Chapter 7 - 6

06 Art History

Listen to a lecture in an art history class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

W: Good afternoon, class. I bet there isn’t one person in here who doesn’t think of the name Andy Warhol when the pop art movement is mentioned.

It’s gotten to the point that that movement is inextricably tied to this one figure, and with good reason.

Andy Warhol had an incredible influence on shaping the American pop art movement and was largely responsible for legitimizing pop art.

We’ll go into further detail a little later in class, but I think I’d like to start with a definition of what pop art is exactly. I think people have conflicting ideas about what pop art is, mostly because it was a movement that was going on in a lot of different places all at once.

There was the Spanish movement, the British movement, even the Japanese pop art movement.

But the earliest emergence of the movement sort of happened simultaneously in Britain and the United States in the early 1950s. Anyway, at its simplest pop art employs well-known images and themes as a kind of celebration of popular culture and a rejection of elitism.

It’s often look down upon as being lowbrow, I guess, but a lot of pop art is actually preacademic.

There were many different figures that influenced pop art, but really, the one that always comes to mind is Andy Warhol. I said earlier that Warhol heavily influenced the American pop art movement.

He did this in a couple of ways. Before I start, I want to emphasize that Warhol was a trained artist, and was actually a working artist during the 1950s before he became a prominent figure in the movement.

I say this because I think most people assume that he was a hack, so to speak… uh, someone who merely capitalized on a passing trend.

I guess you can still argue that if you like, but he also had some very interesting ideas about art.

See, the man was completely enamored with pop culture. Taking cues from the movement, Warhol added a different aspect to his side.

One way that he shaped the movement came from his ideas about the role of mass-produced items in the art world.

He likened himself to a machine and wanted to elevate items that were mass-produced to art. For example, some of his most famous paintings are those of Campbell’s soup cans.

Really, most of the subjects were really recognizable. And for him, the important part was making art that had mass appeal. In other words, he wanted his art to attract and speak to the majority of people, not just art critics.

I also want to mention Warhol’s tendency to collaborate with other artists. His frequent collaborations helped change people’s previous attitudes about art.

What I’m referring to is how, usually, artists tended to be really protective about their work. It was generally seen as a more personal thing.

But the other side of Warhol’s ideas about elevating mass-produced items to objects of art was that he also wanted to mass produce art. Do you all get the distinction?

OK, so anyway, by collaborating with others, he created an assembly line of art, which, needless to say, was very uncommon at the time.

But after that, collaborations weren’t looked down upon so much and it was very much a part of that movement. Warhol pushed pop art into the consciousness of the public not only through depicting popular subjects, but by bringing pop art to the gallery.

In a 1964 exhibit called The American Supermarket, Warhol and other like-minded artists presented different pieces that represented a supermarket.

They featured paintings of soup cans, vegetables, meet−all the things that you see when you go to the supermarket.

The importance of the exhibit was twofold. For one thing, it was really the first big exhibit featuring pop artist. This is significant because it kind of added legitimacy to those artists and the works they created.

Also, the subject matter made people think to themselves, “What is art?” Do you all see what I mean?

Because it wasn’t what people were used to, I think that simply seeing these pieces in a gallery forced people to evaluate their personal ideas about what makes art art.

1) What does the professor imply when she says this: It’s often look down upon as being lowbrow, I guess, but a lot of pop art is actually preacademic.

2) What does the professor imply about Andy Warhol’s artistic background?

3) What can be inferred about Warhol’s part assembly line?