An Illustrated Dictionary of

POPART
José Pierre

Barron's $3.95
BOSTOTSI
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
 POP ART
An Illustrated Dictionary

Unlike other books on the subject, this comprehensive survey

of the fascinating phenomenon of Pop Art is arranged in
dictionary form. There are entries on most important
all the
individual artists, from Blake to Warhol, from Oldenburg to
Rauschenberg; entries on movements, from Anti-Pop to Zebra;
entries on cities and countries, from Paris to Japan; and entries
on genres, from Assemblage to Ready-mades. There's even an
entry on Pop Art's chief obsession, Marilyn Monroe.

Most entries are accompanied by illustrations, over seventy of

them in full colour. Some are so w^ell-known they have become
their ow^n myths, while others are still sufficiently unfamiliar to
provoke considerable controversy.
in the same series

A Dictionary of Expressionism
A Dictionary of Impressionism
A Dictionary of Surrealism
 POP ART
An Illustrated Dictionary

José PIERRE

TRANSLATED BY W. J. STRACHAN
CHEVALIER DES ARTS ET LETTRES

EYRE METHUEN
LONDON
 JUN 1980 ,N/6V9^
,7^^ A^ 53/3
CODMAN SQUARE
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

French Terms
Where appropriate and customary, terms denoting a movement
or group originating in France, such as Le Nouveau RéaHsme,
founded by Pierre Restany, and La Jeune Peinture, have been
retained in French, and not itaHcized. Similarly in the case of the
Nouveau Roman.

Captions
Where appropriate the captions which are in French in the
original edition have been translated. The exceptions are where
the non-French artist used a French title e.g. Richard Hamil-
ton's Hommage à Chrysler Corp. (sic). The eccentricity of Pop
Art captions will be no surprise to those famiHar with the
movement. The problem has rather been that of the French
author having to translate English and American titles. The
reverse process involved identifying Warhol's Dance diagrams
(for Fox-trot etc) with plans de chaussettes and Rosenquist's Blue
feet (Look alive) with Dépêchez-vous etc. One was almost
surprised to find examples as easily identifiable as P-Peut-être for
Lichtenstein's 'M-Maybe'.
I make this point about title for the benefit of visitors to
international collections and exhibitions of Pop Art such asone
of the former, extremely representative, now housed in Le
Musée National d'Art Moderne section of the Centre national
d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, which opened -
appropriately enough as far as this book is concerned - with an
exhibition of Marcel Duchamp, whose 'ready-mades' are so
closely Hnked with Pop Art. One cannot recommend a visit to
the Pop Art section of the Centre too strongly to readers of this
book who wish to follow up the subject.

Layout design by Nathalie L'Hopitault

FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN 1977

BY EYRE METHUEN LTD,

11 NEW FETTER LANE, LONDON EC4P 4EE

© FERNAND HAZAN. PARIS 1975

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED S.P A.D'E.M AND AD A G P .

PARIS

ISBN 413 38370 9

PRINTED IN FRANGE BY SUD-OFFSET. RUNGIS

 'There is something more miraculous in a

coffee-mill than in all the seraphim of

'

heaven.
Aragon

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF POP ART

The hindsight with which we can today look at the all-

important phenomenon of Pop Art should lead to a deeper and

more dispassionate appreciation than it has so far enjoyed. But is

not attempting this to over-emphasize the virtues of objectivity

in an area in which emotion has always played the leading role?
There is in fact no one work devoted to this subject that is not, at
least on some point, contradicted by another: Jim Dine, for
example, considered by several critics to be outside Pop Art,

occupies a central position in the eyes of others; James Rosen-

quist, generally deemed one of the least disputable stars of the
tendency, hardly gets a mention from Christopher Finch, who
in his turn fails even to name Wesselmann. Furthermore, the fact

whole Hbrary of books devoted to Pop Art has

that practically a
been written by English or American authors explains - without
in any way justifying - the wretched treatment, not to say total
neglect of European, Japanese and even Canadian manifestations
of Pop Art. Jasper John's Flags have played a by no means
negligible part among the precursory signs of the movement,
and no one, it appears, ventures to pronounce on Pop Art
without hoisting his national colours. It could doubtless be
claimed as the best way of avoiding becoming the target of one's
friends - and so Jasper Johns interested himself in Targets as well.

Rarely have reactions to a new artistic tendency been so

excessive and combined to such a degree with purely chauvinis-
tic attitudes. In stating this we are not only thinking of the
U.S.A. where the genesis of Pop Art - thanks to the previous

efflorescence of Abstract Expressionism - merely strengthened a

feeling of a cultural autonomy that already existed. The more so,
since this time - in the opinion of some - was a matter of an
it

infinitely more democratic not to say demagogic art. It should

not, however, be forgotten that Pop Art was not wholly
welcomed in America, far from it; the critics most deeply
committed to Abstract Expressionism, or, a Minimal
little later.

Art, treated it with scant regard. On the continent of Europe,

where - with the almost total neglect of the British contribution
- Pop Art was treated by artists, critics and public alike as a
typically American phenomenon, we can say without exaggera-
tion that pro-American and anti-American feeling played a
much more decisive role than purely artistic considerations on
the way the new aesthetic was received. This dichotomy
however did not operate solely among American partisans of
Pop Art on the one hand and anti-Americans opposed to the
movement on the other. By far the most enterprising stand was
that taken by artists who spontaneously rallied to the new
aesthetic since it corresponded both to the demands of their
sensibility and their intelligence. Nevertheless, feeling a mysteri-
ous sense of guilt for adopting such a flagrantly American style,

they salved their consciences by treating, albeit episodically,

subjects which demonstrated their anti-Americanism. This
strange way of protesting one's virtue appears to have been
neglected by few, if any, of the most outstanding representatives
of Pop Art on the European continent and, at the same time,
accounts for the special attention that some of them gave to the
work of almost the only American artist linked with Pop Art
who adopted an openly critical attitude towards social reaHty

and American poHtics, Peter Saul.

By contrast. Pop Art in Great Britain stemmed from a pro-

Americanism not only readily acknowledged but so ingenuous
that there is no doubt - at least in the present writer's mind - that

this is why British Pop

Artists were the first to define the Unes
on which the specifically mid-twentieth century American style
was to develop. The fact that this style found its first definition
outside American territory should be enough to convince us that
its characteristics pass far beyond the bounds of narrowly
geographical and historical circumstances and that, in other
words, it emerges as the style of the most technologically
advanced society, particularly in the channels of information and
communication known mass media. For what was
as the
considered proper to this style, not only in England but the rest
of Europe, had by no means specifically American cultural
origins (such as the Ash Can School, the Precisionists, Stuart
Davis, Edward Hopper or Joseph Cornell); it embraced, on the
contrary, whatever was free from any set cultural stamp. In
short, what was novel because impersonal and without a past,
such as a magazine or newspaper photograph, a film still, a TV
image, an advertisement, a hoarding, a neon sign, a pin-table,
automobile coachwork, a preserve canister. From this point it

becomes obvious opposing attitudes described above in

that the
terms of pro or anti-American, mean something quite different
from sympathy or antipathy towards any particular nation and
its members but rather the acceptance or rejection of a certain
style of Ufe imposed by the enormous development of industrial
production and commercial techniques, in short the style of life

of what is known as the 'consumer-society*. Pop Art is in fact

first and foremost the 'consumer-society' style, which inciden-

tally, explains its world-wide success and diffusion. To misinter-
phenomenon as 'capitaHst realism', as some have done,
pret the
would be to make it at once into its opposite and the counterpart
of Eastern European 'social realism'. In the first place it is by no
means certain that Pop Art, despite the fact that it borrows
almost all the forms it uses from everyday life, belongs to the
category of realism. We have only to consider the work of Claes
Oldenburg to admit that the frontier which divides realism from
surrealism in Pop Art is hard to define. Further, we have to
remember that 'social reaHsm' was founded around 1934 in the
USSR on an authoritarian and bureaucratic dictate both con-
cerning style and content. Now, Pop Art was not only the
spontaneous product of individual initiative but it would be
wrong to see it as the celebration of the American style of life in
particular and consumer society in general. Nor can the opposite
thesis, frequently advanced in Europe for the reasons of secret
guilt already mentioned, be maintained either. Pop Art is

certainly not an indictment of the American style of life nor

of the culture of the mass media nor even of the ideal city of
technocrats. And if there is in the movement a vein one might
call which - omitting Peter Saul - we can connect
ironic (and
with the Chicago School, particularly as exemplified by Jim
Nutt and Ed Paschke, to which we should add the strange part
played by Ronald B. Kitaj in the genesis of British Pop Art), this
vein, intriguing or inventive as it is, certainly cannot claim to be
representative of any specific feature of Pop Art generally. When
therefore we suggested a definition of Pop Art as the style of
consumer society, the implication was not that Pop artists
aligned themselves either with it or against it, but that their
themes and their way of treating them were direct results of the
urbanization of the said society. This debt to urban environment
has given rise on the other hand to the legend, jealously
maintained by a certain Pop dandyism, of the indifference of the
Pop artist to his subject, an indifference that some theorists in
their turn have promoted in the aesthetic principle of the
'constat': whereby the artist, reduced to the role of a recording
apparatus (and it is true that an Andy Warhol, for example, has
never quite been able to console himself for not being a camera
or a what he can of the images,
tape-recorder) should 'catch'
gestures and sounds which perpetually assail him and reconsti-
tute them as faithfully as the techniques he uses allows. Such an
exemplary passivity inevitably refers us back to what stands out
as the model par excellence of Pop Art, Marcel Duchamp's ready-

made.
 THE TWO FACES OF POP ART

Here again, we should clarify: if the ready-made, as defined by

Duchamp at the end of 1913, is considered as the aesthetic
prototype of Pop Art, it is not so much because of its influence
consciously by the Pop artists since it seems that only the
felt

creators of American proto-Pop Art, Jasper Johns and Robert

Rauschenberg, perhaps also Jim Dine and Joe Goode, had really
thought about Duchamp's contribution. What mattered was the
prophetic significance of Duchamp's act of elevating a current
consumer product, a manufactured article, to artistic dignity:
bicycle-wheel, bottle-drier, urinal etc. or mass-produced image
(calendar-illustration, advertisement hoarding, reproduction of
a famous picture). In other words, the gesture which, around
the First World War period, had no meaning except for
Duchamp alone (with meaning of the ready-
Picabia the
made was already considerably perverted by humour) became
intelligible to a wide public some forty or fifty years later,

though not without some risks of misunderstanding. It is

indisputable, for instance, that the systemisation of the notion of
the ready-made, worked out by George Brecht and Ben ran
counter to the smallnumber of 'interventions' to which
Duchamp intended to limit himself in order to keep their
meaning within bounds. Whatever, we think about such mista-
ken interpretations, the introduction of the ready-made into the
present account has the advantage not only of providing a

perfectly usable general point of reference but helps us to

distinguish two quite distinct phases of Pop Art, according as to
whether the ready-made consists of an actual object or of the
image of this object as presented by the mass media. Although
the appellation 'Pop Art' has been particularly linked with the
second of these two phases, the view is no longer tenable today,
it seems to us, that it should be considered in isolation from the

other which often throws light on it. To take account of both

therefore, we propose to use the designations Pop Art 1 and Pop
Art 2.

POP ART 1 , which in certain cases could be called Proto-Pop

Oldenburg. Soft Toilet. 1%6. Collection Mr. and Mrs. Ganz, New York.
Art and in almost every case assemblagist Pop Art, is charac-
terized by the participation of the artefact itself whether the
latter is integrated into the works of art or whether - alone or

combined with other works - it stands autonomous and self-

Sufficient. Pop Art 1 includes a host of predecessors, beginning

with Picasso's Still-life with Chair-caning (1912), followed by his

constructions, Duchamp's ready-mades, some works by
Picabia, Schwitters' Merzbilder and Joseph Cornell's 'surrealist

objects' and 'boxes'. The fact remains however that Pop Art in

its totality differs completely from its various antecedents in the

way it shows itself particularly conscious of the relation it

estabhshed - through the intermediary of current consumer

goods - with the urban environment as the latter impinged on
the major conurbations of highly industrialized society in the
mid-twentieth century. The awareness of such a relation
produced a variety of consequences according as to whether the
artsts - as was the case with those of the Nouveau Réalisme -

totally neglected the human drama or whether, conversely, they

attempted to express by incorporating urban detritus into
it

their themes; whether through the kind of theatrical subHmation

we find in the 'happenings' of Kaprow, Oldenburg and Jim
Khne or whether in the frenzied emotion of Kienholz and Bruce
Conner. If our criterion is the clear historical priority - at all

events in the U.S.A. - of Pop Art 1 over Pop Art 2 (the

assemblagists made their presence known, particularly on the
Cahfornian seaboard in 1950; Rauschenberg's first combine-

paintings date from 1954-1955; Oldenburg and Dine showed

their first large-scale happenings in 1959), we are tempted to
conclude that the assemblagist phase prepared the way for the
pictorial or sculptural phase proper which in New York began
in 1961. Taken as a whole and at least in the New York
ambiance, this succession corresponds to the facts. We must,
however, be careful not to think of it as a hard and fast rule since

many of the Assemblagists, including some of the most

important, did not give up Assemblages from that time
(furthermore, Oldenburg chose wisely in turning to sculp-
if

ture, Rauschenberg did not seem to have gained by abandoning

combine-paintings). Similarly we should be wary of suspecting
that there is any aesthetic hierarchy linking Pop Art and Pop 1

Art 2. The real difference between the two phases may well be
of a metaphysical, perhaps poetic order. It has certainly nothing
to do with aesthetic merit.

POP ART 2, which could equally well be called Pictorial Pop

Art (and in a very limited number of cases Sculptural) or Pop
Art proper is based on the image of the object as the mass media
present it - cinema, poster, TV, strip-cartoon, newspaper and
magazine photographs, animated cartoon, etc. In other words

this style of Pop painting severs all connections with the grand
pictorial manner of the past, including 19th century photo-
graphic academism and even more with the movements that
brought about the break of modern art with the representational
such as Impressionism, Cubism, Geometric Abstraction, Sur-
realist Automatism and Abstract Expressionism. However, the

taste for a certain coolness of execution brings Pop Art 2 close to

Purism and that is why Fernand Léger and his American

emulator Stuart Davis or, even more, the Precisionists, Demuth
and Sheeler, painters of factories, silos and ships, find grace in
the eyes of Pop purists. Indeed, there has often been an attempt
to prove that their predilection for the simplified image and
frequent recourse to large-scale work, link them to a considera-
ble degree with the preoccupations of their contemporaries and
compatriots, Ellsworth Kenneth Noland and Frank
Kelly,
Stella, creators of vast abstract paintings in which the actual

image is reduced to the minimum. Such a comparison which has

a certain formal justification tends to conceal the fact that what

was first and foremost the virtue of Pop Art was its deliberate
aggression against good taste and the noble artistic traditions of
the past, an aggression which took the form of flinging in the
public's face the stuffed animals that Rauschenberg fixed on his
canvases, Jasper Johns' bronze-cast electric lamps, Campbell's
soup-cans repeated ad nauseam by Andy Warhol, Rosenquist's
vast Dance-diagrams (Fox Trot etc.) or plates of spaghetti,
Wesselmann's painted nipples and the lips of smoking women,
the sophisticated enlargements of mediocre comic-paper images
to which Lichtenstein devoted his attention, monster bags of
chips and 'soft' lavatory seats, made by Oldenburg. Not that
Pop Art and Pop Art 2, in particular, neglected the nostalgic
dimension, nor was unaware of the drama of the individual and
indifferent to international events. Its novelty and specificity,
however, consisted above all in focusing the viewer's attention
on objects or familiar images, after first endowing them with a
strange power. Taking advantage of this apparent complicity
which from the systematic reference to the banal and
resulted
everyday element in 'consumer society', Pop artists finally

opened the eyes and doubtless also the hearts of their contem-
poraries to a world of poetry by showing them that from images
which they had every reason to believe were those of resignation
and social and philosophic conformism, could suddenly spring
impressions never before experienced and, precisely for that
reason, revolutionary.

We have however resisted the temptation to treat the story of

New York Pop Art - the most glorious of all and although all it

happened against the backcloth of the most 'pop' city in the

world - as unique and inevitable. From the moment when the
international character of this movement was recognized, it was
unreasonable to favour New York, in principle, over London or
San Francisco, not to mention Paris, Rome or Dusseldorf. For
who owe as
can prove that the 'consumer society' style does not
much to Peter Blake, Konrad Klapheck, Titina Maselli or to
Nouveau Réalisme as a whole, as to Rauschenberg, Johns,
Rosenquist and Wesselmann? Nor has its success alone seemed
to us a sufficient criterion, despite the fact that the backing it

provided for this or that artistic personality is undeniable. And if

it is only right to allow Lichtenstein, Oldenburg and Warhol the

place they deserve, it is even more justifiable not to refuse it, for

example, to Marisol, Mel Ramos or Marjorie Strider. Pop

artists, like any others, should not be judged by the way they
mark time while following the fanfares of fashion but by the
inimitable, unforeseeable, and original response they make to

society's invitations in the way they walk, run or dance.

Jose Pierre.

I
^
 Duchamp: Ready-mades

Surrealist Objects

POP ART 1: THE OBJECT

Picasso: constructions

Schwitters: Merz

Picabia: Dada works

POP ART 2: THE IMAGE OF THE OBJECT

Léger: The City

Magritte: The Human Condition

THE TWO FACES OF POP ART

AND THE ORIGINAL CONSTELLATION
14
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Accumulation. Artnan. Glug-glug. 1%1. Galleria Schwarz, Milan.

Accumulation. The first word 1935). Pop Art 2. It was only by

in this dictionary is a key-word for clinging desperately to the most
Pop Art 1. It was used as early as everyday reality that in 1963
1951 in San Francisco on the occa- Adami managed to escape the in-
sion of an exhibition with the sig- fluence of Matta. Not, however,
nificant title Common Art Accumula- without showing evidence of ear-
tions. From 1960 on, Arman used it lier nostalgia, chiefly for Magnelli
to designate his most characteristic and Juan Gris of the years
intervention, with the abbreviated 1913-1915 when both were en-
variant 'accumulation' when he re- gaged in opposing Cubist grisaille
peated the same object, and 'gar- with the resplendent certainties of
bage can' when it involved as- the present. Still today Adami
sembling disparate elements. But evokes these same certainties by
the principle of repetition also ex- collecting together photographs of
ists in Pop Art in the strict sense. hotel rooms, bathrooms, hotel
lounges, shop-windows and lava-
Action. Synonym of Happening tories in London or elsewhere and
when the emphasis is more on the submitting them to his own very
artist's intentions than on outside special alchemy. Introduced in lo-
intervention. cations which violate all notion of
time and while the intimate truth
Adami. Valerio (Bologna, Italy, about himself is at least partially
ADZAK
unveiled, the human being is found researchwith the poetry of the
there but so guilt-laden that his thereby pursuing the prog-
'find',
face is never shown to us. At most, ramme of the general rehabihtation
he betrays his presence with a of our everyday environment, un-
shoulder, an arm, a hip, often by dertaken by Pop Art in its various
the concession of a foot or a whole aspects.
leg while the body torso is almost
always shown below the waist and Alleyn, Edmund (Quebec, 1931).
in a curious way attached to the What distinguishes Alleyn's posi-
furniture, his accomplice. This uni- tion from that of all the rest, as it

verse of adulterous trances and emerged in 1966, is his utilization

even some furtive rendez-vous in of technological means to de-
lavatories, thispanorama of man's nounce technological society. In an
squalid existence in large modern early period he used figurative im-
cities,is deHneated in a uniform agery to describe the irresistible
and authoritative line, thanks to an invasion of our intellectual and
effective gumming technique, in a spiritual space by robotization
space partitioned by flat, strident (series of Zooms, Conditionings, Ag-
colours. gressions). Alleyn turned next to a
direct use of technology to make
Adzak, Roy (Reading, England, his famous Introscaph (1968-1970) -
1930). Since 1957, his aim has been a veritable egg of discord under the i
to integrate the feminine principle - brood-hen of cybernetics.
what he believes to be the hidden
truth of things and human beings- Alloway, Lawrence (London,
into the canvasby the use of hol- 1920) Art critic. He has been very
low casts. And whether they are closely associated with the discus-
bottles, women or chickens, what sions and exchanges of views from
he offers us are ghosts, since he which Pop Art was to take
British
rejects colour and has a special shape. As director of the Guggen-
predilection for snow effects, heim Museum, New York (1962-
scooped out as it were around an 1966), he organized a major exhibi-
invisible presence. tion of American Pop Art at the
Whitney Museum of Art in 1974.
Agostini, Peter (New York,
1913). With his plaster moulds, Alvermann, H. P. (Dusseldorf,
taken either from crumpled mate- 1931). Pop Art 1. A broadly con-
rials like cloth or paper or famihar ceived satirical vein inspired his
objects such as pillows, eggs, bal- Assemblages which, with equal in-
loons or cartons, he blazed the trail difference, send up myths of politi-
both for Segal and Oldenburg. cal power, temptations of techno-
cratic society, the hypocrisy of
Agullo, Thierry (Bordeaux, middle-class moraHty and the fal-

1945). By his systematic exploita- lacies in the 'German miracle'.

tion of worn-out shoe-irons
around the year 1972, Agullo com- Amen, Woody van (Eindhoven,
bined the discipline of ethnological Netherlands, 1936). Pop Art 1 and
i6
Adzak. The Solid Cage. 1969.
Adami. Lavatory.
1968. Studio Marconi, Milan.
 ANTI-POP

Alleyn. Conditioning I. 1967.

his sole material for expressing his

ideas.

Appropriation. Originally
coined by Pierre Restany, this term
is the 'Open sesame' of the Pop
movement as a whole, since the
Pop Artist, according to each case,
'appropriates' the daily objects
around him, images introduced by
the mass media, the mass-media
style or even the media themselves.

Arakawa, Shusaku
(Nagoya,
Japan, 1936). Only
most super-
the
ficial resemblances Hnk Arakawa
2. Woody van Amen's Assemb- and a whole current of Pop Art
lages combine ingenuity, irony, from Jasper Johns to Edward
fantasy, anxiety and indifference. Ruscha via George Brecht and In-
They are imbued with nostalgia for diana - whose participants have
the past and speculation about the often adopted printed characters or
future. Together, these elements numbers as themes for pictorial
form a kind of fantastic and comic expression. Although Arakawa's
chronicle of the artist's moods inscriptions are reminiscent of
according to his reactions to the those of Larry Rivers, their nature
major or minor events of everyday is in fact totally different, since,
life. In its expression of spon- instead of echoing an image, they
taneous nonconformity, his con- form a substitute for it, designating

tribution is one of the most original a bird, a woman, a cloud or the sea,
of the w^hole of Pop art. the better to evoke what is stated
but not shown.
Anti-Pop. Title of the manifesto
pubHshed by Boris Lurie on the Argentina. Ruben Santantonin's
occasion of his exhibition at the vigorous Assemblages, Hke An-
Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York tonio Berni's painting-
in 1964 and w^hich sums up the assemblages, which describe the
attitude of the 'Doom Artists', q.v. tribulations of his heroes, Juanito
Laguna and Ramona Montiel, are
Apple, Billy, name adopted by the evidences of the meeting of
first

Barrie Bates (Auckland, New Zea- the current of fantastic expression-

land, 1935). After making casts of ism, highly developed in the
apples in painted bronze, mostly Argentine Republic - and particu-
insect-gnawed, he adopted neon as larly exemplified in the work of
i8
 ARMAN

Lea Lublin, Romulo Maccio and

Antonio Segui - with Pop sensibili-
ty. But what sparked the whole
thing off was Mark Minujin's re-
turn to Buenos-Aires in 1963. Up
to about 1968, there was a some-
what disorganized but extremely
flourishing activity in the arts, the
chief representatives of which were
Rodriguez Arias, Oscar Bony,
Delia Cancela, Zulema Ciordia,
Gimenez, Pablo Mesejean,
Palacios, Delia Puzzovio, Suzanna
Salgado, Carlos Squirru and Stop-
pani. The explosion of this highly
coloured 'pop linfardo' would be
enough in itself to prove that Pop
Art as a phenomenon of civilization
associated with large modern
western-type cities corresponded
to a genuine international need.

