A plastic picturesque: notions of public as projected through the works of Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol

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Content A PLASTIC PICTURESQUE:
NOTIONS OF PUBLIC AS PROJECTED THROUGH THE WORKS OF
CLAES OLDENBURG AND ANDY WARHOL
by
Gina Marie Conway
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC, ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Gina Marie Conway
ii
Acknowledgements
I would first and foremost like to thank my parents for their continuous love
and support. I could not have continued my educational endeavors and the pursuit of
my passion without your encouragement. Thank you Joe for your patience and
understanding during this long process. I would also like to thank the committee
members involved in this process, Karen Moss, Anne Bray, Caryl Levy and Dean
Ruth Weisberg. Thank you for your guidance, words of encouragement, and
expertise. Most importantly, thank you Sarah and Tom for your inspiration.
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract v
Foreword vi
Introduction 1
Introduction Endnotes 4
Chapter 1 5
Claes Oldenburg and the Infamous Andy Warhol 7
The Art of Abstraction 9
The Commercial Artist 12
Chapter 1 Endnotes 14
Chapter 2 15
The Store 18
Oldenburg’s Encounter With the Public: By Way of Public 20
Performance
Claes Oldenburg: Multiples in Retrospect 24
The Monument 27
Chapter 2 Endnotes 33
Chapter 3 35
The Birth of the Banal 36
Associative Recognition 37
The Age of Mechanization 38
Icons in Repetition 40
Pop Philosophy According to Warhol 41
The Manufactured Image of the Celebrity and the 44
“Mythic” Status of Andy Warhol
The Factory 47
Films 49
Andy Underground 51
Chapter 3 Endnotes 54
iv
Chapter 4 56
The Influences of Pop: Maurizio Cattelan 58
Murakami and Pop Appropriation 63
Chapter 4 Endnotes 66
Chapter 5 67
Reinventing the Monument 67
The Continuation of Andy 70
The Past, Present and Future States of Public Art and 72
the Pop Sensibility
Chapter 5 Endnotes 78
Bibliography 79
v
Abstract
_____________________________________________________________________
This thesis explores how the Pop artists innovatively synthesized the ideas of
popular and public by infiltrating the public realm on a more direct level through
performance, monumental sculpture, and constructing the artist persona. Claes
Oldenburg and Andy Warhol became catalysts who demystified the elitist attitude of
the art world by creating an approachable and tangible experience for the audience.
Oldenburg’s monuments questioned societal transience, and the transformative,
sentimental, and accessible components of pop culture imagery. Warhol challenged
the mythic status of the traditional artist by revealing the inner-workings of the artistic
process, creating a persona that elevated him to a status of artistic desirability.
Throughout the next five decades, the artist would continue to encourage the public to
react, relate, and respond to their media-driven environment. These concepts further
synthesized in the post-Pop generations, including artists Maurizio Cattelan and
Takashi Murakami, inevitably effecting how the public views and experiences art.
vi
Foreword
The Two Andys, Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro, 30 ft. x 30 ft., 2006.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, I had always wondered what the wonderfully
fabulous life of Andy Warhol must have been like. His image, persona, and works in
repetition always intrigued my artistic sensibility. It was not until I saw the image of
The Two Andys, 2006, created by Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro that I would soon
discover the topic of my Master’s thesis. The mural depicts Andy Warhol and
Andrew Carnegie appearing in a hair salon and undergoing a transformative
makeover, almost consumed in a sea of vibrant blue and pink polka dots. Although
vii
living in very different time periods, these two men are very iconic figures in the
Pittsburgh community: Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), the preeminent industrial steel
mogul, was the notable mastermind behind many cultural centers including the
Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History, and Andy Warhol (1928-1987), is
arguably Carnegie Mellon University’s perhaps proudest and most quizzical graduate.
Sparking endless conversation among the citizens of Pittsburgh and the everyday
passerby downtown, the mural represents the significant changes that Pittsburgh has
undergone in the past century, a makeover in the works, from a recession in the steel
industry to efforts in revitalizing Pittsburgh’s historical past and prominent future as a
center for arts and culture. Most importantly the mural brought forth the idea of Pop
and public by representing art historical references in contemporary society while
underscoring the powerful impact that art can have in the public realm.
1
Introduction
_____________________________________________________________________
A Plastic Picturesque - Where the artificial images extracted from popular
culture, and appropriated with a Pop sensibility, seem to appear more
desirable and picturesque than the actual person or object itself.
