER]
The rest of you, I'm sorry,
you'll have to,
you'll have to Google it.
[LAUGHTER]
And this was the page he saw.
And he started to think, gee,
I wonder what that would look
like kind of if I blew it up
and whatnot.
So that was the inspiration.
He changes some of the positions
and things for what you see
here.
So all, so many pop artists were
interested in comic books,
comic strips, illustrations.
Some of them
came from commercial art
backgrounds.
So this is not something they
thought was inferior or somehow
not worthy of art.
And Lichtenstein is forever
associated with this kind
of comic strip subject matter.
The story is that in fact, we
know Warhol began to do
this kind of imagery
at the same time, but he wasn't
aware that Lichtenstein was
doing it.
And then Lichtenstein had
a one-person show at Costelli
Gallery that Warhol walked into.
And Warhol walked into it
and he saw all
of these incredible paintings
and he said, OK, this is the guy
from the comic books,
I'm not even going to compete.
And he went
in a whole different direction.
He said, there's no way I can
compete with this guy.
So he went
in a different direction.
He even recreates
the Ben-Day dots.
You know, the little dots
of the printing on Mickey's face
here.
There are speech balloons.
The reason this work is so
important, is because it is
the first time that he begins
to draw from commercial comic
or illustration.
And so everything that he's
going to now expand upon,
is really spinning off
of this painting.
So this is a pivotal, pivotal
painting in the development
of his, of his career.
Here's the little Ben-Day dots
here.
This is a much later work.
This is the work that's at,
is that Minneapolis?
Yeah.
Minneapolis Institute of Art
today.
It's called Vicki!
I Thought I Heard Your Voice
from 1964.
This is how sophisticated they
get.
What he was using here,
when he first thought
about trying to recreate
the Ben-Day dots,
he had a dog's grooming brush,
and it had kind of spiky,
you know, comb hard bristles,
thank you.
But at the tip of the bristle
was a little, they were all
little balls.
So you wouldn't snag.
So he would put the dog brush
in the paint.
And then he would sort of push
it against the thing.
But it's very subtle here.
And of course, what I like
about it, is that Mickey looks
like he's blushing.
Here, it's kind of cute.
Eventually, he develops
a whole sophisticated way
of laying down a screen.
So in case you don't know
about Ben-Day dots, just, we
should give this guy credit.
They actually were invented
by a guy named Benjamin Day.
So they're called Ben-Day dots.
He died in 1916.
He was a New York printer.
And he first used the small dots
in photo engraving.
The idea was to try to enhance
the range of a halftone to bring
into it,
bring in a little more sort
of depth.
This painting is so
important to Lichtenstein.
We're so fortunate to have it.
It even appears
in other paintings.
[LAUGHTER]
If you saw our Lichtenstein show
a few years ago,
we had this painting right
as you came into the entrance
to the show.
And you could see into the show,
you could see the Mickey
painting and you could see this.
So it was nice.
So this is Artist's Studio Look
Mickey, 1973.
This is at the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis.
So there's our painting.
Lichtenstein is really, believe
it or not,
I mean despite the cartoon
imagery and the comic book,
he's very much a formalist.
This guy, believe me,
he is precise about color
registration and color context
and what's next to what and what
shape and what color.
But of course, he speaks also
to the, as all these guys did
in some ways,
to the abstract expressionist.
So this is a painting by Willem
de Kooning, Merritt Parkway
from 1959.
And of course, a very famous
series of paintings
by Lichtenstein
are the Brushstroke paintings.
So this is called Brushstrokes
from '65.
This relates in part
to the effort
that many of these artists
again, needed to get out
from under the shadow
of the abstract expressionist.
At one point, Lichtenstein's
says quote, "It was hard to get
a painting that was despicable
enough so that no one would hang
it.
Everybody was saying
everything."
[LAUGHTER]
"It was almost
acceptable to hang
a dripping paint rag.
Everybody was accustomed
to this.
The one thing everyone hated was
commercial art.