Arman. Name adopted by Ar-

mand Hernandez (Nice, 1928). Pop
Art 1. In 1956 Arman used rubber
stamps to exploit the idea of repeti-
tion which continued to be the
basic inspiration behind all his
work. In 1959 the notion of 'ac-
cumulation' and 'waste-paper bas-
ket' occurred to him simultaneous-
ly - in other words the use of the
quantitative as a poetic principle.
This way of competing, not as
once described by Apollinaire,
with perfume-bottle labels but
with ironmongers' shelves or de-
posits of waste, was a brutal sever-
ance with the lyrical tradition of
assemblage, brutal to the point of
creating bitter enemies as well as
some enthusiasts, one of whom
was Restany. During the
Pierre
time when he was enriching his
range of plastic solutions - in 1961
'cross-sections' (objects sliced into
reliefs) and 'tantrums' (trampled. Amen. Assemblage.
19
 Ascal.Album I.
1%7-1%8.

Arman. Accumulation of Motor-homs.

1%0. Collection Lauffs, Kaiser-Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld.
OfOOOfOOOfOO
3f OOOf oc
oAfmiDol^ooêoo
>ff#ooff oc

Arneson. Call Girl. 1965.

The Hansen-Fuller
Gallery, San Francisco.
ARNESON
crushed and lacerated objects), in regular line, does not always avoid
1963 'combustions' (calcinated ob- the pitfalls of didacticism. On occa-
jects) - Arman became
key figure
a sion, however, Ascal can be both
in Nouveau Réalisme and exercised effective and lyrical.
an ever-increasing influence. But
the success on the one hand and, on Assemblage. Ever since the suc-
the other, the technical perfection, cessful exhibition 'The Art of As-
resulting from his exploitation of semblage' in New York, 1961, this
plexiglass and polyester, brought term has been generally accepted to
about a marked decHne in the po- denote every form of three-
tential aggressivity of his v^orks. dimensional collage - rehef, sculp-
Finally, from the time, circa 1966, ture or 'environment'.
w^hen he introduced the intermina-
ble series of 'inclusions' of tubes of Assemblagists. This is the label
colours, crushed in polyester, given in the U.S.A. to a current of
Arman could no longer conceal the great diversity which developed
driving force of all his activity - an chiefly between 1950 and 1961, the
incurable nostalgia for painting. year when 'The Art of Assemblage'
exhibition seemed, in New York,
Arneson. Robert (Benicia, at any rate, to have deHvered it a
Cahfornia, 1930). Faithful to the knock-out blow. The origins are
spirit of Funk Art, Arneson has attributable to a general reaction
used the medium of ceramics to against the subjectivist excesses of
make his ironic comment on every- Abstract Expressionism, combined
day apparatus, such as the tele- with an intentional allusion to
phone, typev^riter or toaster, witti- Dadaism and Surrealism and
ly refuting the optimism charac- which, for the most part, con-
teristic of Pop Art. cerned artists who had repudiated
painting without wishing to enter
Artschwager, Richard the field of sculpture. Thus the
(Washington, 1924). Pop Art 2. New York Assemblagists found
After constructing Oldenburg's themselves closely associated with
Bedroom, he made a reputation for the rise and development of 'Hap-
his 'cubic' pseudo-furniture in for- penings'. Among the most notable
mica, then for his urban view^s in of the New York Assemblagists
w^hich his technique of flecking over the years are: Brecht, Dine,
played a styHstic role, akin to Lich- Jean Follet (b.l917), Esther Gentle
tenstein's use of simulated screens. (b.l916), Gloria Graves, Johnson,
Kaprow, Robert Mallary (b.l917),
Ascal, Bernard (Paris, 1943). Pop Salvatore Meo (b.l920), Robert
Art Bernard Ascal aims to
2. Moskowitz (b.l935). Samaras, and
achieve a formal vocabulary of easy Edith Schloss (b.l919). Although
legibility that allows the free circu- their technique is similarly linked
lation of emotions and ideas bet- with Assemblage, Lee Bontecou
ween individuals and - hopefully - (b.l931), John Chamberlain
peoples. The schématisation of his (b.l927) and Louise Nevelson
images, emphasized by a thick. (b.l900) do not obey the same
 AXEL

aesthetic imperatives as the As-

semblagists. Particularly influential
in California, the assemblagist
stream surfaced in early days under
the stimulus of John Bernhardt
(1921-1963), Bruce Conner, Wally
Hedrick, George Herms (b.l935),
Kienholz, Hassel Smith, Clay
Spohn. A httle later we have Arlo
Acton (b.l933), Dennis Hopper
(b.l936), Rodger Jacobsen
(b.l939), Charles Meyer (b.l940),
Gordon Wagner (b.l915), not to
mention almost all the artists of
Funk Art. Nouveau Réalisme is
often considered by American cri-
tics as the Paris variant of the
assemblagist movement.

Axell, Evelyne (Namur, Bel-

gium, 1935-1972). Pop Art 2. As
she cut opalescent images of a cool
yet mordant sensuaUty in enamel,
plexiglass or formica, Evelyne
Axell never stopped dreaming of
setting up 'a factory in the service
of the imagination, fantasy, eroti-
cism from which mass-produced
works would emerge to be sold in
supermarkets.' With her the plastic
vocabulary of Pop Art was totally
subservient to poetry, and since the
aim was to exalt the luminous
beauty of the human body and
erotic fulfilment, not without re-
percussions of a moral and
philosophic order in a newly found
freedom.

23
Assemblage. Deschamps. Textile Picture. 1964.
Galerie Mathias Fels, Paris.

Axell.
Bird of Paradise. 1971.
 Bastin. Cherry Sundae. 1970.
CollectionGuy Robert, Sainte-Adèle.
BAJ

Baj, Enrico (Milan, 1924).
Art There is no shadow of doubt
1 .
that Baj works under an assemb-
lagist Muse. This appHes equally to
his female portraits wholly com-
posed of trimmings on damask
materials, to his superb soldiers
crumbling under the weight of in-
numerable medals, to those ugly
httle demons who invade Alpine
landscapes with their officious and
salacious presence, to academic
nudes, mass-produced by piece-
workers, to sculptures constructed
of meccano parts and his all-cloth
Guernica of 1969. It is as an As-
semblagist that Baj, thanks to an
exuberance which is never totally
lacking in aggressivity and to an
only semi-serious affection
materials, deserves his unique place
in contemporary art. Although in
the final analysis, far removed from
Pop Art in the strict sense, Baj's
contribution enlarged the palette
introduced by Cubist 'papiers col-
lés' and advanced the intrusion of
the everyday element into aesthe-
tics.
Pop statement that stands half-way be-
tween an ironic Jasper Johns' pro-
vocation and a Magritte-like poetic
evocation.
Baruchello,Gianfranco (Leghorn,
Italy, 1924). The disconcerting
itinerary presented by Baruchello's
work (mostly in a wayward scatter
of drawings, partly in-
detailed
spired by comics and somewhat
reminiscent of Fahlstrom and
Bertholo) leads us some distance
from Pop Art territory, since, as
Alain Jouffroy has written, 'he at-
tempts to introduce the viewer into
that Amazonas of thought known
as "the illegible" '.
for
Bastin, Michèle (Belgium, 1944).
With a tender and ingenuous grace
Michèle Bastin juxtaposes the dis-
creet promises of female flesh with
the downy plumage of birds, the
rotundity of apples with the melt-
ing savour of ice-creams. With him
Pop Art becomes intimate and
cosy.

Ballaine, Jerrold (Seattle, Beat Generation. In the early

Washington, 1934). Jerrold Bal- 'fifties, poets hke Gregory Corse
laine swept the formal repertory of (b.l930), Allen Ginsberg (b.l916),
Pop Art 2 into a mad, typically Charles Olson (b.l910) or novelists
'funky' adventure in which Popes Hke Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) and
hold discourses in stainless steel and William Burroughs (b.l914), the
in which a piece of lemon peel is 'Beat' writers vehemently de-
transmogrified into a female nude. nounce the American way of Hfe
finding their code of conduct in
Barker, Clive (Luton, England, jazz, drugs and a quest for God and
1940). Whether he takes a drop of lost innocence. Their original
water falling into a bucket, a pic- home, San Francisco, was also one
tureby Magritte or Lichtenstein or of the centres of CaHfornian As-
even Marlon Brando cow-boy semblagists with whom
they estab-
boots as the theme for his briUiant lished close contacts.
chrome-plated steel sculptures,
Barker succeeds in introducing a Belgium. Assemblagism is bril-
26
 BERTHOLO

Barker. Homage to Magritte.

1%8-1%9.

Bengston, Billy (Dodge City,

Kansas, 1934). Pop Art 2. In the
family of Californian Pop Art,
Bengston represents a sort of man-
nerism, remarkable as much for its
formal perfection a-s for the very
narrow hmits the artist imposes on
his themes. Since 1960, m fact, the
central theme (if we except the
analytical series inspired by his own
motor-cycle) is the U.S.A. army
sergeant chevron around which -
in a kind of aurora borealis - radiate
luminous effects of great subtlety,
further refined by the use of crum-
pled aluminium sheets, carefully
waved and polished. The gap bet-
ween the mediocrity of the pretext
and the extreme refinement of the
craftsmanship here constitutes the
essence of the exercise.

liantly represented in Belgium by Berlant, Anthony (New York,

Vic Gentils (b.l919) and Paul van 1941). Berlant's main contributions
Hoeydonck (b.l925), the former to Pop Art consist of hisworks of
more lyrical, the lattermore epic in glued cloth and paint, portraying
style. As for Pop Art proper, it is male and female torsos, and the
mainly exemplified in the dazzling attractive small Pop-boxes in
images of Evelyne Axell and those which he houses his tiny treasures.
fascinating objects of meditation
which, in the hands of a Pol Mara, Berman, Wallace, (California,
become the faces and bodies of pin- 1926). He played a precursory role
ups. Roger Raveel (b.l921), Roger in Pop Art by establishing relations
Nellens (b.l930) and Joseph Wil- between the Beat poets and the
laert show a turn of mind closer to Assemblagists of the early 'fifties.
realism. Finally, Marcel Brood- In addition, he perfected a very
thaers (b.l924), Hke, more recently, personal way of photocopying col-
Jacques Charlier (b.l939), Emile lages of photographic prints and
Christiaens (b.l928) and Jacques diagrams.
Lennep, use pop techniques for
intellectual and critical purposes Bertholo, Rene (Alhandra, Por-
which differ radically from the tugal, 1935). After the pleasing and
preoccupations of Pop art. poetic 'accumulations of images'
Bengston. Godzilla's Saddle. 1962.
The Artist's Collection, Venice, California.
p

.#

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^'
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=^$5^.
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-

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: I

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1
'^'i-i^'-rO^

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«3 '

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^^^jtt^

I^^'^I5>*|
-'I
/
m.
%''. ^M.

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Bertholo. Objects produced in evidence and others. 1965.

Galerie de Bellechasse, Pans.

BERTINI

Belgium. Hoeydonck.
The Green Grass, 1967.

which are the scene of his pictures motorcars), transferred to the can-
between 1962 and 1966, and by vas by mechanical means.
virtue of which he occupied an
individual place between Arman Benyon, Eric (Geneva, 1935).
and Fahlstrom, he devoted his at- Endless curiosity first attracted him
tention to his 'reduced models' of a around 1960 to the assemblage of
somewhat childish charm in which various materials. Then, in 1962 to
sun, waves, clouds, boats and fish a particular treatment of the Pop
are set in motion by a piece of image based on a compHcated sys-
mechanism. tem of reading, involving princi-
ples of reversal and reflection. Fi-
Bertini, Gianni (Pisa, 1922). In nally, in 1964, towards the
1962, the exhibition entitled 'Le mechanically reproduced image in
Pays Réel' in which he showed which he attempts to make a sub-
flags, passports and official docu- jective use of the technical sources
ments bearing his name, marked of the process, his target being a
his conversion to Pop aesthetics. In mass-produced article capable of
truth, it is less a matter of conver- ruining the art market and the cult
sion than - as could be seen shortly of the unique artefact.
afterwards - a fusion between Lyri-
cal Abstraction (a field in which he Blake, Peter (Dartford, England,
had hitherto distinguished himself) 1932). Pop Art 2. Peter Blake's
and newspaper and magazine work would suffice on its own to
photographs (pin-ups, war scenes, counter the thesis that Pop Art was

30
 BRUNING
the result of a critical or merely those of 1961-1962, are attractive
ironic attitude to popular culture as and casual, and constitute a kind of
spread by the mass media. When in anecdotal commentary on as-
1955 he embarked on the work On tronautics, the condition of
the Balcony - which he completed twentieth-century man or the glory
in 1957 - this repertory of imagery of the British navy. Then, in-
anticipated Pop Art clearly indi- trigued perhaps by the chevrons on
cates the artist's sole sources of airmail notepaper which he faith-
inspiration and sole obsessions. fully reproduced during those same
Whether he juxtaposes photo- years, he found a new outlet in
graphs of 'idols' with broad strips 1964 in non-figurative works, simi-
of colour (Find a Girl, 1960-1961), larly chevroned, but now extend-
lovingly reconstructs a toy-shop ing into the third dimension.
window, combines a reaHstic por-
trait of a music-hall or circus star or Brecht, George (Halfway, Ore-
all-inwrestling champion with an gon, 1962). Pop Art 1. George
assortment of small objects to com- Brecht occupies a marginal posi-
plete the significance of the icon tion in relation to Pop Art proper,
{Doktor K. 1965), Blake
Tortur, but many aspects of Post-Pop Art
seems much anxious to define a
less owe something to his influence.
style attuned to his private obses- On the one hand, his detailed and
sions than to extend them and complex ensembles of pigeon-
celebrate their themes. Or, more holes, drawers and cupboards are
exactly, when he shows his attach- conceived in such a way that they
ment to the content of this mid- cannot be taken in at a general
twentieth century popular culture, glance and invite further, analytical
he feels no necessity to subscribe to exploration. On the other hand, he
the pictorial forms it employs. On replaced Happenings - which he
the contrary, in his pin-up girls in considered too theatrical - with his
particular, we note that when, like Events, reduced to elementary ges-
so many of his fellow artists, he tures, a change that has not been
uses photographs as a starting- without influence on many artists
point, he spontaneously re- from Conceptual to Body Art. Fi-
introduces a sensuality of touch in nally, along with Ray Johnson, he
his painting that is completely alien is the initiator of Mail Art which

to the impersonal idiom so wide- consists in using communications

spread among
other Pop artists. for aesthetic ends.
The an extremely seduc-
result is

tive dichotomy - the intentionally Briining, Peter (Dusscldorf,

nostalgic treatment of a distinctly 1929 - Dusseldorf, 1970). Equally
'museum' flavour accorded to the obsessed by traffic signs and map-
most topical and utterly trivial sub- references, Peter Briining devised
jects. monumental objects inspired by
these two categories at the same
Boshier, Derek (Portsmouth, time as he was creating real or
England, 1937). Pop Art 2. Derek hypothetical model cities, filled
Boshier's early works, particularly with his own signboards, inserted
Beynon. Multiple. 1967.

Brûning. NY, NY, NY, NY. 1967.

Blake. Little Lady Luck. 1%5. Fraser Gallery, London.
 BURRI

Boshier.
England's Glory. 1%1.
Grabowski Gallery,
London.

among imaginary networks of purely urban preoccupations of

motorways or flown over by Pop Art, he has never ceased to
U.F.O. (Unidentified Flying Ob- submit it to a whole set of screens,
jects) whose passengers enthusiasti- masks etc. The result has been not
cally recognize as New York or so much to effect a metamorphosis,
Dusseldorf. as to ehminate the original interest
of pure rhythmic and chromatic
Burri, Samuel (Tauffelen, Swit- fantasies. And the system of optical
zerland, 1935). Pop Art 2. Samuel grids which Samuel Burri imposes
Burri's work, as it has evolved indifferently on an Alpine land-
since 1964, is typical of one current scape or one of his famous polyes-
of Pop Art which is characterized ter cows is doubtless his way of
by its lack of interest in the content saying that no domain is valid
of the images, but, on the other outside that of painting, that no
hand, for its passion for purely power can rival the painter's.
formal experiments. Thus, once
Burri adoped a particular figurative
pretext, almost invariably of rural
origin, which in itself represents a
very conscious deviation from the

34
 c:anai)a

Cage, John (Los Angeles, 1912). we sec the gradual emergence of

In 1917 Jean Cocteau asked Erik the spirit of Funk art. It can be
Satie to introduce the music of described as dramatic in Conner
Parade 'these ''trompe-l'oreille''; and Kienholz while remaining
dynamo - Morse - sirens - express faithful to humorous noncha-
its

train - aeroplane, on the same princi- lance in Wally Hedrick and m Funk
ples as painters use newsprint, Art proper. Finally it became re-
picture-frame, grained wall-paper as spectable and even aesthetic in
trompe-Voeif . On the equivalent works that can pass as being typi-
principlefrom Cubist 'papiers col- cally representative of Pop Art in
lés' John Cage replaced
therefore, California. Joe Goode
can be seen
premeditation by non-premedi- sustaining the role played by Neo-
tation: if there are to be 'sons collés' Dada or Jim Dine in New York. In
(glued sounds), let them stick Los Angeles Pop Art proper is

themselves at un-premeditated mo- represented by Billy Al Bengston,

ments or not at all! The ascendancy Llyn Foulkes and Edward Ruscha,
exercised over George Brecht, in Sacramento by Mel Ramos and
Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow and Wayne Thiebaud. Among those
Rauschenberg by John Cage exact- who sustain a secondary part, we
with the Assemblagist
ly coincides should mention in particular John
movement and is a manifestation of Altoon, John Baldessari (b.l931),
the same spirit. To become the Anthony Berlant, Vija Celmins,
inspirer of Neo-Dada and Happen- Robert Cremean (b.l932), Douglas
ings it W2is enough for John Cage Edge (b.l942), James Gill, Phillip
to show^ himself systematic in his Hefferton, Roger Kuntz (b.l926),
search for chance, the gathering of Robert O'Dowd (b.l934) and
mushrooms and an involvement Richard Pettibone.
v^ith Zen.
Canada. In English-speaking
California. If Abstract Expres- Canada Pop Art saw a remarkable
sionism lacked vehemence on the development about which too little

West coast of the U.S.A. the As- is known outside that country's
semblagist movement on the other frontiers. Concerning Dan Patter-
hand asserted itself with greater son (1884-1968) for example, a
vigour, imagination and precocity strange precursor who between
than in New York, as proved by 1947 and 1963 constructed an As-
the famous exhibition 'Common semblage of Carnation milk tins,
Art Accumulations' held in San we can say that he was the Trojan
About the same
Francisco in 1951. Horse of Pop Art. Al Neil
time Wallace Herman, Jess Collins (b.l924), Christo Dikeakos
and Bruce Conner were instrumen- (b.l946j, Ian Garioch (b.l936),

tal in estabHshing a link between Barbara Hall (b.l942), John Mac-

Assemblagists and Beat poets. Gregor (b.l944), Sam Mcrklc
From a much more anarchic cultur- (b.l932), Donald Proch (b.l942),

al atmosphere than in New York, Bob Robinson, Al Wilson and

partly because less rigidly subjected Alexander Wyse (b.l938) are As-
to the exigencies of the art market. semblagists of various inspiration.
 California. Ramos.
Tobacco Red. 1972.

Burri. Cow. 1971.

CANOGAR
To the sculptors Audrey Capel Peter M. Clarke (b.l940) and Klass
Doray (b.l931), Donald Bonham Verboom (b.l948). With Hendrik
(b.l940) and Murray Favro Bres (b.l932), Diane Broderick
(b.l940, we
should add the ceram- (b.l947), Michael Morris (b.l942),
ists Gathie Falk (b.l919), Marilyn Gordon Rayner (b.l935), William
Levine (b.l935) and Glenn Lewis Ronald, Robert Sinclair (b.l942)
(b.l935) in whose work we see the and Harold Town (b.l924), we are
development of a Funk Art-like in fact deahng with the abstract
fantasy. The traditional feminine stream of Pop Art. Finally, Les
craft ofquilt-making also received Levine (b.l936) and Iain Baxter
a boost from Pop Art, thanks to (b.l936) as later John Greer
Joyce Wieland and, to a lesser ex- (b.l944), Bob Kinmont, Vincent
tent, Wendy Toogood (b.l947), Tangredi (b.l950) and Colette
Caroline Wickham (b.l945) and Whiten (b.l945) point the way to
Ann Whitlock (b.l944). Pop inspi- Post Pop Art.
ration in an expressionist vein,
sometimes impregnated with the Canogar, Rafael (Toledo, 1935).
fantastic, is behind the composi- Although the recent works of
tions of Claude Breeze (b.l938), Canogar seem to share Marjorie
Rebecca Burke (b.l946), Mieke Strider's involvement in the con-
Cadot (b.l938), Armand Fhnt, flict between painting and the third

Spring Hurlbut, Robert Markle dimension, in fact they represent a

(b.l936), Douglas Martin (b.l948) revolt against the insipidity of im-
and Louise de Niner ville (b.l933). ages due to 'mechanical informa-
Pop Art likewise revitalized tradi- tion' put out by the mass media
tional anecodotal painting in the (and consequently against the
case of Helen Susan Col-
Baillie, major source of Pop Art) as they
lacott Dennis Geden
(b.l948), show by bringing out of the picture
(b.l944). Holly Middleton in full relief the agonizing reality of
(b.l922), Robert Young. As well as suffering and repression.
by its three main leaders Greg Cur-
noe, Michael Snow and Joyce Wie- Castro, Lourdes (Madeira, 1930).
land, Pop Art proper is represented Following a series of Assemblages
by John Boyle (b.l941), Dennis influenced by Nouveau Réalisme,
Burton (b.l933), Wayne Cowell, Lourdes Castro turned his attention
Gill Furoy (b.l951), Art Green, to shadow, and in 1964 cut out his
Marvin Jones (b.l940), Gary Lee- 'projected shadows' in plexiglass
Nova (b.l943), Sylvia Paschinski with much restraint, precision and
(b.l946), Poole (b.l942),
Leslie charm. They are directly inspired
Roger Savage (b.l941), Sunao by photography, yet somehow
Urata and Louise Zuriosky, to subhmated by his skill since he has
whom we should add the engravers used thisagency to embroider 'pro-
Mike Bidner, Henry Dunsmore jected shadows' of sleepers on
(b.l947). Chantai Du Pont (b.l942) sheets.
and John Will (b.l939). The transi-
tion towards Hyperealism is Caulfield, Patrick (London,
marked by David Barnett (b.l933), 1936). Pop Art 2. Of all the British

38
 CÉSAR

Canada. Patterson.
Assemblage of
Carnation Milk tins.
1947-1%3.
National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa.
^±^ ^r

Pop artists, is the only

Caulfield his work to that of Adami, com-
one who complete indiffer-
affects pared with whose subjectivity,
ence to the varied themes he tack- however, Caulfield's approach is

les. His method of imposing his strikingly objective.

unchanging style, consisting of flat
bounded by lines of
areas of colour Cavalière Alik (Rome, 1926). Al-
uniform thickness on his land- though he cannot claim even a
scapes, interiors, still-lifes and de- tenuous connection with Pop Art,
corative compositions alike, recalls Cavalière with the bronze casts of
Lichtenstein. Perhaps he even rivals fruit, flowers, leaves and branches
the latter in distancing his subject. which he has made since 1963,
This coolness owes much to his illuminates in a singular way its

graphic sense which seems derived permanent ambiguity in the sculp-

at once from Art Nouveau \\ne2insm
and the reaHst strip cartoons of the
so-called Brussels school {The Ad-
ventures of Tintin, for example).
Caulfield might therefore be consi-
dered more as a draughtsman than
a painter, were it not for the som-
bre violence of the colours he em-
ploys. This would appear to relate
tural field (confirmed by the work
of Agostim, Oldenburg and Segal),
an ambiguity which causes the
most hithfully imitated object to
assume a spontaneous irrationality.
César. Name adopted by César
Baldaccini (Marseilles, 1921) Pop
Art 1 and Pop Art 2. Twice, thanks
39
Canada. Wieland. Boat Tragedy. 1964. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
*^°'^^^^''—"'"""^""""^

Caulfield. Girl on a Terrace. 1971. Galerie Stadler, Paris.