Pop Art that emerged in the early 1960s was the first post-war movement that
was approachable, accessible and no longer restricted to elite art world participants
and critics. This thesis investigates the role of the Pop artists as preeminent catalysts in
encouraging audience engagement with their artwork by appropriating imagery that
the masses could understand. Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol’s relationships with
the public are exemplified through their experiments with public performance,
sculpture, and the development of the artist persona. It is most important to
investigate these notions of public as this art movement piqued the interest of a larger
viewing audience, unlike any previous movement, and would continue to influence
those artists of the Post-Pop era. Furthermore, Pop Art successfully challenged
traditional notions of the artist and process, encouraging their audience to view the
world around them with new hope and perspective in the age of media. With this, the
audience was exposed to commonalities foreseen in the fast paced consumerist culture
and could view societal concerns and trends through a visual aesthetic. Throughout
the next five decades, the artist would continue to construct a relationship with their
2
audience, encouraging the public to react, relate and respond to their media-driven
environment.
Both Oldenburg and Warhol experimented with the notion of “popular” culture
and “public” as they became catalysts in breaking down the elitist attitude of the art
world. By projecting their artwork into the public sphere, the Pop artists began to
innovatively synthesize the ideas of popular culture in their art forms, creating more
approachable and tangible experiences for the viewer producing monumental
sculpture, large-scale iconic paintings and constructing artistic personae. Both
Oldenburg and Warhol created new relationships with the public and new spaces for
audience engagement.
Specifically, Oldenburg chose to explore the transformative and metamorphic
quality of natural and man made objects through hard and soft forms. He projected his
artwork and art experiences into the public realm by utilizing public space as a stage
for interactive performances. He then began to incorporate large-scale sculpture into
the public realm which heightened the idea of that the art object is both accessible and
sentimental. Through his personal engagement with public space and the public as
audience, Oldenburg challenged the American landscape and the perspective of this
perceived environment. Furthermore, Warhol utilized the artist persona, publicity, and
public engagement to heighten his superstar status. He proposed that the artist,
through exposure and accessibility, could infiltrate the realm of the celebrity. By
appropriating popular images extracted from media, constructing the artist persona,
and provocative filmmaking, he shocked and captured the attention of the public
3
which elevated his artistic desirability. Warhol proved that the artist could infiltrate
the realm of the celebrity through increased media exposure and accessibility to the
mass audiences.
Following an in-depth investigation of the work of Oldenburg and Warhol, this
thesis will explore various concepts that further synthesized in the post-Pop generation
of artists who also became interested in the convergence of popular and public. This
lineage reemerged in 1980s with a renewed interest in incorporating popular and
commercial forms into the artwork. Jeff Koons began to explore the public realm as
space for showcasing his artwork on a large-scale, courting the attention of the
passerby and continuing in the lineage of Oldenburg's objects of monumental
proportions.
The Pop aesthetic can be further traced through the work of a more
contemporary generation. Artists including Maurizio Cattelan and Takashi Murakami
continue to appropriate popular media imagery and iconic figures, appealing to a
wider range of audiences. They also carried on the persona of the artist, although
appear more openly candid with their motives and production techniques. Murakami
created a factory-like atmosphere, comprised of a team of assistants to aid in the
production of his artwork. This in turn has brought forth much popularity for the artist
thus creating a resurgence in high market values for their works. Therefore, they have
created a relationship with the public through the appropriation of popular and
relatable imagery and have made themselves more accessible, thus following closely
in the footsteps of their Pop-predecessors.
4
Introduction Endnotes
1. A Plastic Picturesque is a personal concept referring to the notion of plasticity
and artificiality of Pop images and modeled after Warhol’s idea of the “plastic
inevitable” where the replicated or “fake” image is more real than the object itself.
5
Chapter 1
_____________________________________________________________________
The Pop artist turns to that which is close at hand, concrete. The emphasis is
upon the tangible experience, seeking an aesthetic response that, though
simple, encompasses both the intellectual and the sensible—the perceptual and
experiential.
