Performance / Intervention

Key decade: 1970s
terms: Process Art, Performance Art

1. From Happenings to Performance, 60s to 70s (to now)
   
   A table of non-parallel points
   
   

   	1950s	1960s	1970s	1980+
   contexts	photos of Pollock ptg.	Protests, "Be-Ins"	institutional critique	Museum Politics
   stimuli	John Cage 1958 class	Judson Dance Gp.	Feminism	Identity politics

   
   
   
   1. Pop and Minimalism - similarities
      1. hard-edged, graphic, "iconic"
      2. the trope of industrial production, "performative"
   2. Pop and Minimalism - differences
      1. education of practitioners (Pop commercial, Minimal art hist/ theoretical)
      2. consuming audience
      3. abstraction/ figuration, sculpture/painting, etc.
2. Case Study: "Andrew Warhola," 1928 (?) - Andy Warhol, 1987.
3. Other Pop Artists
   1. Roy Lichtenstein, 1923-1997
   2. James Rosenquist, b. 1933
   3. Claes Oldenburg, b. 1929
   4. George Segal, b. 1924
   5. Marisol, b. 1930
   6. still others: Jim Dine, Tom Wesselman, Mel Ramos, Robert Indiana....

Slide List

Indiana Love 1965-66
Kelly Blue Red Green 1964
Lichtenstein Popeye 1961
Warhol Popeye 1960
Warhol Before & After 1960
Warhol 100 Campbell's Soup Cans 1962
Warhol Marilyn Diptych 1962
Warhol Brillo Boxes 1964 (also Campbell's, del Monte, etc.)
Rosenquist Marilyn Monroe 1 1962
Rosenquist F-111 1965
Lichtenstein Takka-Takka 1962
Lichtenstein Drowning Girl 1963
Lichtenstein Little Big Painting 1965
Segal Cinema 1963
Segal Sunbathers on Rooftop 1963-67
Segal Sunbathers 1963
Marisol Bathers 1961-62
Oldenburg Bedroom Ensemble 1963
Oldenburg Soft Manhattan 1966
Oldenburg Ice Bag, Osaka World's Fair 1970
Wesselman Bathtub Collage 1963

Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Red Green, 1964
Robert Indiana, Love, 1966

His comparison should remind you that hard-edged abstraction (present in "Post-Painterly Abstraction," Minimal Art, and other abstractionists like Kelly who did not belong "officially" to either group) coexisted with Pop art, and the two kinds of painting were deeply engaged with each other.

Andy Warhol, Popeye, 1961
Roy Lichtenstein, Popeye, 1961

Amazingly enough, Warhol and Lichtenstein both began painting cartoon images, each unknown to the other. Everything from Rauschenberg's and Johns's interest in everyday images, and the decisions of television programmers, probably contributed to this "Zeitgeist."

Warhol, 100 Cans, 1962
Warhol, At work in Factory (photo)
Warhol in Stable Gallery, 1964 (photo)
Cambell's canvases on view at Ferus (photo)

I've argued that Warhol began with a "production aesthetic," before "Pop" had been named. What did Warhol first call this new art? How did the "production aesthetic" of the early works and installations get converted to the consumer aesthetic we now associate with Pop?

Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, (diptych), 1963
Rosenquist, Marilyn Monroe I, 1962
Oldenburg, Bedroom Ensemble, 1963
Wesselman, Bathtub Collage, 1963
Segal, Sunbathers, 1963

Called "The New Realists" in a famous 1962 exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery, the Pop artists focused on the nexus between the commodity and desire. Were their works affirmative or critical of "Madison Avenue's" production of an unstable subject who wants, then needs, a new commodity to complete themselves?