CHEVAL-BERTRAND
to the ready-made, César has wren-
ched himself away from his career
as iron-welder to which, up to
1954, he thought he was con-
demned. The first time-1960-was
that of his 'automobile compres-
sions' carried out in scrap-iron fac-
tory, images of pop civiHsation in
which the gestural aspect of Ab-
stractExpressionism came to a
cHmax - and its end. The second
occasion, 1967, was that of his
polystyrene 'expansions', freely
diffused in space - a kind of in-
voluntary homage to Surrealist au-
tomatism. It is fair to say of César,
as of Andy Warhol, that his work is
pop when carried out by another
agency.
Che val- Bert rand. Name
adopted by Jean-Paul Bourg (Paris,
1932-Paris 1966). Pop Art 2. To-
wards the end of 1964, but only
briefly, a rain of images poured
down on the canvases of Cheval-
Bertrand. All equally in a Hght key,
whether the subject was a camel, an
odaHsk, a Venus, a banana palm, a
bugle or a Bengalee, lightened
further by the luminous clarity of
colour as arbitrary as it is possible
for colour to be. From their inter-
weaving - as if they were a legacy
from Picabia's ^transparences' -
emanates a bitter-sweet poetry.
Chicago. Pop Art in Chicago has
never manifested itself in a pure
state, assuming such a state exists.
In fact the artistic climate of
Chicago is so deeply impregnated
with the fantastic and grotesque
that the interpretation of the imag-
ery of the mass media inevitably
reveals an expressionistic or sur-
realistic aspect, sometimes both at
42
the same time. This fact has not
prevented artists linked to some
extent with Chicago, such as H. C.
Westermann, Red Grooms and
Peter Saul from exercising a certain
influence on the development of
Pop Art at one time or another. In
the domain of Assemblage, in
which we approach more nearly
than elsewhere 'the surreaHst ob-
ject', George Cohen (b.l919) and
June Leaf (b.l929) were succeeded
by Harry Bouras (b.l931), Don
Baum, Theodore Halkin and Whit-
ney Halstead (b.l926). The most
serious forms inspired by Pop Art
are probably the paintings by Art
Green, Phil Hanson, Victor Kord
and Roy Schnackenber (b.l934) on
the one hand and, on the other, the
pin-ups of Frank Gallo (b.l933).
But the authentic spirit of Chica-
goan art is to be found nowadays in
the artists of those ephemeral
groups with such sybiline names as
'The Hairy Who', 'The Non-
plussed Some', 'The Sunken City
Rises', 'Marriage Chicago Style',
'Chicago Antigua', 'The Artful
Codgers'. The works of two of
these artists, Irene Siegel and Karl
Wirsum (b.l939) reveal only
sporadic if intriguing Hnks with
Pop Art, whereas those of a Jim
Nutt, an Ed Paschka or a Christina
Ramberg, may be considered as
deliberate perversions (in the do-
main of oniric buffoonery,
caricatural verism or naif sensibili-
ty) of pop aesthetics.
Christo. Name adopted by
Christo Yavacheff (Gabravo, Bul-
garia, 1935). The way Christo was
annexed by Nouveau Réalisme
when he created his first 'packag-
ings' in 1961 could hardly have
 COLLINS

César. The Thumb. 1%6.

been more arbitrary. With him the

negation of the object is so flagrant
that it goes well beyond a certain
tendency in Pop Art to select a
given theme merely to demonstrate
one's indifference towards it. For
not only is the object, of whatever
nature, Hving mannequin, motor-
cycle or
Australian coastline*
wrapped, but wrapped in such a
way as to reveal Httle or nothing of
the nature of the contents.
It is not difficult to understand why

Christo who has been Hving in the

U.S.A. since 1964, has felt encour-
aged by latent American Puritan-
ism to mask all sexual objects no
less than to veil his own
megalomania (phallic) of the
enormous sheath exhibited at the
Documenta IV of Cassel 1968.

Colla, Ettore (Parma, 1899) Colla

was undoubtedly the first sculptor
to use scrap-iron. This was as early
as 1950,but agricultural scrap, and
hisaim was less to integrate it in an 'Combine-paintings' to Rosen-
Assemblage than to bring out the quist's compartmented pictures,
particular lyricism in the different could hardly be more wide-spread.
parts themselves. In this, his work
differs as much from that of Arman Collins, Jess (Long Beach,
and Stankiewicz as from that of California, 1923). Closely as-
David Smith, Gonzalez or Picasso. sociated with the Beat poets, Col-
lins made his reputation chiefly
Collage. applying this very
In through his work of condensation
general and sHghtly derogatory and acceleration applied to three
term to two-dimensional Assemb- comic-strips, 'Big Ben Bolt\ 'Lance
lage, one
aware that its use, real
is Comics' and, above all, 'Dick
or simulated (thatis whether it is Tracy', of which - under the anag-
actual or, to use Max Ernst's rammatic title of Tricky Cad, he
expression apropos Magritte, en- produced seven versions between
tirely hand-painted), in reference to 1953 and 1959. His other works
Pop Art, from Rauschenberg's show the influence of Picabia.
* Wrapped coastline. An area involving one million square feet was wrapped at Little Bay, Australia in
1%9 (illustrated in W. J.
Strachan, Towards Sculpture, Rodin to Oldenburg, Thames & Hudson. 1976).
4^
 Combine-painting.
Rauscnenberg.
Pilgnm. 1960.

Chicago. Nutt. Sally Slips

Bye-Bye. 1972.
Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago.

Cheval-Bertrand.
Lay Opera I. 1%6.
^t^4j
COMBINE-PAINTING
Christo. Packaging of 5450 m^.
1%7-1968.

Combine-painting. This is the

designation chosen by Rauschen-
berg to describe his works of the
years 1954 to 1961, for the most
part paintings to which chairs,
clocks, pillows, stuffed eagles,
goats likewise stuffed, and smaller
objects are attached. The same
term could be appHed to similar
works by Jasper Johns, Jim Dine
and Joe Goode. They can all be
considered as making the transition
from Abstract Expressionism to
Pop Art proper.

Comic-Strips. These perfect

examples of widely disseminated
modern popular art, comics, were
bound to rouse the interest,
perhaps even the secret envy of Pop
Hence the frequent allusions
artists.

to comic strips in Pop Art, notably

in the works by Jess CoUins to
Warhol, Mel Ramos to Télémaque.
For Fahlstrom and Lichtenstein it
goes further - they have found in
them a definite source of inspira-
tion. With
the development of
comics (1966-1967 onwards) and
their hallucinatory Hnes, we are in
the presence of an opposing influ-
ence. Their champions - S. Clay
Wilson (b.l941) Manuel Rodriguez
(known as 'Spain' b.l940) and
Robert Crumb (b.l943) would ap-
pear to have had more than a
nodding acquaintance with the
painting of Peter Saul and the
Monster School of Chicago.

Conner, Bruce (McPherson,

Kansas, 1933) Pop Art 1. For the

46
 CUT-UP

same reason as Kienholz, and al- corporated into the pictures and
though he rejects the latter's 'slices exploits an immense variety of
of life' as much as his large-scale plastic methods. As patriotic as
Verist or fantastic Environments, Joyce Wieland's works, its nation-
Bruce Conner was instrumental in alistic, not to say provincial accents

Assemblage to a
raising Californian are not immune from anarchicizing
very high level of invention and and even Dadaist elements. Above
expression. Everything in his work all, in a particularly intense range of

betrays the imminence of death, colours, his painting illuminates

which is already apprehended in the most trivial moments of life.

the decomposition of people and

things, yet at the same time trans- Cut-up. This Dadaist procedure,
figured in all their sinister splen- reinstatedby William Burroughs,
dour. consists in the cutting-up of a
printed page into various pieces
Curnoe, Greg (London, Ontario, and pasting them up in a different

1936). 2. Next to Joyce

Pop Art order from the original. Applied to
Wieland's, Curnoe's work is the a cinema reel or tape-machine, the

most original of the whole of cut-up becomes the 'scramble'.

Anglo-Canadian Pop Art. With its This technique underlines the af-
intentionally controversial content, finities that the Beat poets share

it makes great use of captions in- with the Assemblagists.

M-MAYËE HE BECAME
AND COULDN'T
LEAVE THE
STUDIO-^

Comics. Lichtenstein. M-Mayhe.

1%5. Collection Ludwig,
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
 DESCHAMPS
D'Arcangelo, Allan (Buffalo, colours bright and light; for, if

1930). Pop Art 2. Since 1962 D'Ar- white is accorded a privileged

cangelo has been the poet of place, brilliant colours also have
American motorways. He prefers their share in the fête. But the
to depict them at night when they oddest part about this 'switch' in
tend to merge into the surrounding the work of the Neapolitan painter
country, with the former, like the is that his encounter with British
landscape, spHt in two by the phos- Pop Art has not enslaved him to
phorescent median and emb- the subjects and forms of mass-
lazoned at intervals by road-signs media culture, but led him to dis-
and traffic signals. The fact that the cover his references in the armoury
vertiginous vanishing line, as pre- of Giorgio de Chirico's 'metaphys-
sented to us, has an erotic signifi- ical interiors', and by the same

cance, reinforced rather than di- token in the work of Carra and
luted by the particularly 'cool' Morandi. Thus Lucio Del Pezzo's
structure of his canvases, implied is painting can be considered as the
by the silhouettes of female hitch- brilliant and astonishing sequel in

hikers who sometimes interrupt the plastic vocabulary of the last

the traffic-flow (like crash-barriers, third of the twentieth century
stores and actual grids which make when man in urban
this typical
the obstacle still more expHcit) and adventure was his own prisoner
by the dreamy faces of the women, among his everyday objects as we
sometimes lying on the grass- see him revealed in Metaphysical
verge, wistfully watching the painting {pittura metafisica) between
smoke of their cigarette as it curls 1915 and 1919.
upwards.
Deschamps, Gérard (Lyon,
De Geer, Marie-Louise (Stock- 1937). Pop Art
and 2. From many
1

holm, 1944). Rarely has ingenu- points of view, Gérard Deschamps

ousness got on so well with imper- is the odd man out of Nouveau
tinence, immodesty with gracious- Réahsme. Because Accumulation
ness, clumsiness with elegance than was considered to be Arman's spe-
when the 'baby' of Marie-Louise cial preserve, Deschamps' pictures
Geer plays bo-peep with us from made of swathes of textiles and his
the top of her impregnable citadel Assemblages of feminine under-
or when the girl strip-tease turns clothes were not given the atten-
intomuscle-man, then into a mon- tion they deserved. Apart from
key and finally a bird. their novelty, free-expression and
sumptuousness, they show a sen-
Del Pezzo, Lucio (Naples, 1933). sitivity to colour almost unparallcl-
Pop Art 2. It would certainly seem led among the New Realists.
that was the example of British
it Furthermore Deschamps was suc-
Pop Art which induced Del Pezzo cessful with ready-mades as unusu-
to quit his unctuous and disturbing al as airport beacons, canvas signal-
themes in 1962. From then on, Del ling strips, bullet-dented armour-
Pezzo's works became precise in plating. Finally, in 1965, he crossed
construction and contour and the the frontier that separates Pop Art
49
Cumoe. Heart of London
(Ontario). 1967.
National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa.
D'Arcangelo. Smoke Dream No. 2. 1%3.
Private Collection.
DIETMANN

Assemblage from Pop Art proper canvas which tells us as much

when, with the help of metallic about Dine the man as about Dine
treUises, he made huge bemedalled the painter. It would seem from the
birettas for military fanatics. point of view of Dine that Assemb-
lage in the strict sense in which
Dietmann, Erik (Jônkôping, painting plays no part, is totally
Sweden, 1937). As opposed to inadequate for the same reason that
Christo - whose first 'packagings' painting by itself is too intellectual

of 1961 were contemporary with in Abstract Expressionism or so

Dietmann's sticking-plaster co- superficial in Pop Art proper. And
vered objects - the latter did not when he states:'All Pop artists

aim at smothering the reahty of speak of the exterior landscape

things, but, just the opposite, whereas mine is wholly interior',
clasping it tightly. If in the process we are justified in concluding that
he reduces these objects to silence, Jim Dine is inwardly convinced
as it were in compensation, he that he holds the key which enables
preserves them against sickness and him to establish communications
death. between the interior and the ex-
terior landscape. And he may well
Dine, Jim (Cincinnati, Ohio, be right.
1935). Pop Art 1. According to the
legend, it was the fascination exer- Di Suvero, Mark (Shanghai,
cised on Jim Dine as a child by his 1933). Mark di Suvero's sculpture
grandfather's hardware store that is a direct legacy of the gestural
gave him his pronounced fondness effusion of Abstract Expressionism
for objects and for tools in particu- (we can see it as the sculptural
lar. Whether this biographical item equivalent of Kline's painting).
is true or not, Jim Dine's relation- Yet, in his recourse to junk mate-
ship with useful objects is not only rial and general dynamism, his
extremely odd, but central to the work belongs to that explosion that
adventure of New York Pop Art. found an outlet in Happenings.
This, despite the fact that he him-
self always refused to be considered Donaldson, Anthony (Surrey,
a Pop artist, or, to be more accu- England, 1939). Pop Art 2. Begin-
rate, was anxious to point out that ning in 1962 Donaldson has pro-
his Pop activities were only part of duced a series of attractive works
his other preoccupations. Dine is the most important of which are
keen to set the record straight with the 'pin-up girls'. They rely on the
regard to his individual sensibihty, contrast between the repeated
for which and clothes are
tools image, treated on montage princi-
called on both witnesses and
as ples inspired by the cinema, and its
accomplices. He may consider ob- frame of abstract rhythms. Later he
jects mainly in their relation to his moved on to develop an almost
own story, but the scene of this schematic analysis of forms and
relation is nonetheless painting. To colours suggested by urban envi-
such an extent that it is the way ronment. The result has been a gain
each object is integrated into the in singularity and effectiveness.

52
 DUMAS
Doom Artists. Name given to a Dufrêne, François (Paris, 1930).
group of artists, the main figures Pop Art 1 . Thanks
to his décollages
among whom are Sam Goodman, or 'lacerated posters' - that is post-
Stanley Fisher and Boris Lurie. ers torn down and showing the
Since 1959 they have shown work pasted side - Dufrêne has won an
that aggressively and vehemently
is original place for himself among
opposed to Pop Art. his fellow poster-lacerators. The
backs of the advertisement posters
are treated by him in smooth,
Drexler, Rosalyn (New York, muted tones that border on silence.
1926). Pop Art 2. Through her
feeling for gesture and setting, in Dumas, Antoine (Quebec, 1932).
by everyday life or
scenes inspired Antoine Dumas's work provides a
'idols' of mass media, Rosalyn marvellous example of the shot in
Drexler has managed to break the arm that anecdotal painting has
away from the traditional jumble received from Pop Art. A remarka-
of images, thereby achieving a ble draughtsman who freely admits
more disciplined style. his debt to Art Nouveau and Dcco
1925 style, he also uses extremely
Duchamp, Marcel (Blainville, subdued tones in his affectionate
1887- Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1968). If yet mocking chronicle of life in
we consider his last work. Given: V Quebec.
The Waterfall. 2° The illuminating gas
(1946-1966) as the popular version
of his 'Large Glass' painting The
Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors
even (1915-1923), we are perhaps
justified in claiming that Marcel
Duchamp's work - posthumously
- can be considered under the head-
ing of Pop. Furthermore, in his
three-dimensional work, he had
been definitely inspired by the En-
vironments of Kienholz and
George Segal.

Dufo, Alain (Sevran, 1934). Pop

Art Whether he paints ghostly
2.
neckties wandering over the sides
of trunks or makes footstools of
goldbeater's skin or encloses fish,
moss, earth, water, air or the
words *Je t'aime' bags
in plastic
extending to infinity, Dufo never
ceases to cast doubt on the reality
of objects, the reality of art - on
our own reality.

r>
Del Pezzo. Presences. 1967.
Studio Marconi, Milan.

Dietmann. Sfi7/ life.

1963. Galerie Mathias Pels, Paris.
Dine. Two Palettes (International Congress of
Constructivists and Dadaists, 1922) No. 2.
Collection Conrad Janis, New York.

'Following page*. Environment. Kienholz

middle of Ins Portable War Memorial. 1%8.
in the
Collection Ludwig, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
E.A.T.
E. A. T. (Experiments in Art and
Technology). Founded by Billy
Kluver and Robert Rauschenberg
in 1966, it is defined by the former
as 'an international network of ac-
and experimental services
tivities
aimed at producing the physical,
economic and social conditions re-
quired for the essential cooperation
between artists, engineers, scien-
tists, members of industry and
workers'. In E. A. T. which,
through the collaboration of artists
and engineers, has made the reali-
zation of certain artifacts possible,
we can see the logical conclusion of
a tendency towards self-effacement
on the part of Pop Art when con-
fronted by technology as the sup-
reme lingua franca of twentieth-
century civilization.
J6
Eat Art. Edible art was sanc-
tioned by Spoerri in 1969. In point
of fact it is a matter of works that
could be, rather than really eaten.
Environment. The notion of
Environment is closely connected
with that of the Happening, so that
one could describe a Happening as
a dynamic Environment and an
Environment as a frozen Happen-
ing. The two phenomena, prac-
tised by Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine
and Oldenburg, appeared simul-
taneously in New York, 1959. But
the Environment soon produced a
valid sculptural solution in 1961 in
the work of George Segal and
Kienholz. Later on, the term Envi-
ronment was applied not only to a
kind of explosion of sculpture but
 ERRÔ

to everything that tended to oc- bunked all the painters who had the
cupy a great deal of space. misfortune to precede Rafael Sol-
bes and Manuel Valdés.
Episcope. An instrument indis-
pensable to every self-respecting Erro. Name adopted by Gud-
Pop artist, since it enables him to munder Gudmundson Ferro
project photographs, advertise- (Olafswik, Iceland, 1932). When in
ment or pornographic images and 1964 Erro systematically juxtap-
every other kind of document on to osed images taken from the 'musée
the painter's canvas. imaginaire' (cp, André Malraux)
and the inexhaustible and savage
Equipo Cronica.* Pop Art 2. imagery Hfted from the mass
Constituted in 1964, as the result of media, the violence he brought to
the encounter in Valencia between this confrontation is such as to
Rafael Solbes and Manuel Valdés, throw doubt on the artist's mo-
Equipo Cronica, under the pretext tives. On lower level of inspira-
a
of making a 'critical' use, pictorial- tion, for example in the American
an art derived from
ly exploited, of Interiors, invaded by Vietcong sol-

Bertold Brecht, systematically de- diers, the method is based on de-

* 'The Chronicle Group'. They redid - in poster imagery style - paintings after Velasquez, Goya, The
Futurists and Picasso etc. They combined this satirical method with the usual items of Pop realism,
derived from mass media, TV, advertising etc. WJS

HOT
30GS
ÉaiÊÊÊmm

57
 Errô. Homage to the
Painter Asian. 1972.

Environment. Segal.
The Restaurant Window. 1%7.
Collection Ludwig, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
 EVENT

stroying a weak image by a power- years suffice to prove, his originali-

ful one. But when he puts a Nazi ty not ultimately to be found in
is

propaganda poster next to a strip of his opposition to the material and

obscene comic, when a German principle of Pop Art but in his
armoured car fires on a Descent from rediscovery of the shattering power
the Cross of Roger van Der Weyden of surrealist collage as previously
or when the effigy of Pope John demonstrated by Max Ernst.
XXIII is mixed up with a picture of
Capogrossi where is the weak and Event. The name given by
where the powerful image? Thus George Brecht to a refined form of
the chief merit of this image-crazy the Happening in which gestures,
Erro lies in the realm of poety and ideas, materials and things assume
not, as has long been supposed, in a new dimension. Example:
that of satire. And as the very 'Switch on the radio. At the first
remarkable paintings of recent sound, switch it off.'

h;
FAHL STROM

Fahlstrôni, Ôyvind (Sâo Paulo, those of Pop Art proper, the vir-
1928). Pop Art 2. During his pro- tuosity which he brings to the
longed dialogue with signs, Fahl- fusion of elements borrowed from
strom envisaged three successive mass media culture provides a mas-
solutions: in the first, w^hich culmi- terly and moving lesson in Pop
nated in Ade-Ledic-Nander II (1955- style.
1957) it was a matter of inventing
signs, as it were from scratch, kind Figuration Narrative. Put
of subconscious hieroglyphics; the forward by Gerald Gassiot-Talabot
second, with its cUmax in Dr. in 1964, this notion
corresponds to
Livingstone, I presume (1961), con- a development the time-
of
sisted in inventing new signs with element, frequently observable in
the help of fragments rendered un- Pop Art.
recognizable, old signs (borrowed
from strip-cartoons); the third was Flexner, Roland (Nice, 1944).
the adoption of the ready-mades After a series of objects, ostensibly
from the most conventional adven- dedicated to Man Ray, Roland
ture cartoon strips, removing Flexner has undertaken a systema-
them, not only from their original tic structural analysis of an ideal

context but from any context Pop object, the Camel cigarette
whatsoever. In fact, since 1962 j)acket. A
vigorous fantasy based
Fahlstrom has never ceased trying on an endless examination of every
out innumerable possibiHties of possible combination of form, col-
'variable paintings' in which mag- our and material of the model
netized elements can be moved under consideration has thus pres-
around on the surface by the spec- ided over the realization of a com-
tator according to whether the lat- pletely novel work of art.
ter follows the dictates of his im-
agination {Sitting . . . six months Flipper (or Pin-ball machine).
later, 1962) or falls with some
in The decoration on electric billiard
rule or other suggested by the tables in the 'fifties, especially those
game {The Planetarium, 1963). The bearing the Gottlieb signature, is

temptation to allow a total mobiH- considered a source of Pop Art.

ty of the signs led to The Little
General (1967) in which a host of Fluxus. Founded in 1963 by
image-elements floated freely on George Maciunas, the Fluxus
the surface of a tank. Fahlstrom's group played a decisive role in the
liking for one particular rule of the spread and general adoption of
game led him in 1970^ to a very Happenings on an international
personal adaptation of the game of scale.
Monopoly.
Foulkes, Llyn (Yakima,
Ferroni, Gian Franco (Leghorn, Washington, 1934). With the de-
Italy, 1927). Although Ferroni's solate and monochrome splendour
preoccupations, due to their of his rocks, bare, tortured by
dramatic and even political charac- erosion, sometimes of fantastic
ter, are a long way removed from form - images which he repeats or
6o
 FUNK ART

Flexner. Camel: the Hump. 1972.

Collection José Pierre, Paris.

Frazier, Charles (Morns, Ok-

lahoma, 1930). Pop Art 2. It cer-
tainly seems that Frazier's originali-
ty proved too much for his com-
patriots. This would explain why
he has not yet been given the place
that he deserves. Frazier who in
1963 showed a bottle of Coca Cola,
cast in bronze, complete with
breasts, under the title America
Nude, provided a whole sculptural
development of such popular sym-
bols as the heart and especially the
lush, well-larded lips of vamps
(1965) - all things, in fact, which
relate his work Jim Dine,
to that of
Tom Wesselmann and H. C. Wes-
termann.

Funk Art (adj. funky). Although

it is exactly contemporaneous with
New York Pop Art, Funk Art
on which he fixes somesuch
label, materializes as the complete an-
as a postcard, aimed at introducing tithesis of the latter or as a typically

a supplementary distancing - Cahfornian retort in Une with its

Foulkes occupies a place on the own ambitions. A retort charac-

fringes of Pop Art. In his latest terized by exaggeration, light-

works, however, a more intense heartedness, the fantastic and even

note of anguish is discernible. the scatological. In a few cases,
notably those of Jerrold Ballainc,
Francken, Ruth (Prague, 1924). James Melchert, William T. Wiley,
it is basically a matter of how artists
Ruth Francken uses the Pop voc-
abulary of telephone ('Hello, don't reacted to the same challenges that

hang up!\ 1969) or scissors {The urban development and the mass
1973) only for con-
Anti-castrator^ media invited.
juratory ends in order that real
communications can be set up and
the freedoms of mind and body be
established.
6i
Fahlstrôm. Dr. Schweitzer's Last Mission. 1964-1966.
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.
Figuration Narrative. Voss. Bravo Monsieur Durand. 1%6.
GASIOROWSKI

Funk Art. Wiley.

Summertime. 1968.
Hansen-Fuller Gallery,
San Francisco.