1
- Carol Anne Mahsun
Pop Art directly reflected the nation’s shift in identity post World War II from
a country’s excessive spending on defense and the military, to thousands of products
flooding the marketplace. The increased focus on consumerist production ultimately
resulted in the consumer culture of the 1960s and courted the attention of the emerging
Pop artist. Artists working during this time period included the Pop artists, Neo-
Dadaists, Minimalists and Conceptual artists who appropriated imagery or borrowed
forms which put into question the originality of the completed work. Some of these
artists would even leave the fabrication process to a hired team, ultimately leaving the
work untouched by the artist’s hand. According to French Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp,
it was not in the fabrication or the object that was important but the “discovery” and
conception that made the work of art. Therefore, the Pop artists appropriated images
from their immediate environment and incorporated them in a mechanistic and
impersonalized manner. The interest in repetitive forms would continue throughout
the Minimalist movement, specifically through the sculptural works of Donald Judd.
The serial reordering of the Pop and Minimalist movement closely reflected the
abundance of consumer products available in the consumerist marketplace. However,
6
the Minimalist aesthetic appeared completely abstracted and devoid of popular
imagery.
Working in the 1950s, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg appeared to be
the precursors to Pop Art and only slightly deflected the categorical Pop label.
However, Johns and Rauschenberg were pioneers to the 1960’s phenomenon avoiding
the introspective and more traditional notions of art and began focusing on the tangible
and accessible. As a result of growing up during the depression era in Texas,
Rauschenberg revealed, “If I was going to survive, I had to appreciate the most
common aspects of life.”
2
Johns anticipated the Pop aesthetic through his American
Flag, 1954-55, and Rauschenberg used non-traditional materials and found objects to
create innovative paintings, sculptures and assemblages. Both Johns and
Rauschenberg successfully combined the gestural brushstrokes of the artist with the
mechanically produced image. Their artwork formed a bridge between gestural
painting of the Abstract Expressionists, and the popular imagery derived from the Pop
artists.
Most importantly a divide existed between the Pop artist’s and the Abstract
Expressionist’s relationship between the artist, the artwork, and the public.
Simultaneously, this new breed of artist began to utilize various marketing strategies
appropriated from advertising methodologies to ensure the immediate success of their
artwork. All together, the unexpected and perhaps unforeseen works of the Pop artists
had the innate ability to reveal the artistic potential of mundane objects available in the
immediacy of the consumerist culture.
7
With their more accessible art, the Pop artists courted the American public
through reconfirming and disavowing belief systems, political changes, gender roles
and the shift in social identity in the American culture post World War II. Pop art
merged with societal trends and not only showcased the artificiality and plasticity of
Hollywood and media sensationalism, but also actively engaged with it. As a result, it
not only became one of the most radical art movements, but also highly influenced
market trends. Interactions between art and the public presented in the works of
Oldenburg and Warhol, are apparent in how they: present art as commodity through
mechanistic and familiar forms; re-contextualize public space as a setting and stage for
artistic performance and examine the public construct of the artist’s identity.
Ultimately, the work of the Pop artists resounded in showcasing the artificiality of the
American landscape, creating a plastic-like picturesque.
Claes Oldenburg and the Infamous Andy Warhol
Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol, two prominent artists of the Pop Art
movement, infiltrated the public sector by challenging and redefining the traditional
notions of the artist and relationships between art and public. Oldenburg and Warhol
contradicted the traditional role of the artist by challenging notions of the artist’s
persona as an art form, while simultaneously suggesting that art could be tangible,
accessible, marketable and participatory for both the art critics and the masses. These
8
two significant artists of the Pop movement explore the impenetrable notions of public
through the appropriation of public imagery and present the banal and mundane as
high art forms to the public at large. Notions of public are explored through
experimentation of the multiple in repetition, public performance through audience
engagement, presenting the artist as celebrity and the delineation between art and
consumerism. Through their relationships with the public and the consumerist culture
they have heightened the plasticity of the American landscape through the
incorporation of the mundane into critical art practice.
Oldenburg had proven to be highly influenced by John Cage and his theories
on the function of art and the role of the artist in the contemporary landscape, which
presented art as a kind of activity rather than an object as an end in itself. Therefore,
Cage determined that art should not be judged as a medium by pre-determined norms.
3
As a result, Oldenburg chose to organically create an art that was responsive to the
physical environment, welcoming transformation in the complexity of form and
material while encompassing the complexity of nature and man-made objects.
4
As a
result, Oldenburg began to project his artwork beyond the realm of the gallery and
museum and appropriated his forms in the context of the public sphere through his
performances and construction of objects and monuments. Although publicity has
encouraged his international success, his artistic process and product manifests from
the creation of a personal relationship with the physical landscape in which he creates
contemporary monuments. His artwork provides a nexus of absurdity and banality of
the American environment, which in turn challenges and evokes an emotive public
response.
