Artist: Group Show
Title: The Pop Image: Prints and Multiples
Authors: Judith Goldman with essays by Ronny Cohen, Mignon Nixon, Hubertus Raben, and Christopher Sweet
Year: 1994
ISBN: 089797-104-3
Publisher: Marlborough Graphics / Marlborough Gallery, Inc.
Book Format: Paperback, 11 5/8 x 9 3/4 inches, 127 pages, 80 color plates
Beginning November 9, 1994, Marlborough Graphics, New York will present The Pop Image: Prints and Multiples, an exhibition of over 100 prints and multiples (3-dimensional objects) from the period 1960-1971. The exhibition will be international in scope, including artists from England, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, South America and The United States.
The Pop Image: Prints and Multiples follows the development of the Pop aesthetic through works of proto-Pop artists such as Dine, Johns, Marisol, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rivers, and Segal, and culminates with works by Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, Warhol, and Wesselmann. The exhibition thoroughly chronicles the movement, from Johns' Flags, which begins to question the difference between reality and the printed image, to Warhols' Soup Cans series which combines elements of Pop fascination with advertising, series repetition, appropriation, and "authorless" objectivity.
Special to this show is the inclusion of a group of international artists who expanded the original American movement into their own countries. Works by Hamilton, Hockney, Kitaj, Polke, Raysse, Richter, and Vostell illustrate the impact of quintessentially American motifs such as urbanity, commercialism, dynamism on the European sensibility, often using bold advertising and cartoon images. Other American trends such as the aestheticisation of junk and the iconic treatment of everyday objects find a responsive chord in multiples by Arman and Christo.
Some highlights of the show include proto-Pop pieces such as Duchamp's LHOOQ Shaved, important later works such as Rauschenberg's Booster, Jasper Johns' Color Numerals: Figures O to 9 (a suite of ten color lithographs), Hamilton's My Marilyn, Warhol's Cagney and rare early prints by Dine, Hockney, Rosenquist and the German Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus portfolio. Also included are multiples: Oldenburg's London Knees, Wrapped Der Spiegel magazine by Christo, Untitled 1970 by Arman, Phantom by Vostell, Liquid Cup by Kagoshima and the individual works from Seven Objects in a Box.
Ephemera produced during the 1960s consisting of posters, gallery announcements, and early books and portfolios such as Warhol's a la Recherche du Shoe Perdue will be shown.
The language of Pop and the focus of the exhibition is stated by Judith Goldman in an outline for the essay to be included in the catalogue for the exhibition:
"In the 1950s, America prospered. The economy boomed .... High Art and mass culture
This is the background that gave rise to Pop Art-an abundant economy and hermetic abstract art. Pop was the antithesis of Abstract Expressionism and the reaction against it. Pop was accessible, not abstruse. It was plain, blunt, graphic not painterly, impersonal, not emotional or subjective. Pop was open, witty, and fun-loving. It embraced the culture-at-large and celebrated common, popular taste that had been regarded as offensive to highbrows of the 1950s."
An illustrated catalogue with 80 color plates and Judith Goldman's essay with texts by her and others will be available from the gallery.