Gasiorowski, Gérard (Paris, Bruning, Winfred Gaul (b.l918)

1930). Gasiorowski is one of the and Herbert Kaufmann (b.l924)
minority of painters who, though and of speculations on the formal
obviously on the fringes of Pop properties of the image which in-
Art, throw some Hght upon it as it spired in particular Thomas Bayrle
were from the side-wings. If, Uke (b.l937), Konrad Lueg (b.l939),
many of the others, he starts out Sigmar Polke (b.l941) and Gerhard
from the photographic image, the Richter. Wolfgang Rohloff
aim is not to attain a superrealism (b.l939), Hannsjorg Voth (b.
but, on the contrary, to allow any 1940), Lambert M. Wintersberger
attempt to seize the essence of (b.l941) seem to have been affected
things to sink without trace into by the example of Klapheck,
the quicksands of the grey mono- Jurgen Goertz (b.l939) by that of
chrome background. Alvermann. Each of the following,
in his or her way, contributed to
Germany. The pioneers of Pop Pop Art proper: Hermann Albert
sensibihty in Germany were Wolf (b.l937), Bettina von Arnim
Vostell in 1954 for Pop Art 1, and (b.l940), Werner Berges (b.l941),
for Pop Art Konrad Klapheck in
2 Klaus Bottger, K. P. Brehmer
1955. Apart from these artists of (b.l938), Gerd van Dulmen
outstanding importance, account (b.l939), Hartmut Friedrich
should be taken of the satirical (b.l935), Klaus Heider (b.l936),
contributions of H. P. Alvermann Rudolf Huber-Wilkoff (b.l936),
and Fritz Kothe, of the research Peter Kampehl (b.l947), Hans
focussed round signiconography as Jurgen Kleinhammes (b.l937).
it was variously developed by Peter Axel Knopp (1942), Karolus
64
 GILLI

Lodenkâmper (b.l943), Jens Gilardi, Piero (Turin, 1942).

Lausen (b.l937), Monika Siekeving Gilardi's polyurethane moss 'car-
(b.l944), Peter Tuma (b.l938), E. pets', though made in a contem-
G. Willikens (b.l939) and Gerd porary material and identifiable
Winner (b.l936). In contrast, a with society's obsession with
realism that was in fact quite alien enumeration - beginning, literally,
to Pop Art, was the
inspiration not at ground level - which might have
only behind the Zebra group but related them to Oldenburg and
influenced such painters as Hans- Nouveau Réalisme, represent in

Jurgen Diehl (b.l940), Gunther their exclusive allusions to nature a

Knippe (b.l935). Dieter Kraemer turning-away from Pop Art.
(b.l937), Hartmut Lincke (b.l942),
Manfred Mausz (b.l940), Fr. Rissa Gill, James (Tahoka, Texas,
(b.l938), Wolfgang Petrick 1934). Pop Art 2. With his techni-

(b.l939) and Peter Sorge (b.l937). que of grease-crayon combined

As for the work of Peter Klasen with oil paint or shellac on canvas
and Jan Voss it passed through each for his portraits of starlets and

successive stage in Paris. celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, Presi-

dent Kennedy, John Wayne etc.),
Gette, Paul-Armand (Lyon, the same as in his practice of repeat-

1927). In constructing his Assemb- ing and juxtaposing images, James

lages of printing characters, first in Gill has created an original Pop
lead (1959), then in wood (1960- style that is somewhat casual but

1964), as in executing bronze en-

largements of various insects by
mechanical process, Gette occupies
an original niche on the fringes of
Pop experiments.
has an undeniable sex-appeal.
Gilli, Claude (Nice, 1938). Pop
Art 2. The 'cut-outs' made by Gilli
in 1964 on, form the synthesis of a

Gasiorowski.
Mondai. 1%6.
The Artist's Collection.

6?
GNOLI

Goode. Untitled Construction. 1%6.

kind of pop imagery, imbued how- vast 'plans' of heads of hair, bed-
ever in his case with affection and covers, divans, table-cloths, shirts,
illuminated by the clear Côte neckties, shoes, pockets or but-
d'Azur sunlight that reminds us of tonholes, Gnoh fascinated not so
is

Cubist StilWifes. In 1966, GiUi's much by the objects themselves as

interest shifted to colourmen's
signs and colour displacement - a
double touch of irony vis-à-vis pic-
torial tradition and a touch that the
New York Pop artists would not
have disclaimed. His more recent
obsession has been with snails, cul-
minating in 1972 in a series of
ready-mades in the form of casts of
these gasteropod molluscs, vari-
ously arranged.
Gnoli, Domenico (Rome, 1933-
New York, 1970). Pop Art 2. In his
by their textures - obsessed for
example by a herring-bone repeat
pattern in a cloth, arabesque in
embroidery, or completely trans-
ported by the relief of a hem. Into
the midst of this generalized fetich-
ism, a main ingredient of Pop Art,
Gnoli re-introduced the basic anxi-
ety that surrounds the fetish object,
aware that this relationship is of an
illusory nature and ultimately
death-orientated.
Goode, Joe (Oklahoma City.

66
 GRISI

Grisi. East Village. 1%7.

1937). Pop Art 1. When he places Art is nothing more than a kind of
one milk bottle, or several, at the inviting threshold.
base of his paintings, as he so often
did between 1962 and 1964, Joe Graham, Robert (Mexico, 1938).
Goode not in fact repeating
is Pop Art The tiny wax
2. dolls that
Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns or Jim Robert Graham encloses in plexi-
Dine. He is inviting the spectator glass globes fulfil innocent
this
to a meditation of a metaphysical voyeurism as he guiltlessly sur-
nature on painting: the dispropor- prises attractive creatures, solely
tion betw^een object and canvas occupied sunbathing and finally
in
would seem to signify the trifling freed from the tyranny of the
weight of ordinary reality com- bikini.
pared with the body of aesthetic
experience. Similarly, in 1966, the Grisi, Laura (b. Rhodes). Pop Art
fragment of staircase shown by 2.With a fluid combination of cut-
Goode could doubtless be inter- outs, mirrors, lights, sheets of
preted as an invitation to lose - or metal and painting, Laura Grisi
foil
find - oneself beyond the realm of has, up to 1967, endeavoured to
tangible things. For Joe Goode Pop convey the fascination exercised on

67
GROOMS
Hains. SEITA. c. 1%5-1%6.

her by the mirages of the city,

shop-window reflections disturb-
ing shadows, blood-red neon
signs, images of anxiety and desire.

Grooms, Red (Nashville, Ten-

nessee, 1937). Pop Art 1 and 2. A
link between New York and
Chicago, Red Grooms who was
responsible for one of the very first

Happenings, The House on Fire, has

evolved an individual style derived
from Disneyland, the music-hall
and the marionette theatre. It al-
lows him complete freedom to
stage his various whims, varying
from nostalgic tenderness to vio-
lent denunciation.

Guyomard, Gérard (Paris,

1936). Pop Art 2. In a spirit of
gentle ironyGérard Guyomard
draws a hazy line - re-
slightly
miniscent of photogravure - in acid
or subdued tones round scenes of
everyday life. At times, and pro-
vided he does not allow humour to
break in, these are imbued with all
the charm of day-dreams.

68
 Gnoli. The Sofa. 1%8.
Collection Blanche Fabry, Paris.

V
^^S

ijÉ ah
HAINS

Hains, Raymond (Saint-Brieuc, Peter Blake who uses them with a

Brittany, 1926). Pop Art 1 and Pop certain brutality to reinforce the
Art 2. In 1949 Hains and Villeglé credibility of his icons. In Hamil-
began their campaign of stripping ton's case, his attachment to a mul-
layers of old posters, variously lac- tiplicity of sources and procedures
erated, off Paris walls which they seems to point to a desire for ef-
covered. Hains, for his part, oper- facement with regard to the subject
ated with less violence both in the which is also considered as a
choice of form and colour. In 1964 method of recognizing the relativi-
with his match-book enlargements ty of view-points. All this may
- ready-mades for giant smokers - well conceal a fundamentally
he comes close to Pop Art proper. romantic view, already discernible
in the caressing deHcacy of the
Hamilton, Richard (London, curves and touches of colour in
1922). Pop Art 2. The collage Just Hommage à Chrysler Corp., which
What Is It That Makes Today's comes to a cUmax in a work of such
Homes So Different, So Appealing?, rare freshness as Soft Pink Landscape
executed in 1956 for the exhibition (1971-1972).
This is Tomorrow, can already be
seen as a summing-up of Pop cul- Hanlor (Stralsund, Germany,
ture, but it is not until the follow- 1937). Pop Art Obsessed with
2.
ing year that we find ourselves the idea of transformable works,
confronted with Hommage à she applied it, especially around
Chrysler Corp. a Pop pictorial inter- 1968, to portraits of famous men,
pretation, and one of the very first, portions or the whole of which
if we works of Klapheck
take the could be blotted out with white,
and Titina MaseUi into considera- and to profiles made of superim-
tion. In any case with this painting posed slats, each of which could be
Hamilton laid down the main Unes shd in a horizontal direction, with a
of the method he was to pursue. resultant distortion.
Usually, in he proceeds by
fact,
accumulating information and Happening. A manifestation of
techniques. Thus for She (1958- a theatrical character, but con-
1961) he has produced references of ceived and realized by artists, the
ten publicity hand-outs on house- Happening betrayed the ambition
hold comfort. On the same princi- of painting and sculpture at a given
ple, he is fond of technical accumu- moment to get closer to everyday
lations: oil-paint, photo-collage Hfe in its humblest and most
and metal, or oil-painting and silk- routine aspects, combined with the
screen, that is when he is not spray- desire to burst the over-constrictive
ing coloured inks on to a photo- bonds of the 'work of art'. The
graph with an air-brush. A similar popular ambition of the Happening
accumulation of data is to be found certainly represents a reaction
in Rosenquist but handled with against the aristocratic subjectivism
more sustained power because of a of Abstract Expressionism but Pol-
better stylistic unity. We find the lock's 'drip-painting' was already a

same multiplicity of techniques in kind of Happening, with the sHght

70
 HOCKNEY
difference that the artist was pro- crushed beer cans, painted TV.-
ducing everything out of himself cabinets, Assemblages built up
and accomplishing the ceremony in from bits of radio or refrigerator
sohtude. But when, in 1959, Kap- equipment or intentionally feeble
row. Red Grooms, Oldenburg, variants of the U.S.A. flag, en-
Jim Dine, Robert Whitmann, fol- riched with the word 'peace', trains
lowed by others, organized Hap- surmounted with the balloon
penings, these turned into Envi- 'chug', or his ironic
commentaries
ronments, composed of real or im- on the Vietnam war. But he has
itated urban detritus, of the kind still to overcome the conspiracy of
that people - including the artist silence.
himself - encounter as they go
about their everyday business. Hefferton, Phillip (Detroit,
These spectacles are staged mostly Michigan, 1933). His best-known
in artists' studios or in galleries but works are commentaries of an in-
always with an audience present. genuous and flippant composition
They are offered therefore as works on American bank-bills.
of art, replacing traditional works
of art which could not in any way Hernmarck, Helena Barynina
be a substitute for them (not even (Sweden, 1941). Pop Art 2. Her
Rauschenburg's Combine-paint- special merit is that she has adapted
ings which at a pinch could be the themes and style of Pop Art to
considered as reminiscences of tapestry, and most feHcitously.
Happenings). The Happening then David Widman has stated that the
emerges as the most ambitious for- effect produced by her tapestries is
mula of Assemblage, the kind that akin to that of the flow of electric
- by the use of a kind of collage - impulses of the huge strip-lighting
aims at introducing human beings, adverts which sparkle above Times
even life itself into the work of art. Square, New York and Piccadilly
Circus, London.
Ha worth, Jann (Hollywood,
1942). Pop Art 2. In a way that is at Hockney, David (Bradford, Eng-
once satirical and imbued with nos- land, 1937). Pop Art 2. Disdamed
talgia, Jann Howorth has chosen by Pop Art purists, faulted for his
padded cloth as her medium in eclecticism, David Hockney is

which to construct silhouettes of nevertheless of all Pop

British ar-

film-stars of the Thirties, such as tists the most esteemed in his own
Mae West, W. C. Fields, Shirley country, and precisely as one. Since
Temple. She is Peter Blake's wife. in Pop culture success is the acid
test, this fact can hardly be ignored.
Hedrick, Wally (Pasadena, Hockney, an outstanding
Cahfornia, 1928). Pop Art 1 and 2. draughtsman, emerges as the
Wally Hedrick cuts a figure in chronicler of period with a
his
California as a satirical pioneer of particular aptitude for describing
Pop Art, Funk Art and quite a the idle life of 'top people' among
number of other things, whether whom to be seen acting that role is

they take the form of stelae of so important. Thus, irony is funda-

7'
Hamilton. Interior II. 1964.
Tate Gallery, London.

Hanlor. Head. 1968.

 BK;5^?Rf€'^'.'

Hockney. A Neat Lawn. 1%7.

Kasmin Gallery, London.

'

l'

"--,
,. _l

••

—
•"
...
«w^^-
»«=::

_ ^M... II 1

—, ^-^"- -
MH^m"
—1. -
'

-y
— f
• ...^.i-:
.
— -
.-
-
^-- _

—
^^JJ

,
; .mm»m>mmr^" . ^
HYPERREALISM

mental in his work, and if his

styhstic roots are expressionist (Ba-
con's influence is paramount in his
treatment of faces, that of Kitaj in
his taste for anecdote and technical
versatility) Hockney has an amaz-
ing gift of using for humorous
effect - humour that he makes
sardonic at will - the distortions
that are employed by expressionists
for dramatic ends. the pro- Among
cedures to which Hockney has re-
course for this purpose, we note
the simultaneous use of mutually
alien references in one and the same
canvas (graffiti and advertisement
slogans for example) the allusion to
the theatre which emphasizes the
Italy. Del Pezzo. Stele No. 2. 1%8. resemblance between his characters
and marionettes, the assimilation of
the picture-surface to that of a

curtain or a carpet; the latter having

the effect of stressing flatness at the
expense of depth (the frames he
painted produced a similar result).
On the other hand, since 1965-
1966, David Hockney has gone
back toa type of three-dimensional
image. Although he now turns al-
most exclusively to photography
for his inspiration, he still paints as
a chronicler with a scrupulous con-
cern for strictly painterly qualities -
points that differentiate him doubly
from American Hyperrealists.

Hyperrealism (or Photorealism).

In adherence to the themes of
its

urban civilization and its exclusive

reference to photography, Hyper-
realism is the natural sequel to Pop
Art. But concern to render
in its

the fideHty and 'finish' of photo-

graphy, it moves away from it,
since Pop artists liked nothing bet-
ter than the blurs on press photo-

74
 HYPERREALISM

Italy. Romagnoni. In the Centre. 1%4. Studio Marconi, Milan.

graphs and all the hazards of 'ren- with Pop Art. In the realm of
dering' attributable to mass media. sculpture the gulf that separates the
Some of the Hyperrealist painters, casts of Segal and Oldenburg -
such as Jack Beal (b. 1931), John close to Expressionism or Surreal-
Clem Clarke (b. 1937), Robert ism - from the Hyperrealist casts,
Cottingham (b. 1935), Malcolm whether those of John de Andrea
Morley (b. 1931) or Joe Raffaele (b. (b. 1941) with their Puritan idealist
1933) keep at a certain distance slant, or those of Duane Hanson (b.

from their photographic sources, 1925) with their depressed Natural-

and in so doing show their affinities ism, is even more self-evident.

7^
Indiana. Love. 1968.

Jacquet. Woman (detail

of Déjeuner sur Vherhe). 1967.
 ITALY

Japan. Takamatsu. Painting. 1964.

Minatni Gallery, Tokyo.

Indiana. Name adopted by Robert

Clark (new Castle, Indiana, 1928).
Pop Art 2. Following his stelae of
1960, made up from wooden
planks, wheels and stencilled in-
scriptions in honour of the moon
or Cuba, Indiana, as a true heir of
Herman Melville and Walt Whit-
man, celebrated the 'American
dream', quartering its imperatives
in his heraldic compositions ('Eat',
'Err', 'Hug', 'Die', in USA 666).
This mission, however, impHed
more than a lyrical attitude. Indiana
did not hesitate, for example, to
stigmatize racist behaviour in such
cities as Selma (Alabama) in 1965
and Bogalusa (Louisiana) in 1966. Romagnoni in favouring a fusion
His position in Pop Art is al- of images borrowed from the mass
together special, as much because media, on critical principles, exer-
of his moral concerns as of his cised a profound influence, first on
attitude to a formal vocabulary, Adami, Ferroni, Giuseppe Guer-
virtually Hmited to geometrical fi- reschi (b. 1929) and Tadini, then on
gures (circles, stars, pentagons .) . .
Paolo Baratella (b. 1939), Ferrando
and letters or numbers. At least on de Filippi (b. 1940), Mariani, Pardi
one occasion, however, with (b. 1933), Antonio Recalcati (b.
Mother and Father (1963-1967), the 1938), Giangiacomo Spadari (b.
most overtly Oedipian picture in 1938). Among the Milanese, out-
the whole of Pop Art, Indiana has side this current, we should men-
proved with brilliance combined tion Baruchello, Cavalière, Gianni
with humour that he was in no Celano Giannici, Graziella Marchi,
sense an abstract nainter. Fabrizio Plessi (b. 1940), Schifano
and Tino Stefanoni (b. 1937). In
Italy. The pioneers of Italian Pop Rome, Umberto Bignardi (b.
Art in Rome were Ettore Colla and 1935), Drago (b. 1943), Tano Festa
Titina Maselli; then, a little later, in (b. 1938), Elio Marchegiano (b.
Milan, Mimmo Rotella and Enrico 1929), Carlos Rcvilla (b.
Pascah,
Baj. Pop Art next affected a large 1940), Cesare Tacchi correspond to
number of Italian artists but very very different aspects of Pop Art
differently according to their locali- and its settings. The same is true of
ty and their intellectual and emo- Silvio Pasotti in Bergamo; of Pier
tional temperaments. In Milan, Achille Cuniberti (b. 1923) and
77
ITALY

Concerto Pozzati (b. 1935) in Mondino (b. 1938), Ugo Nespolo

Bologna; of Berto Ravotti (b. 1924) (b. 1941), Pistoletto and Sergio
in Coni; of Del Pezzo and Aulo Sarri (b. 1938). Further, it should
Pedicini in Naples; of Umberto be noted that Adami, Bertini, Del
Buscioni (b. 1931) and Gianni Ruffi Pezzo, Maglione, Pasotti and Fabio
(b. 1938) in Pistoia and, finally, in Rieti (b. 1927) have elected to re-
Turin, of Beppe Devalle (b. 1940), side at least for some part of their
Pietro Gallina (b. 1937), Aldo Hves in Paris.

Johns. Electric Torch. 1960. Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles.

7«
 JOHNS

Jacquet, Alain (Neuilly-sur-Seine, Tatsumi Yoshino.

1939) Pop Art 2. Jacquet's aim was
to blur the distinction between re- Jeune Peinture (Salon de la). The
ality and illusion to a maximum name of a group founded in Paris in
degree. He began with the reaction against all the various
'camouflages' of 1962, produced by avant-garde movements, and in
the imposition of road-signs and conformity with a doctrine in-
famous paintings of the past and spired by 'social realism'. In 1964,
present; then, from 1964, came the under the Eduardo
influence of
use of photo-mechanical processes Arroyo (b. borrowed
1937) they
to produce a systematic distortion various formal elements from Pop
of the photograph whereby the Art.
screen became more important
than the image; finally, the confu- Johns, Jasper (Allendale, South
sion introduced as to the identity of Carolina, 1930). Pop Art 1 To the .

substances by reproducing a wood Abstract Expressionist painter Wil-

grain on wood, printing a grid on lem de Kooning who said that the
cloth and a sheet iron imprint on New York picture-dealer Leo Cas-
plexiglas. More recently Jacquet telli was even capable of selling
has developed an experiment based beer cans, Jasper Johns replied by
on the Braille alphabet. casting two Ballantine ale cans in
bronze, in their original size which
Japan. It appears Japan
that in he painted and sold to Leo Castelli.
Neo-Dada made a greater impact Apart from its amusing side, the
than Pop Art proper and that Jasper anecdote tells us something about
Johns in particular was the vital Jasper Johns' aesthetic attitude and
influence on Arakawa, Ay-O (b. his ambiguous influence on the
1931), On Kawara (b. 1933), genesis of Pop Art proper. In point
Tomio Miki and Keiji Usami. of fact, although he makes his beer
Around an obsession with cans enormously like the real thing,
shadows, Takamatsu evolved
Jiro he is careful not to take the re-
work that of charm whilst a
is full semblance as far as Warhol was to
more apt comparison for Tetsumi do in 1964 with his Brillo soap
Kudo would be with the Califor- pads. As opposed to Pop artists
nian Assemblagists, Conner and who endeavoured to imitate the
Kienholz. Among
the other Japan- brand-new and totally impersonal
ese artists who
maintained relations appearance of current consumer
with Pop Art, we should quote goods, Jasper Johns pushes his

Yoshiko Hirasawa (b. 1944), ready-mades museum-wards with

Shoichi Ida (b. 1940), Yukihisa all his might, flrst by casting them

Isobe (b. 1936), Mokuma Kituhata in bronze, then by giving them a

(b. Nobuaki Kojima (b.
1935, pictorial treatment which takes
1035), Yayoi Kusama, Hiroshi them closer to Rembrandt than
Nakamura (b. 1932), Natsuyuki Warhol. This is not a new feature
Nakanishi (b. 1935), Ushio in Johns' work. From 1958 he had
Shinohara, Keiichi Tanaami, Kat- not only translated pocket-torches
suhiro Yamaguchi (b. 1928) and and electric-light bulbs into ar-
79
JOHNSON
tifacts of papier mâché or bronze
but, in 1954-1955, had inaugurated
his series of 'flags' and 'targets' in
which he followed the same princi-
ple applied to easel-painting.
extend a star-spangled banner over
the full dimensions of the canvas
may, at first sight, seem a conve-
nient but not particularly inventive
means for an American of execut-
ing abstract painting. And doubt-
less the choice of the flag implies
criticism of the excessive subjectiv-
ity of Abstract Expressionism
Jasper Johns' part since no one
could possibly fail to identify the
'subject' of the picture. But Jasper
Johns was out to prove that this
'subject' is merely a pretext (as
opposed to what was to be the case
for Indiana) whether he piles up
several flags one above the other or
covers the stars and stripes with a
sufficiently creamy white to make
them almost illegible. For Jasper
Johns, the star-spangled banner is
no more important than a beer can.
The only thing that counts is the
quality of the painting. So we
that whileopening the way to Pop
Art proper, he resolutely put him-
self outside it.
Johnson, Ray (Detroit, Michigan,
1927). Pop Art 1. In his street
exhibitions of 'moticos' - cut-out
every kind - as in his
illustrations of
sHght distortions (patches of colour
etc.) of some mass media 'idols',
Elvis Presley in particular, a proce-
dure he later extended to Magritte
and Mondrian, Ray Johnson in
1955 expressed that hunger for im-
ages which was to be at the very
root of Pop Art proper. In 1962 he
founded the New York Corres-
pondence School of Art, the temple
of Mail Art which in 1971 became
The Marcel Duchamp Club.
Jones, Allen (Southampton,
To 1937). Pop Art 2. Of all the British
Pop artists, Allen Jones is probably
the one in whose work the sheer
pleasure of painting is most in
evidence and which can indeed be
equated with pleasure itself. This
finding is a confirmation of the
a hypothesis that the erotic impulse
is just as present in those works
on which seem to stem from his pure
love of lively and caressing colours
and their contrasts, as in those
which are expHcitly a homage to
elegant female legs, sheathed in
transparent stockings and wearing
stiletto-heels. Conversely, the ero-
tic object by its very nature calls for
lush colours to describe it. Thus the
skirt of a pretty girl passing by can,
in Allen Jones' eyes, merge into the
rainbow or into the cloud which
produces them - and in one of his
most felicitous metaphors - the
parachute. A similar fusion of the
see contours and subtle indications of,
this time, male and female, sug-
gests in a way which no previous
painter has achieved, the loss of the
partners' identities in a loving em-
brace {Hermaphrodite, 1963). This
lyrical use of painterly resources is
revealed not only in the explosions
of colour but in the invention of
unambiguous signs such as desire
which other Pop artists would shun
under the pretext that they do not
belong to the pubHc sphere. Allen
Jones luckily refuses such restric-
tions and one could indeed main-
tain that he deHberately extended
his adventurous painting towards
two opposite horizons: as far as
possible in the direction of a prohf-
Johns. Flag on Orange Field. 1957. Collection Ludwig,
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
 JUNK ART, JUNK CULTURE

Kienholz. Back Seat Dodge 38, 1%4. Dwan Gallery, New York.

eration of line and colour in which

Kandinsky is compass, and at
his
least as far (particularly in his pro-
jects for the stage, cinema, televi-
sion and its familiar furniture) to-
wards erotic aberration.

Junk Art, Junk Culture.