9
Unlike Oldenburg, Warhol relied on publicity and public engagement as a way
to further his relationship with the American public. Through repetitive imagery,
Warhol closely engages the audience with the artificiality of Hollywood and the
provocative images of death and destruction appropriated from the media. Warhol
forces the viewer to confront their fears and misconceptions, forcing the audience to
numb themselves from the repetitive nightmarish scenes extracted from media and
confronts the audience with a ruptured yet accurate image of reality. Warhol had
proven to create a unique relationship with the public and the subjectivity produced
from mass society. His artwork was meant for the American public appealing to a
mass audience through appropriating objects of mass consumption.
5
Warhol projected
the plasticity of the American landscape all while conjuring notions of the abstract
through anonymity. Additionally, Warhol’s personal life remained private while his
public persona continued to fuel his art career and pique the curiosity of the public
audience. Together, Warhol and Oldenburg would emerge as the preeminent artists of
the Pop movement, creating a further divide between themselves and the Abstract
Expressionists.
The Art of Abstraction
Oldenburg, Warhol, and the other Pop artists distinctly removed themselves
from the dominant art practice of the 1940s and 1950s. Abstract Expressionism
10
emerged as a truly American style, which proved to be emotive in technique and
theory. This new movement grew out of a period of war and turmoil which created an
atmosphere of isolation and alienation of not only the self, but also formed a distinct
separation from traditional aesthetic forms of expression and representation. The
Abstract Expressionists’ general disregard for the public maintained the already
hostile relationship between the artist and the viewer making art synonymous with
elitism, which ultimately restricted their audience to those of an elite group or art
world participants and critics. Not unlike the Abstract Expressionists, Oldenburg was
also concerned with emotive expression through aesthetics in his early work; he was
aware that this ideal could be aesthetically achieved through abstraction.
The artwork derived from an intellectual and existential thought and would fill
the void of devastation experienced by many of the major European centers of the art
world. This new school of thought, sometimes referred to as the New York School,
had made itself known as one of the major movements among the international art
scene drawing upon writings from Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
Deriving from the Surrealist interest in automatism, psycho-analysis and exploring the
unconscious, the Abstract Expressionists were interested in exploring action painting
as a way to liberate one-self through expression to create new artistic forms.
Abstract Expressionism had proven to be a process rather than a particular
style, with an emphasis on the liberating act of painting rather than product.
Ultimately, the loosely associated members of the movement became categorized as
the “action painters” including Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock and the
“color field painters” such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. The color field
11
artists predominantly focused on the gestural motion and the intensity of hue rather
than the performative element of the action painting, but both reached towards
complete abstraction.
Pop Art was a return to representational and visual communication with the
masses. These artists utilized accessible images derived from their own personal
landscape and the landscape of advertising and media. The Pop artists absorbed the
monotony and seriality of consumer productivity, whereas the Abstract Expressionists
deflected the commercially driven urban landscape. The Abstract Expressionist found
solace in working alone with their medium merging their personal emotions and their
execution. However, the Pop artists experimented with virtually eliminating the hand
of the artist, leaving an almost mechanized result. Most importantly, the mechanized
product and repetitious imagery reflected the bombardment of images extracted from
the media attesting to the American sensibility and threshold for temptation.
Therefore, Pop identified with a larger public audience then their predecessors which
“not only reflected important developments of this time but also correspondingly
validated that shift in consumption in the realm of cultural discourse.”
6
The Pop artists
began to absorb the world around them rather than deflect the bombardment of images
in age of industrialization, willfully engaging in very public social events, which
ultimately elevated the status of the artist to that of the untouchable celebrity. The
new consumerist culture and attention towards production also caused a resurgence in
the field of design and commercial illustration which would further attest to the Pop
sensibility.
12
The Commercial Artist
A major development in the Pop Art movement resulted in the artist’s ability to
immerse themselves within the sphere of media sensationalism. A prior engagement
with careers in commercial illustration highly influenced the development of the Pop
aesthetic. Many of the Pop artists supported themselves by commercial illustration in
which they familiarized themselves with marketing strategies including tactics in
advertising and window displays. Their marketing strategies proved to be an
intersection between art and commerce, “a practice that reinforced both the
commodity status of art and the value of advertising.”