Apparently they didn't, they
didn't hate that enough either."
Because then when he started
going [INAUDIBLE],
all of a sudden,
that was selling.
But he's saying, you could do
anything.
Just slapdash, you know, you
could take Jackson Pollock's
paint rag
and tack it on the wall
and people would say, oh my god,
it's a masterpiece.
[LAUGHTER]
So this is a series in which he
is commenting,
because everything that
is loose and free
and spontaneous and gestural and
existential in the de Kooning,
is now controlled, mechanical,
replicated, very sophisticated,
very tight, very, very
much controlled.
Here's the brush.
So the relationship is to this,
but of course, the source
for some of the Brushstroke
paintings are comics very often.
And here's the source
for this painting.
This is the comic that he saw.
And this is, this was
of a series.
It was in fact called,
the Charleton Comic series.
It's called, this story
was Strange Suspense Stories,
The Painting #72.
It was, appeared in 1964
as a comic strip.
And these are the kind,
you notice,
the change from the Mickey one
is this.
That initially he goes
to Disney, right?
He's showing us a Disney
character, Mickey Mouse, Donald
Duck.
Very soon after that, he
realized, you know,
that's too famous
and that has too much baggage
and too much lineage
and all that.
I'm going to look for comics
that are less well-known,
more pulp fiction kind of stuff.
The kinds of things that not
everybody's aware of.
That takes us to the war images,
you know,
WAM, and all of that kind
of stuff, which are
among his greatest paintings.
We don't have an example
of that.
But here, this is the kind
of source that he would often
look at.
He takes on history.
You know, he's again,
he's a smart guy.
He knows art history.
So he has his interpretations
of Cubism, Expressionism.
The best, and it's funny,
but it's also very interesting,
is the series he does on Monet,
on Rouen Cathedral, because he
thinks, well you know,
the Impressionists had all
these little dots, you know.
And it's interesting, the artist
he never does is Seurat.
[LAUGHTER]
You would think that would be
logical, that'd be a natural.
You know, do Seurat.
You know, like that guy did
paint in dots.
But the Monet Rouen Cathedral
series, which we had
at the gallery during that show,
it's really fascinating what
he's doing.
This is a Cubist.
This is called Cubist Still
Life, 1974.
By the way, these, I mention,
this is all Magna, that paint
that we talked about with Morris
Lewis.
Sometimes it's Magna
with a little bit of oil.
And then this is a kind
of interesting one.
This is called Entablature
from 1974.
So an entablature is in
a Greek or Roman
or classical temples.
The horizontal part, that's
above the columns.
And here he mixes a lot
of stuff, because he wants it
to look almost sort
of like stone.
So it has oil, it has Magna,
it has sand, it has aluminum
powder.
So if you look carefully,
it almost a stony kind of
surface to it.
We Harry hangs this,
this was kind of tongue
in cheek, but I like it.
Do you know where this painting
hangs?
[LAUGHTER]
It hangs, it hangs
above the Canova.
So I think Harry here was going
for the idea
that this is the closest thing
we have.
It's a neoclassical sculpture
and a classical kind
of reference.
But of course, he was,
Lichtenstein was not looking
at architecture in Greece
or in Rome.
He was looking at the buildings
in the New York
financial district.
So he was looking
at the neoclassical buildings
in New York
for these entablatures.
Again, this is well beyond pop
art.
1983, this is our great Painting
with the Statue of Liberty.
And here, you got, again,
you have to think about things.
He's bringing together two
different things here.
Now what he's doing is,
he's kind of acknowledging
the abstract expressionist,
because part of the painting
is very loose brushwork
against his other sort
of hard, metallic commercially
reproduced brushstrokes.
It's the Statue of Liberty.
It's in New York.
He's essentially, in some ways,
saying you know, the two
great icons of New York City,
abstract expressionism
and the Statue of Liberty.
In a certain way, it's a kind
of a tribute.
Just a couple of other people,
Wayne Thiebaud.