The art that makes use of debris
particularly urban, or objects of
little value such as manufactured

articles come under this heading,

which is therefore a more or less
disparaging synonym for Assemb-
lagism.

82
 KITAJ

Kaprow, Allen (Atlantic City, tin amazing and terrifying recon-

New Jersey, 1927). Pop Art 1. To stitution of a Nevada brothel of
Allan Kaprow alone must go the 1943 - that Kienholz found his feet,
credit for the transition from As- and a formula, the 'tableau', so-
semblage to Happening and for the called in homage to a particular
extremely flexible definition of the kind of popular rural theatre which
latter. Neither the patchwork of the artist had known in childhood.
activities realized at Mountain Col- These 'tableaux' differ as much
lege in 1952 under the direction of from the naive-aim of imitating
John Cage nor the heroic manifes- city life in all its mediocrity which
tations of the Gutaï group in Osaka inspired New York Environments
between 1955 and 1957 can rob and Happenings and European
Kaprow of this distinction. Thus Nouveau Réalisme as from the
he was the artist who bridged the euphoric approval of consumer
gap between art and life. On the society and mass media which,
other hand he must be held respon- most of the time, animated Pop Art
sible for the vague reHgiosity and proper. But we have only to com-
stupidity of a large number of Hap- pare them with the other great
penings. artifacts originating from the Envi-
ronment - those of George Segal -
Kermarrec, Joël (Ostend, to appreciate how the fantastic
1939).Although firmly situated in metamorphoses inflicted by
the margin of Pop Art, Kermar- Kienholz on his characters, in keep-
rec*s work is of the greatest interest ing with an allegorical and prophe-
for the study of the movement in tic outlook and probably rooted in
so far as it systematizes some of the Puritanism, take their place in open
problems which it raises and, in opposition to that world of resig-
particular, the relationbetween ob- nation which is Segal's. In one
ject and painting as posed by Jasper sense, everything that Pop Art re-
Johns, Jim Dine and Joe Goode. fused to be, is to be found in the
Whereas Johns thinks the object work of Kienholz.
should be completely annexed by
the painting. Dine hesitates and Kitaj, R. B. (Chagrin Falls,

Goode is convinced that painting Ohio, 1932). Pop Art 2. Kitaj's

should escape from the object,
Kaprow himself is wary of decid-
ing, and, between the real object
and the object painted on the can-
vas, he produces the most subtle
ambiguities, discredits illusion and,
deploying every blandishment
his disposal, puts us hopelessly off
the scent.
Kienholz, Edward
Washington, 1927) Pop Art 1. It
was in 1961 with Roxy's Tableau-
work is a perpetual commentary
made on one image by other im-
ages, on colour drawing, and a
pohtical and aesthetic commentary
on a cultural theme. At every point
we meet formal elisions which tend
at to make this or that structure (face
or silhouette, for example) unde-
cipherable, at the same time as wc
encounter accumulations of figured
(Fairfield, elements or stylistic procedures, as
if the painter was simultaneously a
prey to the two opposing tcmpta-
83
Kermarrec. Black Background + Object. 1967. Collection E. A.
Klapheck. The Logic of Women. 1%5. Collection J. and C. Asher, New York.
KLAPHECK

tions: to exhaust the subject he is chair, a bag of potato crisps - we

treating and to escape from it. The
verve with which Kitaj adopts this
ambivalence, the authority with
which he makes hght of the techni-
cal traps into which he allows him-
self to fall, finally the way he
reintroduces the rational element
while using indisputably Pop
sources, account for the dominance
he exercised over Derek Boshier,
David Hockney, Allen Jones and
Peter Phillips from around 1961.
This was his personal contribution
in defence of the second wave of
need to differentiate only between
the Pop artists who flee and fear the
associative tide and those who go
out to meet it. And no one surely
would deny the continual presence
of metaphor evoked by Klapheck's
sewing-machines, boot-trees, flat-
irons, douches, saws, tyres, bicycle
bells, telephones, roller skates,
tractors and keys.
Klasen, Peter (Lubeck, Germany,
1935). Pop Art 2. From 1962 to
1966, Klasen's work is the scene of

a sadomasochistic dialogue bet-

British Pop Art against the imper-
sonal style which the New York ween the body of the woman who
offers her Hps or breasts and wit-
artists had erected into a dogma.
nesses of the cold and mechanical
Klapheck, Konrad (Dusseldorf, universe of objects; it shows special

1935), Pop Art 2. If Pop Art is truly
that form of art which borrows its
'subjects' and style from 'consumer
society', Klapheck's work, as it has
evolved unflaggingly and without
predeliction for plumbing, sanitary
equipment and the surgeon's kit.
The fragments of images which
coUide and collect according to the
rules of collage, set about it in an

interruption since 1955 - the date of even more hermetic way than in
his first Typewriter - deserves a Rosenquist, as if Klasen refused to
place of honour in the movement say too much or denied us access to
he pioneered and illustrated. If, his deepest thoughts. Are we then
however, the images used in the to consider him as a mere witness,
Pop Art repertory owe nothing to or, on the contrary, as an organizer
outside some purists
sources, as of confrontations between flesh
maintain, it becomes clear that and metal, laughter and cruelty, the
Klapheck's which embody a com- orgasm and the bidet? When in
mentary full of anguish and 1971, the intrusion of real objects -
humour on the intimate relations lavatory or surgical - becomes par-
we entertain with famihar objects, ticularly noticeable, we see a ten-

are alien to Pop Art and doubtless dency of the painted image to be-
much closer to Surrealism. It come autonomous, exclude
would seem hardly likely that the dialogue and finally to arrive very
images chosen by Pop Art would close to the most austere photo-

alone escape the mechanism known reahsm.

as the association of ideas, a process
as natural to man as breathing. Klein, Yves (Nice, 1928 - Paris,
Since, therefore nothing is immune 1962). Pop Art 1. An exceptional
from the association of ideas - be it person, Yves Klein represents a

a Coca-Cola bottle, the electric kind of mystique in the heart of

86
 KRUSHENICK

Kudo. Your Portrait,

May 66.
Galerie Mathias Pels,
Paris.

Nouveau Réalisme. The majority believing that Fritz Kothe's paint-

of his enterprises that link him in ings were simply pastiches of
some way with Pop Art, are Rotella's 'Torn cinema posters'.
marked by a nostalgia for Lyrical But, in point of fact, apart from a
Abstraction. This applies to his few which with mechanical
deal
sponges saturated with colour, his elements, they are mainly based on
'flame-gun' paintings, the casting erotic advert imagery, mixed with
of Arman's nude body and also to notices and road signs, so that we
his 'anthropometries', imprints of can read them as a kind of satire on
nude women, previously rolled in this commercial eroticism and the
blue, on the blank canvas and a Pop Art movement in general.
spectacular manifestation of paint- Nevertheless, this implicit criticism
ing called 'gestural'. For, as op- fails to disguise the genuine fascina-
posed to the image of the woman, tion which pin-up girls pasted on
above all if this image is a sophisti- our hoardings exercise on this
cated one, the woman herself, all artist.
the more if nude and even if she has
been rolled in paint, is not Pop. Krushenick, Nicholas (New
York, 1929). Lucy R. Lippard has
Kothe, Fritz (Berlin, 1916). Pop suggested that Krushenick's 'can-
Art 2. We could be forgiven for vases' were probably the 'first non-

87
 ^^
T r-
^

,j
Klasen. Bandaged Woman. 1968.
Galerie Mathias Fels, Paris.
 Lichtenstein. Driving. 1%3.
Collection Sig. Sigra Agnelli, Turin.

Kothe. March. 1970.

KUDO
objective Pop Art', and among the materialize when man and nature
best to illustrate the 'latent Pop' of have merged mutual decom-
their
which Max Kozloff spoke. But, position (and their mutual pollu-
although Krushenick's briUiant and tion). Nor will the electronics be as
strident areas of flat paint relate Europeans represent them, that is
him to Lichtenstein, the hermetic as something non-human, radically
nature of his forms places him opposed to man, but a system born
outside the real field of Pop Art. of the magma in which man and
nature have sunk. Decomposed
Kudo, Tetsumi (Osaka, 1935), man and electronics will be buds on
Pop Art 1. 'For ten years' writes the same plant. From the moment
Kudo,' was intent on destroying
I when antagonistic relations disap-
the European dualisms: man- pear to give way to those of recip-
nature, man-machine, electronic- rocity, the environment will form
man. I used provocation as a means part of us and conversely.' T.K.
of sowing doubt. My intention was 1972). Intent on describing man's
to express man's dégénérescence terribledégénérescence as an indis-
. . . 'Genuine electronics will pensable condition for his renewal
in communion with 'authentic
electronics' Kudo, like Kienholz
has, since 1962, been responsible
for some of the most uncom-
promising and agonizing work of
our time.

Kusama, Yayoi (Matsumoto,

Japan). Pop Art 1. Since 1962,

• Kusama Yayoi has on many occa-

sions made an impact on the artistic
life of New York with his poetic

and sensual ideas, both in the area

of costume, - presenting dresses
covered with items of food sprayed
with silver paint (1964), and in that
of the Environment, - covering all
his studio furniture with a pro-
liferating phallic vegetation (1962-
1963) or arranging mirrors and de-
vising tricks with light in such a
way as to create a disturbing am-
biance, propitious for amorous ex-
changes (1965-1966).

Kusama. Driving Image. 1%3.

90
 LICHTENSThIN

Lichtenstein. Golf Ball. 1%2.

Collection Mr and Mrs M. Hirsch,
Beverly Hills, California.

'Lacerated Posters' ('décol-

The torn poster is one of
lages').
the most original contributions of
Pop Art since it makes the transi-
1 ,

tion between the 'gestural' lyricism

of Abstract Expressionism and the
sociological and urban constat.
Dufrêne, Hains, Rotella, Villeglé
and Vostell distinguished them-
selves particularly in this branch of
Pop Art.
technique that strikes us in Lichtcn-
stein's early Pop paintings. He re-

Laing, Gerald (Newcastle-on- duces still further the already simp-

Tyne, England, 1936). Pop Art 2. lified drawing of the originals and
uses colour in flat areas of crude
Skilfully simulating photogravure-
screen effects so as to make them colour, imitating photogravure-
screens to vary the colour density
evoke nostalgia or desire and bold-
(using the famous punctuation of
ly contrasting them with flat areas
of colour or schematic drawing,
Ben Day dots.) During that and the
Gerald Laing between 1962 and
following year when we compare
Lichtenstein's canvases with their
1965 produced attractive images
dedicated to film stars of the Thir-
models, we realize the perseverance
pin-up with which the painter has refined
ties, girls, parachutists and
his handling, tightened effects and
racing-drivers.
at the same time, universalized the
Lichtenstein, Roy (New York, composition. Nevertheless, it is
1923). Pop Art 2. It seems to have not until 1963 that we see him
been in sketching effigies of escape the heaviness, looseness and
Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse general overloading that bogs
for the benefit of his two boys that down work. Meantime Lich-
his
Roy Lichtenstein escaped from the tenstein found the essential
has
clutches of Abstract Expressionism source of his inspiration in comic-
and found his own way. We know books - deliberately chosen from
was struggling with
that in 1961 he among those distinguished neither
the elementary
house-and-home for the originality of their language
mythology, from the cooker to the nor their draughtsmanship,
engagement ring, from pedal-bin whethev the comic-strips treat of
to the hand-shake, from oven- romantic love or violence. And the
ready turkey to basket-ball shoes. year 1963 shows an expansion of
Directly inspired by advertise- the artist's style into the 'epic' vein,
ments and, occasionally, comic- exemplified in the celebrated
books, it is the coarseness of the Whaam!, as well as into the roman-

9'
Lindner. Pillow. 1966. Collection Ludwig,
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
London. Paolozzi. Moonstrip Empire News.
Donald Duck meets Mondrian. 1%5.
LINDNER
tic vein, with the three outstanding Curiously enough, however, Lich-
know
successes: I Brad, Hopeless
. . . tenstein does not abandon Ben Day
and Drowning Girl, in which we Dots even when he is matching
recognise unmistakeable ac-
an himself, symbolically at any rate,
knowledgement to the flamboyant with the abstract-decorative art
linearism of Art Nouveau. The current in his early childhood. So
artist spent 1964 assimilating his that, if he is no longer a Pop artist
previous conquests (with a fine in his themes, he firmly remains
work We rose up slowly and a very one in his technical handling.
uncompromising military triptych
As I Opened Fire. .), and sys- .
Lindner, Richard (Hamburg,
tematically developing his re- 1901). Pop Art 2. When he fmally
Mondrian
creations of Picasso and came into his own - albeit tardily -
on which he had embarked in 1962. m New York m
1953 {The Meet-
Finally we witness his escape into ing), Richard Lindner was the only
landscapes of cloud, glorious sun- significant painter who owed his
setsand views of Greek temples. success to the high quality of his
This was the time when the art drawing and his colour. And as
critics, eager to celebrate the advent such, he doubtless encouraged the
who, in his feeling for
of a painter painters of Pop Art proper to
monumentality and refining- choose subjects from everyday life
down, was in every way compara- and paint them with the same as-
ble to such abstract painters as surance as if they were abstract
Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, paintings. In 1962 Lindner, in his
fairly fell on his neck. Lichtenstein turn, profited by the Pop emanci-
seems to have lent them a favour- pation to describe
in terms of
able ear, since, in 1965, after a final amazingly formal boldness urban
series of very handsome female fauna, reduced to two archetypal
faces - inspired by comic-strips figures - the corseted Prostitute
{Girl with hair ribbon; M. . .Maybe), and the Pimp with fantastic neck-
he embarked on commentaries on ties. He remains, however, above

his own technique, with the 'explo- all a very great expressionist
sions' partly composed of
reliefs painter.
screens which he uses for his Ben
Day Dots, the Ceramic Sculptures, in London. As opposed to the way
which he stresses the arbitary itcame about in New York, British
nature of his pictorial method and Pop Art arose from a combined
the enlargements of abstract- action of artists and writers who
expressionist brush strokes. Two took their inspiration from popular
or three examples of the latter are culture as put out by mass media,
admirable. Next he proceeds to emphasizing its originality and
make pastiches of '1925 Deco' in subsequently attempting to incor-
paintings and sculptures of extreme porate it into contemporary artistic
virtuosity, expressly made, it creation. In an initial period (1953-
would seem, to appeal to those of 1958) Lawrence Alloway and
his critics who limited their praises Eduardo Paolozzi were the driving
to the abstract-painter in him. force behind the \G (Independent

94
 LUNDBERG

Group) which organized meetings Pop Art has moved a step closer to
and exhibitions ('Man Machine and Surrealism. On the other hand,
Motion' in 1955, 'This Is Tomor- Assemblagists like LathamJohn
row' in 1956) based on the relation- (b.l921),George Fullard (b.l924)
ship between art and technology. A and Bruce Lacey (b.l927), do not
second period (1958-1960) when appear to have any relationship
Richard Smith was the dominating with Pop Art which must be
personality corresponded to the counted the most important art
American contribution, both from movement in Great Britain during
the angle of popular culture and the present century.
that of the New Abstraction. Final-
ly, the third phase (1961-1965) was Lundberg, Lars-Gosta (Malmo,
chiefly animated by artists from the Sweden, 1938). Pop Art 2. With all
Royal College of Art and charac- the moralist's zest, Lundberg ex-
terized by stylistic eclecticism, due ploits the vocabulary of Pop to
to the influence of R. B. Kitaj. denounce all the pettiness of every-
Magda Cordell and John McHale day life and the great iniquities that
for the first period, Robyn Denny disturb the international consci-
(b.l930), Tony Gifford, William ence. And his sincerity, dispensing
Green and Ralph Rumney for the with words, often enables him to
second, Jonathan Hague, Peter achieve real poetry.
Miller, Henry Mundy (b.l919),
Patrick Proktor, Jon Thompson
and Norman Toynton for the
third, were among the artists who
participated in this adventure. But
the real representatives of British
Pop Art are first and foremost,
Peter Blake, and David Hamilton,
then Derek Boshier, Patrick Caul-
field, Anthony Donaldson, David
Hockney, Allen Jones, Gerald
Laing, Peter PhilHps and Joe Til-
son. More recently it would seem
that with artists such as Ivor Ab-
rahams (b.l935). Clive Barker,
Mark Boyle, Michael John David-
son (b.l939), David Giles (b.l936),
Nicholas Munro (b. 1936), David
Oxtoby (b.l938), Robin Page
(b.l932) Paul Roberts (b.l949),
Colin Self (b.l941), Wojiech Siud-
mak and Penelope Slinger, British

Malaval. The Legs remain. 1%5.

Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris.
J%rA^^mV mdFB
 London. Jones. Gallery Gasper. 1966-1%7.
Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich.

London. Kitaj. Synchromy with F. B. 1%8-1%9.

Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London.
MAGLIONE

Maglione, Milvia (Bari, Italy, ton, Pol Mara - both within and
1936). Pop Art 2. In 1964 white outside himself - hunts down the
silhouettes of cherished beings and most devastating effects of
objects, a sign of the absence of or feminine seduction, multiplied by
yearning for the lost paradise of the arsenal of mass media. Vainly
childhood, invaded MagHone's pic- he strives to stanch these effects. In
tures. They were soon joined by vain he paints to conjure them, but
gentle clouds, the ribbon of the nothing can prevent this seduction
rainbow, the harvest of leaves, the from exercising itself and inspiring
rhythmic pulsations of the tides, dehghtfully, ineluctably, Pol
until they added up to the perfect Mara's painting, the perverse mir-
vocabulary of Divine favour. ror of the eternal temptress.

Malaval, Robert (Nice, 1937). Marchi, Graziella (b. Milan).

Pop Art 1 and 2. Crème Chantilly, Pop Art 2. It started with candy.
shaving-soap or whipped sperm, Then in Graziella Marchi's cos-
Malaval's 'white food' vaguely en- mogony came man, tree and cloud
croached on furniture and house- springing successively into being in
hold objects between 1960 to 1965, the form of these sticks of succulent
and finally the female body. Funda- and stupid confectionery. Until,
mentally, it was all a protest of the world having been created
subjectivity, in league with hidden from a diversity of syrups, the
organic forces, against the exterior sovereign plasma-producer shuts
world. Subsequently, Malaval in herself up in her kitchen to take
his drawing and painting tried to milk-baths and forget her new
put us off the scent and conceal the Genesis.
gravity of his case. For it was not
Malaval who fed on the 'white Mariani, Umberto (Milan,
food' but the 'white food' battened 1936). Pop Art 2. Long fascinated
on Malaval. by the strange humanity of plastic
cushions, plastic thigh-boots, plas-
Manzoni, Piero (Soncino, Italy, tic covers and various straps for
1933-Milan, 1963). Pop Art 1. binding up all this overflow of
Aside from his pictures made of flaccid, shiny and slightly sticky
Assemblages of round loaves, ex- form, Umberto Mariani thought
ecuted in a spirit close to that of he could control the powers of evil
Nouveau Réalisme, Manzoni's sole by suspecting them of plots of
contribution to Pop art were his international eroticism before he
'Artist's Turds', boxed c. 1961. But, came to recognize them as the
despite appearances, they are not in uneasy cowls of the cagoulards.
fact ready-mades.
Marisol. Name adopted by Es-
Mara, Pol (Antwerp, 1920). Pop cobar Marisol (Paris, 1930). Pop
Art 2. Exploiting a whole spectrum Art 2. Although the subjects she
of techniques, which, like his pre- treats are borrowed from daily life

dilection for fluid and translucent and she found a particular outlet for
tones, remind us of Richard Hamil- her exuberance in contemporary

98
 MASS MEDIA

film stars (John Wayne) or politi- which she takes to extravagant

cians (De Gaulle, the Kennedy lengths in vast and unusually vig-
family), we must concede that orous compositions. She parts
Marisol's treatment has nothing of company however with Futurism
that deliberate impersonality of and finds herself blazing the trail of
technique which, rightly or Pop Art through the passionate
wrongly, is considered to be the interest she brings to bear on the
distinctive feature of New York imagery of everyday animation in
Pop Art. Essentially, her procedure city life and on the transformation
consists in reducing a whole group these images undergo at the hands
of persons to an interplay of cubes, of the mass media, mainly diffused
each cube being in proportion to by press photographs and televi-
the seniority and importance of the sion (whereas the Futurists much
person in question and receiving a preferred their own visions to ob-
further treatment of modelling, servation and their own pictorial
drawing, painting, sculpture, col- system to popular culture). Be-
lage or Assemblage by way of cause of this and a highly personal
supplementary information neces- use of colour which varies from an
sary for his or her personalization. austere black and white to the in-
The result is for the most part tense vibration of a red backed by a
confusing in its truth, wit or even violet, it is impossible to write the
poetry. These evidently are exigen- story of the genesis and develop-
cies to which we do not expect Pop ment of Pop sensibility without
artists conform. Nevertheless,
to taking account of Titina Maselli's
despite her exaggerated originality exemplary painting.
and lyrical invention, the cHmax of
which is probably The Party, 1965- Mass Media. The techniques of
1966, one of the major works of the mass diffusion by such media as the
'sixties, Marisol has contributed cinema, television, daily press,
enormously to the enrichment and magazines, posters, advertise-
scope of Pop imagery. ments, strip cartoons, have had a

Mas ell i, Titina (Rome, 1924)

Pop Art 2. Since 1950, Titina
Maselli's has been the
painting
scene of and tumultuous
eager
marriages of Futurism with Pop
Art. In the former, she re-
discovered the attitude of lyrical
exaltation towards twentieth-
century urban civilisation and those
forms of modern heroism - foot-
ball and boxing - but, in addition,
the sense of an exacting rhythm

Meister. Painting. 1970.

99
Mara. Paint your Flowers
with Pearls. 1974.
 -

Maselli. New York. 1970.

Marisol. The Visitors. 1%4.

Collection Ludwig, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.

TS^.-,. t:<-
•-. -7 -TV .•
fc'ft^sf'ys^iE^ 2*vf
MEC ART

Messac. Only a Thread. 1972.

direct influence on the subject mat- crytogams - from the morel to the
ter as on the style ofPop Art in the lycoperdon by way of the clavaria -
strict sense. that he arrived at a style of a fined-
down Pop of great expressive vig-
Mec Art (Mechanical Art). This our, based on a line of uniform
term was coined by Pierre Restany thickness and a restrained but effec-
in 1965 to designate a radically new tive use of colour which linked him
use of the photographic transfer. In closer to Krushenick than to Lich-
point of fact, Serge Béguier tenstein.
(b.l934), Gianni Bertini, Eric
Beynon, Samuel Buri, Pol Bury Melchert, James (New Bremen,
(b.l922), Alain Jacquet, Yehuda Ohio, 1930). After he had made his
Neiman (b.l931), Nikos (b.l930) mark on Funk Art with hermetic
and Mimmo Rotella frequently and obscene ceramics, poetic, mul-
used the process to distort the ticoloured, James Melchert turned
photographic image and not, like his attention to inventing mysteri-
Warhol and Rauschenberg, to ous games in which he makes great
show their respect for it. use of ready-mades or semblances
of them. In this way he developed a
Meister, Jean-Marie (Bienne, highly individual language in his
Switzerland, 1933). Pop Art 2. Like approach to Pop Art and his daily

John Cage, Jean-Marie Meister obsessions.

found what he was looking for in
fungi. It was from the time in 1966 Messac, Ivan (Caen, 1948). Pop
when he began to devote his full Art 2. Choosing two themes,
attention for several years to these charged with childhood memories
 MINUJIN

- Redskins (1972), then Boxers cations.' Tomio Miki goes on to

(1973) - for his area of activity, add 'I would not venture to say I

Ivan Messac produced an effective chose the ear: the ear chose me.'
dialectic of image and colour which Solitary, large or small, repeated
not only serves visual eloquence hundredfold, cast in metal or plas-
but brings a moral and critical tic, sometimes painted on glass, the

dimension into it. ear enjoyed an undivided reign

over Miki's work up to the quite
Messager, Annette (Berck-sur- recent date when the image of an
Mer, Annette Messager's
1943). embryo began to dispute its ascen-
'studio works' involve the making dancy.
and disposition of artificial spar-
rows compelled by their creator Minujin, Marta (Buenos Aires,
into an artificial but engrossing 1931) Pop Art and 2. Marta
1

existence. Her 'chamber works' Minujin started off by playing a

consist of innumerable 'collections'
of elements, mostly catergorized
ready-mades: 'men whom I love',
'my jealousies', 'commonplaces',
'ridiculous perversions' which gen-
erate a kind of Pop sensibiHty.
Miki, Tomio (Tokyo, 1937).
Art 2. 'One day in a train I
struck by a vision: a succession of
ears attacked me with their suppH-
key role in the initial phase of Paris
Pop Art with her mattress Assemb-
lages around 1962. Next with the
vast collective 'autodafé' of these
same Assemblages in 1963. Then,
in Buenos Aires she became the
undisputed animator of the brilliant
Pop but ephemeral Pop activity in
was Argentina. A Httle later, in New
York, with her Minuphone, on the
other hand, she transferred her al-

'

Miki. Ear 109. 1%5.