7
For example, Andy Warhol
began his career post graduation, from the Carnegie Institute, within the fashion and
advertising industries, ultimately designing for the department store Bergdorf
Goodman and working on various projects for Tiffany’s. However, Warhol often felt
conflicted when it came to his commercial art career. He would even hide his
commercial art from studio and personal visitors so they would not prejudge him. It
appeared as if he believed that commercial art was not acceptable or good enough.
Similar to Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg found employment
in their early careers within the commercial art world, designing highly effective
window displays that had “captured the sensibility that was so crucial to effective
advertising.”
8
Early in their career the artist learned various tactics in appealing to a
target audience while simultaneously showcasing the product. James Rosenquist, who
was best known for his billboards and window displays, would eventually showcase
large, “flatly-painted close-up images that suggested fragmented billboards” ultimately
13
providing a Pop environment as a backdrop to the mannequins.
9
Meanwhile
Wesselman inspired to become a cartoonist while Oldenberg, who was well-versed in
advertising tactics because of his apprenticeship at an advertising agency, would
ultimately influence his continuing career within the arts.
The Pop artists became well aware of the strategies that must be utilized in
order to become successful as they began to take an active role in managing their
careers in the fast-paced art market. They clearly understood that the success of the
artwork depended on the gallery representation and one’s ability to manage one’s
finances. It was also apparent that the artist must exhibit his work in a reputable
gallery in order to gain notoriety to ensure immediate success in the art world.
According to Warhol, a reputable gallery is one “that looks out for the artist, promotes
him, and sees to it that his work is shown in the right way to the right people.”
10
Specifically, Warhol proved to be well versed in the gallery bureaucracy and the rising
market values of art. He concluded that one “needs a good gallery so that the ‘ruling
class’ will notice you and spread enough confidence in your future so collectors will
buy you, whether for five hundred dollars or fifty thousand.”
11
Promotion and
marketing had proven to be a key element in an artist’s name recognition. More
specifically, Warhol had dreams of being represented by the Castelli Gallery not solely
for business reasons, but rather issues concerning popularity, once again, appropriating
the artist into the realm of celebrity.
12
14
Chapter 1 Endnotes
1. Carol Anne Mahsun, Pop Art and the Critics, (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1987), 29.
2. Arnason, H.H., History of Modern Art, (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2004),
483.
3. Barbara Rose, Claes Oldenburg, (The Museum of Modern Art, New York: New
York Graphics Society Ltd., 1970), 35.
4. Rose, 36.
5. Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, et. al., Art Since 1900: Modernism,
Antimodernism, Postmodernism, (New York: Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2004),
490.
6. Mamiya 133.
7. Mamiya, 137.
8. Mamiya, 134.
9. Mamiya, 137.
10. Andy Warhol & Paul Hackett, Popism: The Warhol Sixties, (New York:
Harcourt, Inc., 1980), 21.
11. Warhol & Hackett, 21.
12. Warhol & Hackett, 21.
15
Chapter 2
If I find myself going to far into my fantasy I pull myself back . . . it always
goes back to a simple experience like riding the subway, and what I try to do is
use my landscape, my own landscape, and try to avoid as much as possible
imaginary landscapes.
1
– Claes Oldenburg
It is more often than not that we are exposed to familiar signs, ultimately
becoming blind to their symbolism and meaning beyond the aesthetic. When these
images are incorporated into a painting or work of art, then their meaning is in
question. Therefore, in reference to Jasper Johns Flag, 1954-55, Carolyn Mahsun has
said: “The repetitive character of the design verges on monotony, but we simply
cannot isolate such factors from our compelling identification with the image, which
means so many different things to each of us.”
1
Exposing the very true nature of art in
contemporary culture reveals that there is no correct answer to the questions proposed
by the artwork. It is the artist’s desire to challenge the perception of the image,
complicating and revealing its inner potential and significance not only for the viewer,
but also to a wider public audience. The Pop artist created work within the interstitial
places between art and life, and never limited their creativity to a one-dimensional
surface. Their efforts are noteworthy in their refusal to accept an image as mundane,
incapable of transformation. This refusal comes as a result of the artist’s continual
aspiration to find meaning beyond the aesthetic, challenging the audiences’ ultimate
perception within the consumerist driven society.
16
It is apparent that these artists are operating,
In an indeterminate area somewhat between art and life, in such a way that the
potential of enrichment of life as art merges inseparably with the possibility of
making the work of art an experience to be enormously more directly felt then
the previous nature of paintings and sculpture ever permitted.