Here, Cakes from 1963.
And James Rosenquist, White
Bread from 1964.
A lot of food.
So a lot of things.
Again, food is disposable.
You know, you eat it, it's gone.
That kind of stuff.
Thiebaud was born in Mesa,
Arizona, but only by the time
he was born, the family
was already moving to Long
Beach.
He grew up in Long Beach,
California.
Again, he starts
as a commercial artist.
So does Rosenquist.
He works, he worked for Disney
briefly as an apprentice,
as a young animator.
Comes to New York, begins to,
he takes a master's degree
in art history actually.
Then starts to study painting.
He works in an advertising
agency.
By that time,
he starts to frequent the Cedar
Tavern, you know,
where all the guys are hanging
out.
He becomes very
friendly with Franz Klein
and with de Kooning.
But the thing that turned him
off about all that,
was he said
about abstract expression,
quote,
that it started to have quote,
"a churchy feeling of a lot
of New York painting."
In other words,
it was so reverential now,
and like being in a church,
that it was hard to kind
of a get out from under that.
So his, these paintings
are marvelous.
They're almost
like magic realism,
because they have such a clarity
and brightness
and brilliance and beautiful
handling of paint.
Each work almost has
a little aura.
The color, they look
like they're competing
with each other.
Just the way you would want
in a pastry case.
You know, buy me, buy me,
this kind of thing.
You know?
They're really brilliant.
This is a very unusual
Rosenquist.
He was born in North Dakota,
Grand Forks.
But he moved to Minnesota
and went to the University
of Minnesota.
He's in New York City by 1955.
Like Ros, like Thiebaud, he
works in commercial art.
But what Rosenquist does,
is work as a painter
of billboards.
So he works on a very large
scale, which is very
important
to his later development.
This is a very unusual
Rosenquist.
It's kind of small.
It's kind of modest.
This was the first Rosenquist
we brought into the National
Gallery.
We acquired this in 2008.
We had not had a work prior
to this by Rosenquist, which was
unusual.
So this is, this kind of way
he creates sections.
Here it's logical, because he's
laying bread on top of each,
other slices of bread.
But normally, he works in a kind
of collage way,
where it looks like he's got
separate sections.
But I'm going to end
with a painting we don't have,
I wish we did.
Arguably one of the greatest
paintings in America
of the 20th century.
It's by James Rosenquist.
It's not one you see out all
the time, because it's
86 feet of painting
and it's 10 feet high.
And it's this one.
This is when it was brought out
for a while at the MoMA.
This is the great F-111
from 1964-65.
This is oil on canvas
with aluminum.
It's, depending on how they
arrange it, it is sometimes it's
23 sections.
Or they can arrange them
together on a long, a long wall.
This comes out
of his billboard commercial
experience.
He said at one point quote,
"Painting is probably much more
exciting than advertising,
so why shouldn't it be done
with that power and gusto,
with that impact?"
So this is the work that was
shown at the Leo Castelli
Gallery in '64, '65.
It took up, Castelli gave
the whole gallery
to the painting.
It couldn't be shown long.
It had to be shown broken up
along different sections
of the gallery.
And it's one of the greatest
American paintings
of the 20th century.
It deals, in essence,
with the Vietnam War
and with his attitudes
about the war.
It has the most incredible array
of images.
The plane, this is the very
famous image of the little girl
under the hairdryer.
She looks like she's
in a missile.
But he said she's actually
the one who's flying the plane.
She's the aviatrix,
he called her.
It has one of the greatest
depictions of what I call
radioactive spaghetti.
[LAUGHTER]
Here.
When you see this painting,
it just, it just bowls you over,
and it's one of the most iconic
paintings.
It comes out of a pop sort
of orientation.
Rosenquist did not like
that term.
He did not like to be called
a pop artist.
He sort of accepted it.
He just died I think in 2017,
he just passed away.
So this
is a magnificent painting.
This is one you should check on
and look at all the details.
OK, I think that takes us
through pop art.
Thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]