Collection Shimini, Tokyo. iilit iffiiiil)ll|g|MatiitttJit^
lo;
 Monory. Murder no.X. 1%8.
Private Collection, Paris.

Monroe. Warhol. Marilyn Monroe. 1%2.

Collection M. and Mme Ileana Sonnabend, Paris.
MIRALDA

legiance to the technological wing somewhat aggressive romanticism

of Pop Art, in Hne with the E. A.T. to a near-cynicism, but his whole
of Robert Rauschenberg and Billy conception of the pictorial struc-
Kluver. ture as well. Everything is based on
the juxtaposition of two images,
Miralda, Antoni (Barcelona, one of which can be called the
1942). Releasing his hosts of lead - major, more or less in proportion
or to be exact 'plastic' - soldiers on to the space it occupies in the
the world, Miralda is of course canvas, and the other, the minor,
producing a parody of actual con- which, however, is the one which,
quering armies, but in a still more in relation to the major element,
hidden way, is satisfying an un- plays the same role as the Bickford
satisfied childhood megalomania, fuse to an explosive charge. Yet the
just as, a little later, he was to relation between these two compo-
celebrate an equally unsatisfied nents of the picture is often am-
gourmandise by adding pâtisserie biguous. It behes the evidence, re-
and confectionery to the conquests fuses to offer an explanation, there-
of modern art. by inviting the viewer to set his
imagination working and even to
Monory, Jacques (Paris, 1934). suspect hidden meanings which, in
Pop Art 2. When in the course of the final analysis, centre round the
1965, Jacques Monory passed spectre of death - dealt out, re-
through his brief 'Hlac period' to ceived, feared or wished for, but
the 'blue period' - which ten years omnipresent.
later still flourishes - we are not
only witnessing, along with the Monroe, Marilyn (Los Angeles,
change of the colour dominant, 1926 - Hollywood, 1962). Her
that of his mental attitude from a suicide coincided with the triumph

Plaster mould. Segal.

Couple on a Bed.
1%5.
Galerie Ileana
Sonnabend, Paris.

io6
 New York. Rosenquist. Blue Feet (Look alive!). 1%1.
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris.

New York. Wesselmann.

Great American Nude No. 92. 1%7.
Private Collection, New York.
NAUMAN
Nauman, Bruce (Fort Wayne,
Indiana, 1941). Bruce Nauman
supplies a kind of transition, full of
humour and invention, between
Pop Art and Post Pop Art of which
he is perhaps the most remarkable
representative. His use of casts or
neon, often in conjunction with
certain language problems, should
be included in this intermediary
zone.

Nelson, Robert A. (Milwaukee,

Wisconsin, 1925). Pop Art 2. With
an abundant zest and an orgy of
technical procedures, reminiscent
of British Pop Art, he has dedicated
some amusing and singular icons to
strip-cartoon heroes such as Buck
Rodgers or to strange encounters
of historic personages, for exam-
ple, Washington and the Dinosaur, Noblet. Rose salope. 1972.
1968.

Neo-Dada. This appellation

which for a time competed with
'Pop Art', is not altogether a mis-
nomer, provided we Hmit its appli-
cation to the works of Jasper Johns
and Rauschenberg between 1954
and 1955, and, sHghtly later, to
those of Jim Dine. But, if by Dada
we mean the refusal of art, it is

obvious that there is no Dadaist

element in the work of any of this
trio of artists.

Neon. The Fairy-like element of

urban environment, neon was to
take on different meanings accord-
ing to the artists who used it. Billy
Apple and Chryssa (née 1933) con-
cerned themselves above all with
its emblematic aspect, James
Rosenquist, Dan Flavin (b.l933)
and Richard Serra (b.l939) with its
formal quahties, Bruce Nauman
 NEW YORK
and Robert Watts with its potential
as a message-bearer. Martial Rays-
se alone speculated on its capa-
bilities for poetic expression.

New York. It was tne very suc-

cess Abstract Expressionism
of
which was to induce the younger
artists to move more and more
away from this movement until
Pop Art was the result. From 1954-
1955, the initiative was taken by
Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg
who, although profoundly influ-
enced by Abstract Expressionism,
register a definite acknowledge-
ment of the everyday object. In
1959-1960, under the stimulus of
Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine and Old-
enburg, the twin movements of
Happenings and Environments
were responsible for the spectacular
turn towards the most ingenuous
urban poetry. From that point, it
became impossible to put the clock
back, and, in 1961, we see the
simultaneous emergence of the
four great painters who, with Old-
enburg, were to guarantee the out-
standing reputation of New York
Pop Art: Lichtenstein, Rosenquist,
Warhol and Wesselmann. Along-
side them were some obviously less
orthodox but remarkably gifted ar-
tists,D'Arcangelo, Dine, Indiana,
Marisol, Segal and Strider. Among
the host of artists who maintain
more or less consistent and pro-
found relations with Pop Art we
have first those of the so-called
'Poor' Pop Art since it found its
sustenance in down-to-earth imita-
•%^
Nouveau Réalisme. Spoerri.
Robert's Table. 1%1.
Collection Ludwig,
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
 Nice. Gilli. Le Trayas.
1964.
Galerie Mony Calatchi,
Paris.

Nouveau Réalisme. Villeglé. Lacerated Posters, 1962.


tions of familiar objects or mass
media imagery. The list includes:
Milet Andrejevic, Vern Blosum,
(b.l935), Ray Donarski, Alex Hay
(b.l930), William Kent, Aaron
Kuriloff, Richard Merkin (b.l938),
Don Nice and even the Stephen
NOUVEAU RÉALISME
garde.
Nice. At the centre of what, right-
ly or wrongly, has been called the
School of Nice, there seems to be a
permanent opposition between the
spirit of systemization and the po-

Antonakos before his neon period. etic approach, at once between the
On the other hand, Joen Brainard individual artists and the inner feel-
(b.l942), Rosalyn Drexler, Stephen ings of the individual artists them-
Durkee (b.l939), Sante Graziani selves. The pioneers, Ben (b.l935)
Red Grooms, Leo Jensen,
(b.l920), and Yves Klein, ease the transition,
Yayoi Kusama, Richard Lindner the former at the start of Assemb-
and the 'Doom Artists' maintained lagism, the latter of Lyrical Ab-
only casual relations with Pop Art. straction, in their trend towards the
Kendall Shaw (b.l924), Robert Art of Comportment in which the
Stanley (b.l932) and Bert Stern artistic 'thing' becomes
matter of
a
(b.l929), on the other hand, the individuality alone.
artist's
specialized in a sophisticated form Arman, Rayse, Malaval, Gilli and
of the photographic image. The Flexner preserve their faith in the
realist wing of Pop Art presents autonomous work of art without
aesthetic solutions as widely diffe- however deciding between its poe-
rent as those of George Deem tic attractions and its formal
(b.l932), Alex Katz (b.l926), Kurt charms.
Kay (b.l944), Raoul Middleman
(b.l935) and Paul Thek (b. 1933), Noble t, Jocelyn de (Paris, 1936).
a kind of morbid hyperrealist. For Pop Art 2. Noblet composes Pop
its part, the abstract wing of Pop objects of rare elegance, very 'haute
Art is or was the concern of couture' with the most consum-
Krushenick, Irwin Fleminger, mate ease, but underneath this
Robert Mangold (b. 1937), Robert mask of 'good taste', however, we
Smithson (b.l938) and Richard can descry highly suspect inten-
Tuttle (b.l941). Finally, with their tions.
use of soft materials that Olden-
burg brought into fashion, several Nouveau Réalisme ('New
artists estabHshed a connection bet- Realism'). Founded
1960 by the
in
ween Pop Art and Poor Art, nota- critic Pierre Restany, Nouveau
bly Alice Adams (b.l930), Eva Réalisme claims to be founded on
Hesse (1936-1970), Jean Linder the 'acknowledgement of a
(b.l938), Robert Morris, Richard present-day nature', namely that of
Serra, Keith Sonnier (b.l941)and urban environment. All its mem-
Frank Lincoln Vmer (b.l937). But bers, those of the first phase:
we cannot altogether rid ourselves Arman, César, Dufrêne, Hains,
of the impression that the triumph Raysse, Spoerri, Tinguely, Villeglé
of Pop Art to all intents and pur- and those who joined them: Niki
poses exhausted the creative re- de Saint-Phalle in 1961, Christo
sources of the New York avant- and Gérard Deschamps in 1962, are
IÏ3
 NUTT

§gr iri

Oldenburg. Switches. 1964. Collection Mr and Mrs H. Ladas, New York.

Switches Sketch. 1964. Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.

Assemblagists - to use the Ameri- remarkable artist of the 'Hairy

can terminology - with the single Who' group of Chicago, evolved
exception of Yves Klein. After an exaggerated and caustic style of
1963 the movement no longer had painting which, although borrow-
any collective activity but exercised ing the precise hne and crude flat
a profound influence in Europe. colour from the strip cartoon, also
The tenth anniversary of its found- tips its 'sources' towards the fantas-
ationwas marked in Milan by a tic, the dishevelled grotesque of the
memorable celebration in the pub- dream-world. It is as if Pop Art had

lic square. begun to dream aloud, thus reveal-

ing a host of subliminal thoughts,
Nutt, Jim (Pittsfield, Mas- maHcious for the most part, which
sachusetts, 1938). Pop Art 2. Since for a long timeit had pretended to

1966 Jim Nutt, certainly the most disclaim.

114
Oldenburg. Giant Ghost Eltctnc Fan. 1%7. Sidney Janis Gallery, New Vork.
PAOLOZZI

Paolozzi, Eduardo (Edinburgh, physiological imperatives, in short

1924). Pop Art 1 and 2. Eduardo - renunciation.
Paolozzi played an essential role in
the genesis of British Pop Art at a Paris. If at the beginning of the
time when he was occupied with Sixties there was a certain aware-
his search for 'primitivity', taking ness of the exhaustion of Lyrical
for his starting-point not the naïve Abstraction, running exactly paral-
artifacts of the historic past or dis- lel to the death throes of Abstract
tant exotic lands, but present-day Expressionism in New York, pre-
mass media imagery and industrial tentious French criticism of Michel
junk. Briefly affected - as Olden- Ragon's 'New Figuration' and
burg was to be later - by Dubuf- Gerald Gassiot-Talabot's 'Figura-
fet's example, he sought the key to tion Narrative' seemed anxious to
this Pop 'primitivity' in Assem- impose on Lyrical Abstraction the
blage. Of this there could be no role of fire-control in a forest fire
more eloquent proof than a collage vis-à-vis Anglo-American Pop
of 1954 in which a monstrous Art. But it was a waste of effort,
Dubuffet-like head is composed of since the painstaking disciples of
the accumulation of a quantity of Francis Bacon, of 'Cobra'* or of
small vignettes of motor-car en- Dubuffet who composed the ranks
gines. Up to 1959 Paolozzi's sculp- of the NewFiguration were soon
tureswere also built up in this way either to fade out or rally to the
by an anthropomorphic assem- new aesthetic adventure which, far
blage of impressions taken from removed from expressionist nostal-
industrial junk and cast in bronze. gia, hovers between the Assemb-
Around 1961, Paolozzi began to lage and often sordid option of the
Hberate himself from the expres- New ReaUsm and the alternative
sionist atmosphere of Junk Culture option - optimistic and pictorial or
by elaborating kinds of monu- sculptural - of Pop Art proper.
ments in honour of a Utopian re- From the end of 1962 to early 1963
conciHation, in the midst of some those who, apart from the
'science-fiction' society, of the ar- Nouveaux Réalistes themselves,
tistic avant-garde of the early twen- took up their positions on this
tieth century with technology. battle-field, were René Bertholo,
Eric Beynon, Mark Brusse
Parent, Murielle (Quebec, 1945). (b.l937) Lourdes Castro, Peter
Pop Art 2. 'These canvases express Klasen, Marta Minujin, Antonio
what "real Hfe" is not,' asserts Segui, Peter Stampfi, Hervé Télé-
Murielle Parent apropos her paint- maque, Jan Voss. They were sub-
ings in which Pop vocabulary is sequently joined by Roy Adzak,
used to describe the bureaucratic Edmund Alleyn, Samuel Burri,
and military establishment, the Cheval-Bertrand, Del Pezzo, Erik
cowardice of men and women in Dietmann, Erro, Gérard
respect of sociological or Gasiorowski, P. A. Gette, Jean

* 'Cobra'. A Dutch
group which included Appel, Alenchinsky, Jorn and Corneille. The term is coined
from the names of three cities involved CO (Copenhagen), BR Brussels) A (Amsterdam) in the
movement. WJS.

ii8
Kapéra (b.l924), Maglione, Jac- Pascali, Pino (Bari, Italy, 1935-
ques Monory, Bernard Rancillac, Rome, 1968). Pop Art 2. The best
Jean-Michel Sanejouand, Daniel of Pino Pascali's fantastic work
Smerck. In 1965, their ranks were corresponds to a pursuit of child-
strengthened by the 'Objectors' hood dreams, entertained and per-
and some representatives of 'Mec petuated in particular by the strip
Art\ Between 1966 and 1968, cartoon; first in 1964 - cannons
Dufo, Hanlor, Joël Kermarrec, entirely remodelled in wood, then,
Jean-Marie Meister, Pavlos in 1966-1967, the fabulous evoca-
(b.l930), Jacques Poli, Sarkis tions of the whale, the giraffe, the
(b.l938), Costas Tsodis and Hugh dinosaur to the mygale. Finally, in
Weiss intervened in the debate in 1968, the monstrous caterpillar
have
their turn. Since then, others made of acrylic sponge.
taken an increasingly heterodox
Hne towards Pop orthodoxy; they Paschke, Ed (Chicago, 1939).
are Thierry Agullo, Bernard Ascal, Pop Art 2. an incisive style,
In
Babou, Véronique Bigo, Jacqueline aided by an acid and cruel colour-
Dauriac, Ruth Francken, Gérard ing, Ed Paschke has dedicated his
Fromanger, Gérard Guyomard, painting to the formulation of
Joël Hubaut, Le Boul'ch, Ivan 'emotive responses' to the most
Messac, Annette Messager, Francis brutal events as well as to the most
Meyrier, Bernard Moninot unusual careers - those of politi-
(b.l949), Jocelyn de Noblet, cians or also of those pariahs of
Rabascall, François Roux, Alain sociejty about whom
everything,
Tirouflet (b.l937) and Michel even their sex, is enigmatic.
Tyszblat. There is every indication
that the list is not yet closed. Pasotti, Silvio (Bergamo, Italy,

1933). Pop Art 2. At one stage

Poésie visuelle (Visual Poetry). Bory. Visual Poem. 1973.

119
Pasotti. All that remained of
them was a grass imprint. 1973.

Phillips. For Men only,

starringMM and BB 1%1.
The British Council, London.

Pashke. Hilda, 1973.

Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris.
PETTIBONE

influenced by the example of Peter the most aggressive and therefore,

Saul, Silvio Pasotti later developed it would seem, the nearest to the
an idiom of tender colour com- kind of emotive appeal we associate
bined with somewhat clumsy with motorized gangs of the Hell's
drawing but of great poetic quality Angels type. His first Pop works in
and subtle humour which has un- 1961-1962, however, influenced
ambiguous but discreet leanings to- both by Blake's icons and pin-ball
wards the fantastic. machine-decoration, show an un-
deniable tenderness.
Pettibone, Richard (Alhambra,
CaHfornia, 1938). He is the Photographic Transfer. Two
miniaturist of Pop Art, and after processes are available to the Pop
dedicating reliquary-boxes to
his artist who wants to work as closely
the very sources of the movement as possible with photography: silk-
(comic-strips, racing cars etc.) he screen which allows a certain mar-
has devoted his attention to the gin of interpretation, especially
celebration of their stars in minis- with regard to colour, and, second-
cule copies. ly, the sensitized canvas which of-
fers the same receptivity as the
Phillips, (Birmingham,
Peter photographic film.
1939). Pop Art 2. Compared with
other British and even American Photography. In contrast to the
Pop artists, Peter Phillips stands HyperreaHsts, the strictly Pop ar-
out as a champion of orthodoxy. tists set as much value on the style

Executed with an air-brush in a of the photographic document as

particularly meticulous and cool on the information it conveys.
way, his painting is in fact as per- That is to say, a newspaper or
fectly ready-made as a painting can magazine photograph is more valu-
be, since it excludes any subjective able in their eyes than the actual
interpretation of the elements work of the photographer, and that
selected - images of trademarks, those Pop artists, like Hockney and
commercial seals, motors or parts Ruscha, who had recourse to
of motors, pin-up girls for lorry photography for its own sake, put
decoration, pseudo-scientific diag- themselves outside the pale.
rams, fragments of photographs,
the whole partitioned on geometri- Pistoletto, Michelangelo (Biella,
cally rhythmic backgrounds in par- Italy, 1933). In painting hfe-size
ticularly strident colours. Peter persons on a polished metal sheet
Phillips is careful to respect the acting as a mirror, Pistoletto forci-
style suited to each of the elements, bly introduced the spectator into
assembled in such a way as to his work. But this disturbing revi-
establish a balance between them in had more affin-
val of trompe-l'oeil
the composition, a balance that is at itywith the Hyperrealism which it
the same time the fruit of a perma- heralded than with Pop Art.
nent conflict. Thus his Pop imag-
ery emerges not only as the most Poli, Jacques (Nîmes, 1938). Fas-
faithful to its 'Pop sources', but as cinated by the mechanized uni-
 *^sWn M^
/ / /

Warhol. Tn>/f £/i/i5. 1963. Collection Giuseppe Agrati, Milan.

Rancillac. Ike Turner. The Spectacles, 1973.
Galerie de Bellechasse, Paris.

Quebec. Parent.
Red Sun. 1971-1972.
 QUEBEC

verse, Poli seemed to reject lyri- was an instant and enormous suc-
cism, preferring nuts and bolts and cess. Although Pop Art and Pop
humble elements unlikely to evoke music developed side by side, there
flights of imagination but he failed has been no contact between them.
to stem the ever-increasing tide of
dominating machinery. Post-Pop Art. This term was
applied to late or bastard forms of
Pommereulle, Daniel (Paris, Pop Art by Michael Compton. It
1937). Pop Art 1. Daniel Pom- would be reasonable to reserve it
mereulle has practised assemblage rather for tendencies after Pop Art
(for example, a violet ball of wool and distinct from it but sharing the
attached to the foot of a blue same attachment to the notion of
garden-table) but more for magic the ready-made as in Conceptual
than aesthetic ends, and the pover- Art, Body Art, Land Art and Poor
ty of the means involved in a Art. In the latter, the ready-made is
somewhat theatrical manner only used to highlight mystical thought,
served to underHne their aim - the in Conceptual Art to serve pragma-
unforeseeable consequences which tic thought. In Body Art, the
can emerge from the combination ready-made is the human body. In
of very ordinary objects. Land Art nature is the ready-made.
The notion of ready-made allows
Pop Art (Popular Art - on the us then not only to describe what
analogy of Pop Music). This expres- Pop Art is but what it is not, since
sion originally coined in 1955 by it is self-evident that neither God,
Reyner Bahnham and Leslie Fiedler nor concepts, nor the body, nor
was then employed to designate the nature are Pop 'things'.
ensemble of forms assumed by
modern popular culture as rep- Publicity. By concentrating the
resented by the mass media. It was spectator's attention on the nature,
only several years later that it was properties and make of a product,
applied to the artists who were advertising art has played an indis-
inspired, first in England, then in pensable role in Pop Art, teaching
the United States where it was it to simphfy the image, faciHtate
established in 1963 - by this popu- its legibility and increase its impact.
lar culture. The present work
makes the differentiation between Quebec. In Quebec Pop Art
Pop Art 1, or Assemblagist Pop seems to have been accepted in its
Art and Pop Art 2 or Pop Art totality, albeit with a certain re-
proper. straint, doubtless because of the
Anglo-Saxon origins of its most
Pop Music (Popular Music, term celebrated representatives. Never-
recognized since 1962). It was a theless, it had inspired a great
follow-up of Rock and Roll, but number of Quebec artists, includ-
less aggressive and it has benefited ing a veteran like Albert
from the latest electro-acoustic Dumouchel in some
of his later
music. Pop Music first appeared in works. In the field of painting it
the U.K. and U.S. A in 1960 and sometimes became involved with
12^
RABASCALL
the intimist and nostalgic vein of a
Michèle Bastin or Antoine Dumas,
but for most of the time it nurtured
a modern and wilfully critical cur-
rent in the centre of which, apart
from Edmund Alleyn and Murielle
Parent, are such distinguished con-
tributors as Pierre Ayot, Louise
Lanaro, Serge Lemonde and Guy
Montpetit. We find a more
tinctly erotic dimension in Gilles
Boisvert and Robert Wolfe. From
the glazed boxes of Alan Glass to
the objects of Denys Morrisset and
the Assemblages of Serge Cour-
noyer, freedom and fantasy claim
their place, and we find the same
elements in the polychromatic
sculptures of Claire Hogenkamp
and the giant hinges of Maurice
Bergeron. But it was the graphic
arts in Quebec that profited
the Pop aesthetic most, as we see in
the case of the famous GRAFF
group. Other artists who distin-
guished themselves in the same
suggesting hidden thoughts.
Ramos, Mel (Sacramento,
California, 1935). Pop Art 2. In
1966 the famous comic-strip hero.
Batman, visited an exhibition of
paintings where the works had a
strange resemblance to those by
Mel Ramos. It was merely a well-
dis- deserved tribute on the part of the
'comic' to the artist who, in 1962-
1963, had celebrated the famous
star in a whole series of canvases.
These, executed in an oleaginous
paint in which we can detect
Wayne Thiebaud's influence, are
further characterized by their crude
colours, the violence of their com-
position and certain subtle distor-
tions in the drawing. However,
Mel Ramos, having dealt with the
from famihar strip-cartoon figures, set
about creating new ones, perfectly
plausible, moreover, as far as
heroines were concerned. In this
artist, Pop Art no longer stuck to

field were Carmen Coulombe, aesthetic speculation concerning

Peter Daglish, Carl Daoust, André the forms of the new popular cul-
Dufour, Sarah Gersowitz, Michel ture but strove to perpetuate its
Leclair, Doreen Lindsay, Shirley creative vitaUty. As opposed to
Raphael and Josette Trépannier. Lichtenstein for whom comics had
André Fournelle, Serge Lemoyne merely represented an access-route
and above all Denys Tremblay to the museum, Mel Ramos re-
found their outlet in the Happen- mained strictly faithful to the
ing, Yvon Cozic where sensuality 'popular' vocation of Pop Art. A
and the art of comportment can be Httle later on, when he tackled
said to meet. advertisement imagery, he treated
itwith the same respect - an addi-
Rabascall, Joan (Barcelona, tional indication of his deep respect
1935). Pop Art 2. Rabascall used for mass-media culture. In fact, the
Pop art as a vehicle for open criti- superb pin-up girls he was then
cism, either through telescoping painting, casually flanked by exotic
images and texts in order to extract animals or current consumer pro-
an unexpected significance or novel ducts were not only a tribute - with
aspect from things and events or more than a touch of irony - to the
else by means of the photographic advertising art but also an ambigu-
centring of a detail in a document, ous hymn to femmme beauty.