2
Claes Oldenburg’s sculptural forms put into question societal transience, and
the transformative, metamorphic, anthropomorphic, sentimental, and accessible
components of appropriative forms in popular culture. Oldenburg focuses on the
artificiality of life and the manipulation of nature by man, experimenting with man-
made objects in hard and soft forms, while transforming them through metamorphosis.
Specifically, Oldenburg is interested in the objects changeability through material,
exemplified by his experiments with hard and soft sculptural forms. The change in
physical state is related to metamorphosis of every day life in reference to human
commitment, then detachment, and the struggle between the two in order to achieve a
balance. For example, Oldenburg’s manipulation of the double light switch entitled,
Soft Switches, 1964, and Soft Bathtub, 1966, have been transformed into sexually
charged art objects, and appear malleable and suspended in time. Removed from its
mundane context and concept, the object itself has taken on multiple identities and is
no longer limited to mere representation.
In a sense, his images heighten the artificial or three-dimensionality of
sculpture of the consumer environment, its pliability and changeability reflecting the
identity of the American culture in the 1960s. In relation to public reception
Oldenburg suggests, “I’m not making any rules as to how the thing should be
received, you know. The thing that interests me most is that you’ve set up a series of
17
natural possibilities.”
3
Therefore, Oldenburg is not concerned with public reception,
rather he makes various suggestions by transforming everyday objects. In turn, the
metamorphosis of the object challenges the audience’s perception and provokes
questions concerning its viability within a contemporary setting.
In addition, Oldenburg gathers images from his personal landscape, the natural
environment or the physical landscape that has been manipulated by man. He derives
imagery from the human body in response to his environment creating soft and hard
forms, constantly intrigued by metamorphic qualities of the banal. Often, Oldenburg
relies on his own personal landscape by revealing, “I reached a point where I relied on
my own experience, and this experience has a lot to do with my sense of myself as a
physical object, and I felt that it was natural for a sculpture or painter to create a body
image of himself. Or to try to find the image of himself that was true as a body in
space.”
4
Additionally, he concentrates on the object, its material, context and
subjectivity in relation to its physical conditions and environment. His objects are
subject to change just as the nature of media sensationalism echoes the constant
changeability of products flooding the marketplace.
Most importantly, Oldenburg’s art challenged his artistic expression and the
reception of the public as the viewer and audience. Releasing the artistic potential of
the everyday object, its personality beyond the mundane, in turn, forces the viewer to
take a closer look and question the objects viability. Overall, Oldenburg creates
relationships with the public through challenging the idea of art as commodity,
18
experimenting with public performance, and creating art in multiples or through
repetition all while creating interruptions within the public landscape though
monumental sculptures.
The Store
The emergence of Pop Art paralleled the consumer frenzy of its contemporary
culture. The world of food manufacturing was on the rise as an unimaginable amount
of products appeared upon the grocery store shelves. The development of the freezer
in the post war era facilitated or resulted in pre-packaged food, and virtually
eliminated any need for fresh produce. The artwork of the Pop artists seemed to have
an assembly-line effect, much like the pre-packed factory production of frozen foods.
The emphasis on advertising and packaging proved to be more significant than the
product itself, due to manufacturers concentration on marketing rather then
development of the consumer product. Oldenburg’s storefront studio and performance
space exemplifies his experimentation and fascination with everyday products as art
forms and the interactions between the artwork and the consumer.
Open for approximately one year in 1961, located in New York City, The Store
encompassed the idea of the multiple as an art form, which “embodied the populist
idea of making art for ordinary people, accessible in an ordinary way.”
5
The Store,
fully furnished and appearing to be open for commerce, included an array of consumer
goods of familiar objects constructed from unfamiliar material. The art objects were
19
displayed in various cases and shelving units just as they would appear in any store
along the streets of New York City. Candy, shoes, dresses and other simple consumer
goods appeared as prescient art objects waiting to be consumed by the passersby.
However, the objects themselves were plaster forms, some incorporating materials
such as wire and muslin. Visitors were also given various multiples such as plaster-
soaked muslin potato chips, and various candies. However, it is apparent that
Oldenburg has made a clear distinction between the product from which he drew
inspiration and artistic representations. In return, the plasterized forms could not be
mistaken for the actual consumerist product and were indeed recognizable as artworks
for sale.