126
 RAUSCHENBERG

Rancillac, Rernard (Paris, however be objected that Rancillac

1931). Pop Art 2. In 1964 Walt over-embellishes the causes he de-
Disney's characters burst into Ran- fends and - ironically - even more
cillac's painting, with all the more those he denounces (Kennedy, John-
violence because, doubtless under son, Nixon and Lieutenant Calley on
the influence of Peter Saul, the the road to My Lai, 1970. On the
linear technique is intentionally other hand, when he is paying
free, the colour banal and the com- homage to Black Jazz musicians in
position undiscipHned. But the ar- a series of canvases in 1973 and

tist was inaugurating a critical at- 1974, he would seem to have ar-
titude which, although subsequent- rived at the most satisfactory equa-
ly adopting new forms, never flag- tion between enthusiasm and vir-
ged at any time. In 1966 Rancillac tuosity that found expression in
abandoned the devastating and dazzling pyrotechnics and gem-like
anarchical accents of his first Pop briUiance.
period to devote his attention to a
rigorous and yet wholly personal Rauschenberg, Robert (Port
and deliberate transposition of Arthur, Texas, 1925). Pop Art 1.
photographic documents, almost Rauschenburg has never ceased to
invariably borrowed from the pre- show his deep commitment to the
vailing poHtical (Cuba,
situation Abstract Expressionism which he,
Mao's China, the Vietnam war, more than any other artist, worked
Palestinian resistence). It could to wreck - nor his dislike for Pop

Rauschenberg. Monogram. 1955-1959. Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

127
RAUSCHENBERG

Art proper whose cause he had whilst escaping the Umitations at-
done so much to advance. Doubt- tributable to too much reflexion,
less, his attitude stems from the was to be translated not only in the
ambition he has so often pro- amazing series of combine-
claimed 'to work in the gap be- paintings which, from Charlene
tween life and art'. This aim is (1954) to Coexistence (1961) fol-
expressed very simply in his insis- lowed in succession, but in many
tence on combining in the work of of his other experiments. Thus, in
art painting as he understands it 1962, he adopted the technique of
(that is, freed from every figurative transferring photographs on to
obligation) with those hostages of canvas by silk-screen, an improve-
our everyday life which are rep- ment on the method of rubbings he
resented by
ordinary objects, had previously employed for the
cherished all the more because they same purpose, notably in his fam-
are not new but enjoy a past and a ous series of thirty-four combine-
history. In this sense, 'combine- drawings for Dante's Inferno (1959-
paintings' contains a moral as well 1960). By thesame token, he was
as an aesthetic meaning, since their one of the founders of the E.A.T.
aim is to reconcile man's spiritual in 1966, precisely because of his
and material activities. They con- conviction that technology should
stitute at once a criticism of Ab- not be left out of artistic creation.
stract Expressionism and Pop Art - His Tourniquets oi 1967, his Solstice
both equally guilty of concentrat- of 1968 like the Resonances of the
ing only on one aspect of things: Ludwig collection, show him in
the spiritual or the material aspect. pursuit of the same ends - thanks to
Rauschenberg's serious intention of the aids of technology - as in the
opening up himself and his work to combine-paintings,the combine-
all the rich diversity of reaHty drawings and the silk-screens on

If

Raynaud. Pot 815. 1968.

Rauschenberg. Tracer. 1964. Collection Mr and Mrs Frank Titelman.
RAYNAUD

canvas, or again as in his collabora- In the kind of cult Raysse devoted

tion in the ballets of Merce Cun-
ningham. But we cannot help re-
gretting the modesty of his con-
tribution in paper and cardboard
packages since 1971 which is only
the pale shadow of his adventurous
exploits of old.
Raynaud, Jean-Pierre (Colombes,
1939). An exclusive restriction to
the duahty, red and white, and his
at that time to indifferent bathing
beauties, he was not afraid to make
a simultaneous use of all the re-
sources of a considerably enlarged
palette, and there was nothing he
liked better than to translate in one
and the same picture the idea of
fresh grass by, successively, a
painted portion, artificial grass and
green neon. In High Tension Paint-
ing (1964), a woman's mouth al-

use of objects - apart from the ready painted, is picked out in

flower-pot, with its allusion to Hght-red neon Hght. Other works,
ideas of sickness, madness and on a single techni-
in contrast, rely
death, the very symbol of this artist que, neon in particular, which
- have enabled Jean-Pierre Raysse employs, however, as a
Raynaud to confer a horrendous painter, extracting highly poetic
presence on his psycho-objects of effectsfrom it. His secret, which
1964 to 1967. Their pessimistic im- enables him to create works of rare
plications however limit their link freshness, although the execution is

with Pop Art to purely formal sometimes far too casual, is his
affinities. shattering ingenuity - so excep-
tional in a country with such a long
Raysse, Martial (Golfe Juan,
Alpes Maritimes, 1936). Pop Art 1
and 2. In 1960 in a work Hke
Hygene of Vision which takes its

inspiration from a bazaar display,

Martial Raysse, the golden boy of
Nouveau announces
Réalisme,
with the ingenuousness and gaiety
of this Assemblage and the pre-
sence of various beach-toys, the
vast environment of 1962 Raysse's
Beach which combined all the ele-
ments of the artist's seaside
mythology. And soon, in defiance
of the interdict announced by
Nouveau Réalisme, the painting
came to terms with the Assemb-
lage, then with photographic en-
largements and finally with neon.

Richter. Emma. Nude descending

Staircase. 1%6. Collection
Ludwig, Wallraf-Richartz
Museum, Cologne.
 ROMAGNONI
culturaltradition. Alongside his ty, he appears exclusively preoc-
complete surrender to the sincerity cupied with the legitimacy of the
of his vision, we find in Martial pictorial image which, whatever its
Raysse an undeniable mistrust of nature, portrait, street-scene, erotic
his own predilection for the pretty phantasm or abstract composition,
and the charming. And it takes is first and foremost painting and
little to turn him into the most nothing but painting.
severe critic of his own painting - if
not in verbal strictures, at least in
his actions. Thus, immediately in Rivers, Larry (New York, 1923).
the wake of the events of May 1968 Pop Art 1. In tackling in 1953, a
which deeply affected him, he subject as discredited as Washington
adopted an increasingly negative crossing the Delaware, Larry Rivers
attitude towards forms of artistic was behaving as an authentic
expression. Yet the restraints he pioneer of Pop Art. And yet, in one
imposed on himself in no way way, the sensibiHty of his eye is

prejudiced his considerable gifts of much more Pop than that of either
poetic creation. Jasper Johns or Rauschenberg, as
proved by his later subjects (Bar
Ready-Mades. 'Manufactured menu, Camel cigarette packets, photo-
objects promoted to the dignity of graphy of 'Life\ French hank-note,
objets d'art at the artist's choice' Dutch Masters and Cigars, etc.) Pic-
(Marcel Duchamp). torially he remains much more a
prisoner of the Abstract Expres-
Restany, Pierre (Amélie-les- sionist aesthetic than they are.
Bains, 1930). Art critic and founder Thus, the allusive vibration of his
of Nouveau Réalisme, convinced touch, his taste for sketchy forms
that easel-painting had had its day, and diffused colour have always
Restany insisted that, from the pre- prevented him from approaching
sent time on, the 'vision of things Pop orthodoxy, even when in so
should be inspired by the feeling of many ways, such as, for example,
modern nature which is that of the his plurality of information and
factory and the city, pubHcity and techniques, not to mention and
mass media, science and technolo- above all, perhaps, his interest in
gy.' And for fifteen years he has the coincidence of word and image,
fought unceasingly to impose he manifested specifically Pop Art
ideas, often controversial, and to obsessions.
win recognition for artists, now
famous, thanks to him.
Romagnoni, Bepi (Milan, 1930
Richter, Gerhard (Waltersdorf, — Villasimuis, 1964). Pop Art 2.
Germany, 1932). Pop Art 2. Ac- Romagnoni's contribution to Pop
cording to the situation, Gerhard Art was as brief as it was decisive.
Richter has been considered as ob- In 1961 he undertook to reintegrate
sessed in turn by female nudity, the dispersion of figurative ele-
opening doors, movement that dis- ments, as manifested in Rosenquist
torts bodies, celebrities etc. In reali- and Rauschenberg, in the midst of
131
 GlIKVMUX
PllON!r
SOIJIICIL

Rivers. Parts of the Face (The Vocabulary Lesson).

1961. Tate Gallery, London.

Raysse. Snack. 1%4.

Collection Lauffs, Kaiser-Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld.
ROSENQUIST
an organic unity of exceptional nique and sense of composition.
plastic and dramatic quality. From But, although at first he closed his
the discontinuity of signs, informa- eyes to the fact, Rosenquist was not
tion and significations, he aimed to long in discovering that the
release a complex yet harmonious strength and originaUty of his
image from which no aspect of painting did not depend solely on
everyday reality was excluded. plastic virtues and that the persua-
sive or suggestive qualities of the
Rosenquist, James (Grand image, however fragmented, also
Forks, North Dakota, 1933). Pop counted for something. Thus he
Art 2. When in New York, 1960, soon ceased to show the distrust,
after painting enormous billboards which was a legacy of Abstract
above Times Square, Rosenquist Expressionism, towards figuration
renounced Abstract Expressionism — a change particularly observable

and resolved to adopt a pictorial in his largest compositions. Silver

style directly inspired by his profes- Skies (1962), Painting for the Ameri-
sional experience, he opted for can Black (1962-1963), Nomad
what was a somewhat paradoxical (1963), Candidate (1963), Taxi
solution. The very exigencies of his (1964) and his great mural for the
profession which obliged him to New York International Fair of
take a close-up view in the course 1964, in which the legibiHty of the
of his work on small details, vastly objects continually increases and
enlarged —
images which in this consequently be-
their telescoping
way ceased to be legible con- — comes more amazing and poetical-
vinced him of the possibility of a ly more effective. We may wonder
painting which would preserve all what causes objects to meet in this
the expressive power of the Times way Rosenquist's painting? It
in
Square billboards but without sub- seems that the device to which he
ordinating it to the representation has recourse is the association of
of any particular object (or person). ideas or the association of images
This explains the hermetic appear- whose two essential springboards
ance of so many of his 1961-1962 are of course metaphor and
canvases in which certain elements metonymy. But whereas the as-
can be deciphered immediately sociation of the métonymie type
whilst others defy identification. follows a path which the viewer
Rosenquist contributes further to can easily follow (e.g. in Waves,
this uncertainty by varying not 1962 where the kiss exchanged by
only the scale of the fragments but two persons is to one a visual and
their direction, for example in re- to the other a tactile sensation; or
versing too easily recognizable fea- again in Early in the Morning of
tures such as eyes, mouths, nos- 1963, a summing-up of the day's
trils. This attitude offers him, at first activities), the same thing does
least to begin with, the undeniable not apply, understandably enough,
advantage of Hberating him from when the association is of the
any anecdotal or narrative tempta- metaphorical type. Then, with
tion and of simultaneously fortify- very few exceptions {The Flower-
ing the quality of his painting tech- garden, 1961 for example) the mys-
,

^34
 RUSCHA

tery is complete. This fact does not Roux, Francis (Nice, 1933). Pop
however diminish the fascination Art 2. Francis Roux uses Pop-art
exercised by Rosenquist's painting. techniques with the greatest free-
The artist's commentaries, always dom of spirit. This applies particu-
of interest, only go to confirm the larly to his 'Postcards to Charlotte'
functioning of the association of — amusing relief-paintings in-
images, without justifying the spired by various folklore tradi-
emergence of one object rather tions —
and of his confrontations
than another. Where else then with the three-dimensional object
should we look for the source of and its pictorial projection which
the extraordinary persuasive power are of considerable stylistic interest.
of his painting than in the artist's
deep sincerity. For, as we see, even
when Rosenquist uses the fantastic Ruscha, Edward (Omaha, Neb-
means observable in F 111 (1965), raska, 1937). Pop Art 2. Ruscha's
Forest Ranger (1967) and Flamingo work is perhaps the most discon-
Capsule (1970) he communicates certing in the whole of Pop Art.
his emotions directly, without re- Not because of its eccentricities but
sorting to description, in a visual its cool irony and the arbitrary
language of arresting and over- nature of its aesthetic options. In a
whelming freshness. series of canvases — several dealing
with garages, some flames —
in
Ruscha has systematically adopted
Rotella, Mimmo (Cantanzaro, the cinemascope format, further
Italy, 1918). Pop Art 1 and 2. In his accentuated by vertiginous obli-
'torn posters', the oldest of which ques. Another series shows in an
go back to 1951-1952, Rotella ad- expressive, sometimes humorous,
vanced in three successive stages: in sometimes detached manner,
the peeHng the poster off the
first, words in current use and proper
wall where it had been pasted, names, and in some cases, as-
next, re-sticking it on to his canvas, sociated with very ordinary ob-
and, finally, subjecting it to the jects. Finally, Ruscha has published
ultimate insults. As opposed to small books, each containing a set
Hains, Villeglé and Dufrêne, of photographs of the same kind of
Rotella is — at any rate in the series location: open-air swimming
called obsessed
'de Cinnecittà' — pools, car-parks, petrol stations
with the cinema-poster image, etc.
especially when it portrays stars
and starlets (1961-1962). These gay
and zestful works are followed by
photographic transfers on sen-
sitized canvas in 1963, then, more
recently, by the 'artypoplastics'
which are their perfected form and
in which Rotella makes a welcome
return to his more wayward, sen-
sual obsessions.
ï3^
Rosenquist. Forest Ranger, 1967. Collection Ludwig, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
Rotella. Marilyn. 1963.

Roux. Wrecked BicycU. 1973.

Galerie de Bellechasse, Paris.
SAINT-PHALLE

Saint-Phalle, Niki de (Paris, Saul, Peter (San Francisco, 1934).

1930). Pop Art 1. The 'surprise Pop Art 2. To a large extent, Peter
pictures' with which Niki de Saint- Saul embodies the categorical con-
Phallemade her spectacular entry tradiction of the formaUsm of New
into Nouveau Réalisme in 1961 York Pop Art, at least as it is
were something Uke the cHmax of manifested in the work of Warhol
'gestural' painting, but at the same and Lichtenstein. In the first place,
time the thumbs-down for this repudiation owes its impor-
combine-paintings. In fact, these tance to the fact that does not it

works on which viewers were in- postdate the emergence of Pop Art
vited to direct rifle fire and thereby proper in New York. On the con-
dig pockets of paint in the thickness trary, it came into being at precise-
of the Assemblage, represented the ly the same time. Furthermore and
most virulent criticism levelled above all, Peter Saul's work is a
against a certain kind of assemblag- brilliant proof that, starting out
ism sentimentality linked with Ab- from the same premises, namely
stract Expressionism. Thus, from mass-media popular culture, it was
1962 to 1965, Niki de Saint-Phalle possible to arrive at a radically
was to turn Assemblage in the different conclusion: an art likewise
direction of progressive Hberation nurtured on examples from strip-
from painting, with objects alone cartoons, publicity, illustrated
assuming the artist's subjectivity. magazines and television, but
Her later work, often hallucinatory which, instead of hobbling the
and of great poetic quaHty, was to ideologies of power and construct-
sever every connection with As- ing its aesthetic order on the social
semblage and Nouveau RéaHsme. and economic order, decided resol-
utely to declare its opposition, not
Samaras, Lucas (Kastoria, even by claiming to spread a politi-
Greece, 1936). Pop Art 1 A part of
.
cal message but simply by adopting
Samaras' work (boxes filled with the language and philosophy of the
pins, books filled with razor- man in the street, rather than that
blades, forks with bent prongs, of the technocrats of mass media.
chairs poetically diverted from Thus it is no mere chance that Peter
their normal function) can be con- Saul finds his inspiration as much
sidered as an obvious perversion of from graffiti as from comics, and
Pop Art and, consequently, as a that, as a result, his painting is

criticism of it. where elementary gut reactions

Sanejouand, Jean-Michel
(Lyon, 1934). Pop Art 1 By devot-
.
ing himself around the year 1964 to
the juxtaposition, rather than the
assemblage of ready-mades, Sane-
jouand seemed anxious to produce
a kind of 'cool' transition from the
'surrealist object' to Pop
138
find expression - translated in vis-
ceral form - those famous coils of
ribbons, contorted and cork-
screwed which are equally adapted
to the attitudes of victor and van-
quished, torturer and tortured,
businessmen and drop-outs. For,
seen through graffiti, all causes are
Art. equally grotesque. At all events, it
seems that it is so in the eyes of this
 SMERCK
artist which are however full of vironments'. His casts offer, how-
tenderness since Peter Saul is cer- ever, the peculiarity that it is, in
tainly convinced that men are un- each case, the mould obtained with
fortunate rather than evil. the aid of plaster-soaked bandages
rolled round the models that con-
Schifano, Mario (Horns, Lybia, stitutes the definitive sculpture and
1941). Pop Art 2. Hesitating be- not the faithful reproduction of the
tween the faithful reproduction of - body which has been moulded.
sometimes historic - documents Thus only the inner surface of the
(The Futurists in Paris, February mould and consequently of the
1912) and the nervous and subjec- sculpture bears the exact imprint of
tive interpretation of facts and the model - but in the form of a
things, Mario Schifano sums up, negative or hollow mould. This
not without elegance, the tempta- subtle but effective distancing vis-
tions which the Pop artist spends à-vis reality enables Segal to confer
most of his time struggling to on his heroes a sufficiently elevated
avoid. degree of generality to escape the
anecdotal. At the same time, the
Schippers, WimT. (Groningen, uncertain attraction of the faces and
Netherlands, 1942). Pop Art 1. bodies lends his works the disturb-
Wim T. Schippers has successively ing appearance of a rendez-vous of
brought his humour and his Uking sleep-walkers, or even a party
for provocation to bear on the among ghosts. It has not escaped
disconcerting Assemblage, modish the attention of this artist, never-

drawing cum collage and the sculp- theless, that people in white masks
tural joke (e.g. his five-metre high probably owed their existence and
Chair) on the depressing Environ- their status to Segal's own deep
ment and also the Fluxus concerts, inhibitions. Thus he has deliberate-
the theatre, TV and design which ly executed many representations
he likewise proceeded to turn up- of erotic, heterosexual, homosexu-
side down. al or incestuous scenes (the legend
of Lot)which thanks to him and his
Segal, George (New York, 1924). technique are marvels of delicacy
Pop Art 1 and 2. Segal's work and feeling.
stands on the point of balance be-
tween Assemblagism and Happen- Segui, Antonio (Cordoba,
ings on the one hand and Pop Art Argentina, 1934). Pop Art 2. The
on the other. This explains why it bitter humour' to use Max Clarac-
has been annexed and rejected in Sérou's expression, with which
turn by the theorists of the latter Segui was to assimilate David
movement. Segal has contributed Hockney's lesson in 1963, exercised
two types of ready-mades: moulds a great influence on a whole sector
from Hve models and with the aid of the Paris avant-garde.
of real objects (chair, table, bed,
ladder, bath, dentist's chair, au- Smerck, Daniel (Paris, 1937).
thentic works of art, luminous Pop Art In almost complete
2.
signs, etc.), the suggestion of 'En- secrecy Daniel Smerck evolved be-

139
Ruscha. Large Sign with eight Projectors, 1%2.

Statnpfli. Caprice.
1%8.
Saul. Poverty. 1969. C.N.A.C., Paris.
SMITH

tween 1964 and 1965 a Pop paint- Snow, Michael (Toronto, Cana-
ing of irreproachable plastic quali- da, 1929). Pop Art 2. Painter,
ty, now anxious to find order with- sculptor, scenario-writer, jazz
in a narrative structure, now, con- musician, Michael Snow has been
versely, faithful to the eloquence of the essential Hnk between the New
a image, but deeply and
single York and Canadian avant-garde.
permanently impregnated with a Prophet of Pop Art, he has, since
kind of restlessness for something 1960, elaborated the theme of the
beyond. 'walking woman' in countless
ways, but finally in a rhythmic
Smith, Richard (Letchworth, rather than sensual spirit.

England, 1931). Pop Art 2. Richard Moreover, from the photograph to

Smith's painting, the themes of the video-cassette, byway of tape-
which certainly originate in Pop recorder, he has systematically ex-
Art, whilst the technique has ele- ploited the favourite media of Post-
ments of Chromatic Abstraction Pop Art.
full of charm and sensitivity, oc-
cupies an individual position in the Spoerri, Daniel (Galatz,
genesis and development of the Rumania, 1930). Pop Art 1. Raus-
Pop spirit in great Britain. Richard chenberg's Bed, shown in Paris,
Smith in fact structures his can- 1959, could have inspired Spoerri's
vases on geometrical principles, re- 'snare-pictures' of 1960. Rauschen-
ferring everything to commercial berg had tilted into the vertical
packaging and cigarette packets in plane a bed onto which images are
particular; this, to the point of projected. Spoerri was to do like-
allowing their colour-and volumet- wise, fixing the dirty crockery and
ric relationships to overflow into reliefsof food-items on a table,
the third dimension. then tipping this Assemblage 90f
into the picture-plane. But what

Snow. Black and White

(The Walking Woman).

142
 STAMPFLI

Strider. Diagonal red.

1964.
Collection John G. Powers,
Aspen, Colorado.

was accidental in the American ar- Anecdoted Topography of Chance, a

tistcorresponds in Spoerri to a very careful inventory of objects on a

personal relation with objects and hotel bedroom table, to be re-

time. Freezing the arrangement of garded as a masterpiece of the
objects at a precise instant is, as if Nouveau Roman.*
by staring death in the eyes, one
was trying to intimidate it and Stampfli, Peter (Deisswil, Swit-
thereby postponing the final de- zerland, 1937). Pop Art 2. Of all

struction; and, taking these objects European Pop artists, Stampfli is

at the end of a meal by surprise is the only one who immediately fell
already, as it were, to contemplate for a monumental style, the amp-
one's own annihilation. The sole htude and soHdity of which have
solution to this contradiction takes been continually confirmed since
the form of the aggression and 1963. With him, not the slightest
derision, especially observable in hint of narrative tendency; all we
his ^Dé-trompe-l'oeir - those have is the object, set against a
^daubs' bought at Flea markets neutral, mostly white background
,

with the various objects inserted as - the equivalent of a surrounding

â commentary. Spoerri's anguish emptiness. So that if the 'subjects'
can be assessed perhaps by his ina- treated (which have virtually for
bihty to tear himself away from several years been reduced to one -
métonymie obsessions to win the the motor-car tyre) are borrowed
larger, metaphorical freedom. The from contemporary reality,
exceptional acuity of his vision, Stampfli's painting does not pre-
however, made it possible for his empt u sociological analysis.

* 'Nouveau Roman'. The term applied to a somewhat heterogeneous group of French authors - Robbc-
Grillet, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute whose significant novels emerged in the Fifties. Common to
the latter is the technique which (like a Happening) shows the creative process in action. In the work of
the first two 'objects' play an important role, eg La Jalousie (Robbe-Gnllet) and La Modification (Butor).
WJS.

^4'
STANKIEWICZ

Télémaque. Dressing-case. 1965. Private Collection.

Should these pictures be considered Stankiewicz, Richard

as examples of pure painting in (Philadelphia, 1922). Pop Art 1.

which the 'subjects' are mere pre- Stankiewicz was one of the first
texts? Not so, for in Stampfli's in the early 'fifties to put indust-
painting we find an almost unbear- rial junk to sculptural purposes.
able seriousness, further amplified His work, marked by an an-
by their large dimensions and thropomorphic conception of
which would be incompatible with unusually persuasive power, was
an art solely concerned with plastic not without its influence on Tin-
organization. It would seem then guely.
that weshould consider this paint-
ing as a kind of warning, the more Strider, Marjorie (United
dramatic in that we are unaware Pop Art 2. From a wo-
States).
against what or whom it invites us man's breasts to clouds, via flowers
with such insistence to be on our and tomatoes, images of fecundity
guard. have exercised such a fascination on
 SZAPOCZNIKOW

Marjorie Strider as to have im- for tapestry, are doubtless the most
posed a veritable pictorial obstet- remarkable placed in this situation.
rics on her works which reached To a lesser degree, it is also true of
their climax with Red Diagonal Dick Bengtsson, Olla Billgren
(1964) and View from a Window (b.l940), Bengt Bockman
(1965). By projecting the luminous (b.l936), Roj Friberg (b.l934),
outhne of the windows on the Gerhard Nordstrom (b.l925), Bar-
roundness of the clouds, she was bro Ostlihn (b.l930) and John
not content to reverse the problem Wipp (b.l927).
of the relation of the canvas to three
dimensions in dialectical terms, but Switzerland. Apart from
provided the link that separated Daniel Spoerri and Jean Tmguley,
Magritte from Man Ray on the one Switzerland has contributed many
hand and Oldenburg and doubtless Assemblagists such as Jurgen
Rosenquist on the other, or be- Brodwolf Edy Brunner
(b.l932),
tween SurreaHsm and Pop Art. A (b.l943), Burner (b.l923),
Jean
subversive role which she con- Franz Eggenschwiler (b.l930),
tinued to sustain more recently in Alby Moesch and above all Dieter
her version of a ball entering water Rot (b.l930). In the field of Pop
- water that is perfectly solid. Art proper the most distmguished
painters are Samuel Burri, Jean
Sweden. In the first place Sweden Lecoulbe (b.l930) and Peter
provided Pop Art with a whole Stampfli. We should however
luxury of heterodox positions equally consider the contribution
which go from
Carl Fredrik of a host of other artists, among
Reutersward (b. 1934), an authen- whom we should mention Eric
tic Dadaist surgeon whose jokes Beynon, Sandro Bocola, Franz
would have delighted a Picabia, to Gertsch (b.l930), Alfred Hofkunst
Endre Nemes (b.l909) who pro- (b.l942), Fred Knecht (b.l934),
vides kind of fusion between
a Rosina Kuhn (b.l940), Paul
Surrealism and the spirit of Pop by Lehmann (b.l924). Max Matter
way of the comic Assemblages of (b.l941), Thomas Mislm (b.l936),
Per Olof Ultvedt (b.l927), and Hugo Schuhmacher (b.l939),
especially the strange interroga- Giancarlo Tamagni (b.l940), Peter
tions ofOyvind Fahlstrom. Furth- Travaglini, Marianne Wydler
ermore, Pop Art proper seems to (b.l939) and Jurgen Zumbrunnen
have produced above all a critical (b.l946).
kind of painting, sometimes con-
cerned with the evolution of be- Szapocznikow, Alina (Kalisz,
haviour, sometimes with political Poland, 1926-Paris 1973). The Hps,
problems. Gert Aspehn (b.l944), breast and buttocks which Alina
Marie-Louise De Geer, Olle Kaks Szapocznikow cast from 1965 in
(b.l941), C. Goran Karlsson translucent and variously coloured
(b.l944), Lars-Gosta Lundbcrg plastics allowed her to compose a
among the painters. Par Gunnar whole familiar décor and - in par-
Thelander (b.l936), for engraving ticular a luminous one - in honour
and Helena Barynina Hernmarck of the female body. Her last works
•4^
 TACCHI

seem part of a conjuratory rite Takamatsu, (Tokyo, 1936).

]iro
directed against illness and death. Pop Art 2. 1958 Takamatsu
In
inaugurated that long series of in-
spired works with the shadow
theme, before which the viewer
begins to doubt, first the difference
between his own projected shadow
and the painted shadow, then be-
gins to suspect the Hmits between
his existence and his non-existence.
Further, Takamatsu has elaborated
ideahsed constructions of the cities
of the future.
Tacchi, Cesare (Rome, 1940).
Pop Art 2. In interpreting certain Télémaque, Hervé (Port-au-
devices used in mass media imag- Prince, Haiti, 1937). Pop Art 2. 'I

ery as, for example, the speech- would Hke to be a kind of gauge of
balloons of strip-cartoons, Cesare paradoxical objects', states Télé-
Tacchi with the aid of printed fab- maque. What he means by
rics has not only produced very 'paradoxical objects' are, for ex-
diverting works but has certainly ample, the walking-stick, whistle,
contributed a kind of poetic exten- corset, tent, which suggest con-
sion to Pop techniques. tradictory actions (walking and the
difficulty of walking, noise and
Tadini, Emilio (Milan, 1927). silence, desire and its prohibition,
Pop Art 2. Like that of Adami and the security and precariousness of
Del Pezzo, Tadini's work shares in home). For with Télémaque ob-
a somewhat aberrant enterprise - to jects are submitted to a kind of
the extent that, with the rise of Pop distrustful interrogation. 'How far
Art and partly in reaction to the can one have confidence in them?'
excesses of so-called 'Art brut' the painter seems to ask, confi-
(Raw Art'), it aimed
developing at dence in their practical as well as
de Chirico's Metaphysical Paint- symbolic trustworthiness? Thus,
ing towards a total rationaHzation hardly has he admitted that such an
of pictorial creation. Restraint in object truly possesses a precise vir-
composition and clarity of form, tue than he becomes anxious to
however, were never with de know whether this object does not
Chirico, at his zenith, the product equally offer the opposite virtue.
of a previous calculation but of a Once suspicion is introduced into
rare kind of trance. Nevertheless, the mechanism of the association of
Tadini's paintings - outcome of ideas and images, Télémaque had
this disputable theory and kinds of no other option than to elaborate a
intellectual jigsaws, - sometimes, kind of empiric symbolism, equal-
by virtue of their very doctrinaire ly distanced from practical experi-
severity, attain a kind of stifling ence and Freudian symbology,
poetry, so rarefied is the air, so both no less suspect in his eyes.
pitiless their beauty. Aesthetically, tfiis mistrust is ren-
146
 lllliiBAlU)

dered by a graphic and chromatic Télémaque, however, does not in-

description of rare power and con- dulge in the self-criticism which
ciseness with which Lichtenstein's too often overwhelms Itahan Pop
work alone can offer a comparable artists.

example. But where the American

painter utilizes this plastic décanta- Thiebaud, Wayne (Mesa, Arizo-
tion for purely formal purposes, na, 1920). Art 2. Wayne
Pop
the Haitian painter's aim is to emp- Thiebaud's claim to be considered a
loy it for moral and practical ends Pop artist has often been disputed
as a means of assuring himself — on the grounds of his realistic ap-
without wholly confiding in them proach, especially noticeable in his
— of the docility and goodwill of representations of human beings,
the objects. However surprising women in particular whom he de-
this may appear at first sight, Télé- picts somewhat bewildered and
maque's painting is then a magic distrait, whether they are at work,
painting. The restraint with which taking a bath or licking an ice-
the artist displays objects — which cream cornet. In works of this
contrasts with the crazy profligacy kind, Thiebaud appeared rather as a
of a Rosenquist for example — is moral chronicler of urban aliena-
only the proof of the importance he tion in the Edward Hopper tradi-
attached to these objects, whereas tion. When, on the other hand, he
Rosenquist consumes, wastes describes — in a creamy and sugary
them, without giving them due paste — alignments of symboHc
credit. But this apparent aridity on objects of consumer society —
Télémaque's part seems to indicate cakes, lipsticks or pin-ball
a move towards 'cold' Metaphysi- machines — although the underly-
cal Painting, more particularly as ing message remains the same, the
practised by Adami and Tadini. apparent neutrality of the execution

Thiebaud. Window
Cakes. 1%3.
Collection Harry N.
Abrams, New York.

•47
 TILSON

Tilson. A-Z. 1%3.

The Artist's Collection.

1\

/ / /

'i^'^ITTTrfrV

belongs more obviously to Pop screen should enter the field of

Art. gallery and museum art. His reliefs
in painted wood, his boxes and his
Tilson, Joe (London, 1928), Pop mural decorations bear witness to
Art 2. Of all Pop artists, Joe Tilson his sense of rhythm and colour
is undoubtedly the one who has harmonies.
taken the assimilation with forms
of mass media to the furthest ex- Tinguely, Jean (Bale, 1925). Pop
treme: pubhcity hand-outs, shop- Art 1. With his Homage to New
window dressings, neon signs. York, completed 17 March, 1960,
This desire on his part to merge in Museum of Modern Art
the
into pubhcity anonymity repre- New York, which consisted of the
sents a move in the same direction self-immolation of a vast Environ-
as the welcome he gave to other ment composed of industrial junk,
artists whom he invited to collabo- Tinguely seemed in a curious way
rate in collective stelae, such as A-Z to be sounding the death-knell of
(1963). Furthermore, Joe Tilson Assemblagism on both sides of the
has done everything possible to Atlantic. For his part, he was to
make sure that ambiguous media escape suicide only by putting his
such as the lantern-sHde, relief silk- chips resolutely and simultaneously
Vostell. Miss America. 1968. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
 TROY A

Tinguely. M.K.III. 1964. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

on the Pop movement and- on that in the presence of his work —

humour. In this he succeeded ad- with touch and sight equally con-
mirably by provoking perhaps the victed of lying, and perspective for
last bursts of laughter which the its part denouncing the evidence of

twentieth century has aroused. our senses, we no longer know

where to put our trust. All that
Trova, Ernest (Saint-Louis, Mis- remains, abolishing every distance
souri, 1927). Pop Art 2. In his between man and his familiar ob-
complex Falling Man series, which jects, is the certainty of carnal appe-
includes sculpture, as well as tite.

graphic works, Trova presented, in

particular, remarkable images of Tyszblat, Michel (Pans, 1936).
man, suddenly become automobile Pop Art 2. With a wave of his
and at the same time magic wand, Tyszblat confers or-
thoroughbred, brilhant, stainless ganic properties and weightlessness
and aerodynamic. on objects of our everyday sur-
roundings, but more especially on
Tsoclis, Costas (Athens, 1930). TV sets. Here we are nearer to the
Pop Art 2. With the aid of packing- euphoria of a Claes Oldenburg
cases, furniture, taps, pipes or than the work of a Peter Saul. But
crumpled newspapers, TsocHs, the gentle, pearly refinement of the
since 1964, has taken trompe-l'oeil lacquers is wholly Tyszblat's.
into the interior of space itself, so

I 50
 VOSTELL

Usami, Keiji (Osaka, 1940). Pop Voss, Jan (Hamburg, 1936). Pop
Art 2. From a photograph of the Art 1965 Jan Voss, in succes-
2. In
race riots at Watts near Los Angeles sive stages, abandoned the frame
in 1965, Usami chose four silhouet- and text of the strip-cartoon in
tes of Blacks which he systemati- favour of a dispersion of images on
cally analysed and combined in the surface of the canvas which
graphic and colour work from 1967 allows of much more freedom in
to 1972, utilizing laser-beams as space and time relationships. The
well as painting. The results of this new preoccupation was rather with
exacting enterprise, situated on one those hypothetical treasure islands
of the frontiers of Pop Art, are of which have set so many genera-
very real beauty. dreaming and on
tions of children
which various picturesque figura-
tions replaced traditional map re-
Villeglé, Jacques Mahé de la ferences. Jan Voss's paintings also
(Quimper, 1926). Pop Art 1. Of all abound in adventures, everyday
the 'poster-lacerators' Villeglé is and fantastic, and if they lead us to
the one who has proved himself any kind of treasure it is that of
most obsessed with the ready- paradise regained.
made aspect of this activity. Thus,
it was his idea to give world-wide Vostell, Wolf (Leverskusen, Ger-
recognition to the anonymous many, 1932). Pop Art 1. 'Lacerated
poster-lacerator, the artist who posters', 'mix-ups' of photographs,
raises theproduct of laceration and scrambles of television transmis-
the successive manipulators of this sions. Happenings of every kind,
work, to the level of a 'work of 'concrete casts' of objects, maquet-
art', by his appellation 'anonymous tes of large cities have for Vostell
laceration'. At the same time as he the common denominator 'dé-
showed a particularly revealing collage' ('torn poster'). In his eyes
concern with composition in his in fact, all these activities form part
designs of overlapping letters and of the same challenge thrown
images, he produced further proof down before the destructive forces
of his sensibility in his great refine- perpetually at work in the world
ment of colour. and owe their sole justification to
this challenge. It is this dramatic
Visual Poetry. Starting out dimension and also his overwhelm-
from the combination of two ele- ing sincerity which prevent Vostell
ments of the ready-made, illustra- from falling into the confusing agi-
tion (mostly photographic) and tation which a Joseph Bcuys seems
graffiti, visual poetry opened the to favour.
door to all the temptations of a
kind of childish Pop Art. Almost
alone, jean François Bory (b.l938)
avoided such allurements and de-
veloped original and lyrical work
in two and three dimensions with a
humour not devoid of discipline.
15»
Warhol. CampbeWs Soup Can. 1965. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York.
Weiss. Orestes again. 1974.

Wesselmann.
'Chamber-paintinç* 14.
1%9.
WAR HOI.

Warhol. Clouds à la Leo Castelli Gallery (New York). 1%6.

Warhol, Andy (Pittsburg, those who compose at the 'Factory'

Pennsylvania, 1927). Pop Art 2. his invariable day and night entour-
More than any other Pop artist age of nymphomaniac cover-girls
Andy Warhol has succeeded in and drugged pederasts. From time
keeping his pledge,namely that of to time the colour combinations are
raising the ready-made to an in- changed, but there is no Hmit to the
dustrial dignity. In fact, since 1962 editions or their numbering and
his picture-making activity has Warhol reserves the right to pull
been Hmited to choosing in the first fresh prints every time he needs
place a photograph w^hich catches money to finance a film produc-
his eye in a newspaper or tion. The
first ones date back to

magazine. He then sends this to a 1963, and ever since they have
silk-screen studio to have it en- occupied an increasing importance
larged by that medium to the de- in his output — to the detriment of
sired format so that finally when his painting activities. Apart from
the frame is returned to him with Warhol's choice of an image,
initial
the silk-screen transfer, he can de- his intervention is almost nil (mere-
cide where the colours are to go. ly the decisions relating to format
All that then remains is to have as and colour) in the genesis of the
many prints made as the painter work of art. It is readily under-
wants. Warhol is satisfied to leave standable that such a procedure,
the task of the final operation to unprecedented in the art world, has

M4
 WATTS

profoundly impressed a whole gen- mercial success that he has con-

eration of artists eager to discover
an aesthetic, perhaps ethical guide-
line concerning the ready-made.
Naturally the advocates of the
unique work of art and traditional
pictorial media would have every
reason to protest if the character of
the 'subjects' — a mere list of
which gives some idea of their
diversity — chosen by Warhol had
not provided them with a still grea-
ter grounds for indignation. The
year 1962, that of Warhol's irresis-
tible break-through, brutally im-
posed on the art-market the celeb-
ration of Campbell's soup can, the
Coca-Cola bottle, the one or two-
dollar bill, an airmail postage
stamp, faces of Marilyn Monroe,
Liz Taylor and Elvis Presley. In
fronted the wealthy American
middle-class with the obsessive and
repeated presence on their walls of
what could prove most threatening
to internal security —
images of
violence, emptiness and death,
which, though not explicitly di-
rected against the 'have's', never-
theless releases at every point in
their compostion, the most baleful
of spells. One day, quitting the role
of harmless dandy which he likes to
play (and which leads hirri to de-
clare for example that 'Everything
is pretty' or again 'Pop Art means
loving things'), Warhol acknow-
ledged that in a number of his
pictures there was nothing but the
'death and destruction of American
life'. To infer from this a systema-

1963 followed the portrait series of tic denunciation of 'the American

the thirteen Most Wanted Men (for way of life' on Warhol's part would
'theft', 'murder', 'automobile acci- be, to say the least, hazardous. It

dents', 'race riots', 'air disasters', would seem, on the contrary, that
'electric chairs') and also the picture Warhol, perfectly conscious of the
extracted from a vampire film with deadly significance of his work,
Bela Lugosi. In 1964 came the behaves neither as a moralist nor a
'Flowers' series, the images of the prophet but as a child terrified by
young widow, Jackie Kennedy, what he has discovered in everyday
The Kennedy Family, Brillo pads, images and is prepared by every
— the latter executed mostly in available means to exorcise in —
three-dimensions, the size of the and through these images death —
originals. To all of which we have and its sinister attendants.
in 1965 the mere addition of
(atomic) 'explosions' and the por- Watts, Robert (Burlington,
trait of Marlon Brando. In 1966 we Iowa, 1929). Pop Art
and 2.1

have the wall-paper, featuring From his which,

cows' heads, the Clouds (plastic
pillows inflated with helium) and
the artist's self-portraits. Quite re-
cently and simultaneously were
added effigies of Chairman Mao
and society figures —
the latter, of
course, sold at prohibitive prices.
is not in fact the least of the
Assemblages
from 1960, used sounds, lights and
movements, to signatures of fam-
ous artists which in 1966 he trans-
cribed with the aid of neon, via his
plexiglass sandwiches and chrome-
plated lead hot-dogs, Robert Watts
It was one of the most inventive of
the Pop artists.

paradoxes of Andy Warhol's com-

 WEISS

Weiss, Hugh (Philadelphia, to police torture, his 'spokesman'

Pennsylvania, 1925). Pop Art 2. replies more often than not, like
Far from any desire to illustrate any Henri Michaux's Un Certain
controversial catechism, Hugh Plume* with an irrepressible yawn.
Weiss mobihzes all the resources of And all this takes place in a kind of
hallucination and humour to de- twilight atmosphere where a bitter-
nounce various forms of oppres- sweet glow augurs no good.
sion. For to abuses of authority as
* Un Certain Plume. Plume is a character
invented by the French poet Henri
Michaux (b.l899) in a prose work of
thatname. It belongs to the 'literature of
the absurd'. There is a strong current of
satire and black humour in this witty
book. WJS
Wesselmaim. Bathtub Collage No. 3. 1%3.
Collection Ludwig, Wallrai Richartz Musuem, Cologne.
 WI.SSiLMANN

Wesley. Let*s get out

of the Hall. 1971.
Robert Elkon Gallery,
New York.

Wesley, John (Los Angeles, bear on two problems directly con-

California, 1928). Pop Art 2. cerning the aesthetic significance of
Whether he is decorating furniture Pop Art - first, its relation with
with bearded men and pregnant collage and then the simplification
women on bicycles or arranging of the image. It was in fact only
his paintings flowered
inside after a long, intense and devoted
frames Hke bonbon-boxes, friezes practice in collage that Wesselmann
with pin-up girls, often like arrived at his brilliant and sumptu-
Warhol's soup cans, and more or ous Pop painting of these latter
less mixed with images of cows, years. Of Pop
the five great artists
bears, turkeys, chimpanzees or of New York, Wesselmann is the
squirrels, this New York Califor- only one who deliberately estab-
nian seems to redouble his precau- lishes a link with the glorious tradi-
tions to reassure his pubHc. But tion of modern painting. When
neither the childish style of the therefore in the décor of his Great
drawing, the insipid colour nor the American Nudes he introduced re-
apparent silliness of the composi- productions of Matisse, Mondrian,
tion can hide for long the fact that Renoir, even of the Mona Lisa, it
John Wesley is a Pop artist of was far from being a gesture of
consummate skill and that his pre- defiance such as we find in Lichten-
tended ingenuousness provides stein or of indifference as a Warhol,
him with a means of showing up but a sincere act of homage, even if
certain social aberrations - zoophi- rendered with a smile. In 1959 he
ly, to give an example. took a slep of the greatest impor-
tance since all his work up to the
Wesselmann, Tom (Cincinnati, present stems from he juxtap- it:

Ohio, 1931). Pop Art 1 and 2. As oses fragments of colour photo-

Abstraction depending on its indi- graphic adverts, cut out from
vidual merits, Wesselmann's work magazines, with female nudes de-
brings the most revealing light to picted in a caricatural style. The
^7
WESTERMANN
dialogue thus established between and 1967, succeeded in establishing
the female nude and the object of in most dazzling manner the
the
current consumer product is absolute identity between the aes-
grafted onto the dialogue between thetic reality (the painting) and the
the painting and the collage, in erotic reaHty (the woman). With
such an obvious way that we are this settled, it became possible for
taking no Hberty with the facts him to look on everything that
when we conclude that in Wessel- surrounded his female subject no
mann's eyes the painting composes longer as a hostile presence hem-
a single unity with the woman's med in by horrible things such such
body. The whole of the artist's as telephones, TV-sets, radiators,
subsequent development obeys this refrigerators or baths, but hence-
relationship between the female forward as a friendly décor. Thus it

body and the outer world. And is no accident that in the admirable
around the nude or the painting, series of Bedroom Paintings inaugu-
this exterior world passes succes- rated in 1967 and of such 'retro'
sively through the following charm, the things that surround the
phases: first, represented by two- woman's body and Wesselmann
dimensional photo-collage, then has painted with such affection are
three-dimensional collage of real cushions, furs, jewels, oranges,
objects, before being - for a brief ash-trays and roses.
period - totally eHminated, and,
finally, as has now been the case for Westermann, H. C. (Los
some years, translated in pictorial Angeles, CaHfornia, 1922).
terms. In this succession of diffe- Through and expressly
his poetic
rent solutions, we
could be justifi- Assemblage, Wes-
irrational use of
ably tempted to read the vagaries of a termann has exercised a profound
unique conflict between the picto- influence, not only in Chicago
rial tradition and the burden of the where he long resided, but in
modern world. There is another California and even on Claes Old-
reason which should not escape our enburg whom he doubtless encour-
attention, however tenuous the aged to lend an attentive ear to his
link that can be made between him own phantasms.
and the other Pop artists. It is this:
as opposed to the latter, Wessel- Whitman, Robert (New York,
mann - and he makes no attempt to 1935). Pop Art 1. Associated with
hide the fact - has no desire to paint the Happening movement from the
products of consumer society. start (The American Moon, 1960)
What he really likes to paint are Robert Whitman has since made
female nudes, whole or part: feet, his mark through his Environ-
breasts, lips or even the smoke ments composed of curtains, mir-
exhaled from lush lips like a confes- rors, TV-screens or windows on to
sion. Thus, by a process of elimina- which films are projected showing
tion, leaving only the space round women absorbed in various occu-
this body so passionately celeb- pations, intimate or not - as the
rated, Wesselmann, between 1965 case may be.

158
 Zr.BKA

Wieland, Joyce (Toronto, 1931). sifiable, the astonishing work of

Pop Art 2. Joyce Wieland is one of WilHam T. Wiley - which ranges

the most original exponents of Pop from Funk art to Conceptual Art, -
Art and her Pop work emerges as shows an awareness of the prob-
the most remarkable in the whole lems of Pop art from which it
of Canada. She attracted
British escapes for the most part with an
by the ease and
attention initially adroit turn-about.
lyricism with which she adapted
the qualities of the cinema and Wolman, Gil Joseph (Paris,
animated strip cartoon time- 1929). Pop Art 1. By a selotape
sequences to painting or combine- process which consists of unstick-
painting, either for organic ing words or images from a printed
metamorphoses or in connection page with the aid of gummed strips
with sea or air disasters. Next she and transferring them on to
devoted all her artistic resources to another backing, Wolman has,
celebrate the greater glory of Cana- since 1963, initiated a poetic variant
da and to restore the traditional of 'lacerated posters'.
feminine craft of quilting to a place
of honour. She translated not only Zebra. Founded in Hamburg,
the words of the Canadian Nation- 1965, this group of painters owes
al Anthem but also the lip- very little in fact to Pop Art and a

positions involved in its singing great deal to a realism - sophisti-

and the fragmentation of the pic- cated in Dieter Asmus (b.l939),
ture in successive images in terms hallucinatory in Peter Nagel
of appliqué on fabric and embroid- (b.l941), photographic in Nikolaus
ery on counterpanes and quilted Stortenbecker (b.l940) and trivial
cushions. in Dietmar Ullrich (b.l940) who,
incidentally, explains: 'The Zebra is
Wiley, William T. (Bedford, In- our animal because it is untame-
diana, 1937). By definition unclas- able.'

M9
 Acknowledgements
Our thanks are due not only to the artists themselves for their
valuable co-operation but also, and especially, to the following:
Umberto Allemandi, Jun Ebara, Otto Hahn, Ragnar von
Holten, Yolande Lefèvre, Jocelyn de Noblet, Danièle Ouzilou,
Pierre Restany, Pâquerette Villeneuve, the Phyllis Kind Gallery
of Chicago and, in Paris, the follow^ing galleries - Bellechasse,
MathiasPels, Y von Lambert, des Quatre Mouvements, Ileana

Sonnabend and Darthea Speyer.

WITHDRAWN
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Public Libran^-
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benefits theU
sale of this material

Iconographie sources

Studio Hartland, Amsterdam: 19 - borough Fine Art Ltd., London: 96

Shopplein Studio, San Francisco:
21 b - Paul Bijtebier, Brussels: 30-
Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris:
43-K. Baum: 46 - Sidney Janis
Gallery, New
York: 55 - Ann
Munchow, Aachen: 58, 92, 101,
149 - Tate Gallery, London: 72,
133 - André Morain, Paris: 74 -
Enrico Cattaneo: 75 - Leo Castelli
Gallery, New York: 89 - Peter
Moore, New York: 90 - Marl-
- Geoffrey Clements, New York:
I
106 - Eric PolHtzer, New York:
109 a - Goodman: 109 b-Beatrice
Hatala: 110 - Rheinisches Bildar-
chiv, Cologne: 111, 130 - Edward
Meneeley, New York: 127 -Daniel
Pype, Paris: 128 - Galerie Ileana
Sonnabend, Paris: 129 - Howard
Harrison, New York: 143 - Sabine
Weiss, Paris: 153 b - Rudolph Bur-
khardt: 154.

i6o
 BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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i An Illustrated Dictionary of

£3 POPART
José Pierre