6
Furthermore, Lawson implies that the The Store mimics the environment,
“translating the reality of the mean streets into an arena of joyful representation in
which relentlessly homey display of handmade replicas of mass-produced objects
created and aura of hope.”
7
In a sense, The Store proved to be a Happening to which
the viewer could come and experience and perhaps consume or purchase a work of art
for a limited period of time. Oldenburg also capitalizes on the idea of using the
familiar storefront as a strategy for marketing ones wares, a technique most often used
amongst the work of his contemporaries. The Store bombarded the viewer with art,
forcing interactions unlikely to occur in a gallery or museum setting and, most
importantly, it questioned the product’s viability in the contemporary art world.
Most importantly the objects were hand-made unlike the mass produced,
machine-made consumer products flooding the market place that created a sense of
homogeneity. Once again, the consumer could take pride in his own mini-art
20
collection while creating interactions through buying and exchanges with the artist
generating interest among the masses, and ultimately suggesting art as commodity. In
a sense, Oldenburg attempts to test the visual parameters of consumer products and
their relationship to the public as the viewer and focusing upon the significance of
such an exchange. Warhol would prove to have little or virtually no distinction
between the product and the generated artwork of seemingly likeness. For example,
Warhol’s Brillo Box, 1964, was a reproduction of the Brillo Box advertisement or
branding, directly silk-screened onto wooden box. The result was hardly
distinguishable from the actual product itself. However, Oldenburg proved to take his
own unique approach in transforming the objects from their original states. Not only
would Oldenburg continue to transform various consumer objects through the use of
plaster but also through experimentation with hard and soft forms of various media.
These sculptural forms would be incorporated as props for various installations and
performances.
Oldenburg’s Encounter with the public: By way of public Performance
During the 1960s many contemporary artists participated in what was known
as events or Happenings, theatrical performances most often stripped of the more
traditional characters, rehearsed dialogue, costumes and narrative development. In
addition, the participants or performers utilized simple props and basic performance
directives unlike more elaborate theatrical stagings.
8
Three major participants in this
21
movement were Allan Kaprow, George Segal, Robert Whitman, Roy Lichtenstein and
Claes Oldenburg, specifically his Autobodies performance in 1963, Los Angeles.
Cecile Whiting describes these performances as having the ability to intervene “in
public space as temporary place markers; they brought sudden and brief attention
either to nondescript sectors of the city such as parking lots, gas stations, and
underpasses, or to facades of newly erected commercial and public institutions from
McDonalds to art museums.”
9
Although brief in nature, “They highlighted, even if
only fleetingly, the new physical forms and spaces of the city, while their ad hoc
nature resisted the deadening functionality of the urban environment.
10
The
environment appeared transformative, creating theatrical stages in the most
unexpected places. Overall, these artists create a fleeting, yet physical engagement
with the public sphere, while encouraging others to do the same through active
participation. Oldenburg continued prominently engaging himself in performance
work between the years of 1960 to 1966. His performance work progressed in stages
as a series of realistic or imaginary actions occurring sequentially, the first work
entitled, Ironworks/Footdeath, 1961. In 1962, he rented a storefront known as “The
Ray Gun Theater” which provided a stage for ten Happenings. As a whole, his
performance work progressed with the inclusion of plots projected through various
themes and perhaps created the most intimate of all of Oldenburg’s performance work.
The third stage of performances emphasized setting from which the actions would be
derived and would include his plaster artworks as props. Oldenburg also created
works to be performed on film rather than in front of a live audience, including Birth
22
of the Flag I, and II, 1974, which entailed an arrangement of events filmed in black
and white and devoid of a soundtrack.
Arriving in Los Angeles from New York City in 1963, Oldenburg settled in the
beach community of Venice for a period of six months. Although he previously
experimented with making small plaster objects, Oldenburg began to focus on
fabricating large-scale objects found around the home in hard and soft forms. The
shift in artistic direction occurred due to his relocation to a larger studio space, which
provided room for large-scale experimentation. Not only did the physicality of the
studio have a direct effect on his artistic production, but the spatial environment and
car culture of Los Angeles also had a direct impact on his work conceptually.
Although rehearsed in various locations, the final performance of the event
entitled Autobodies took place in a parking lot situated behind the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics at 7660 Beverly Boulevard. The hour-long
performance transformed the barren parking lot into a stage in which “’visitors’
automobiles were carefully positioned side by side to form the perimeter of a rectangle
about fifteen cars long and nine cars wide with openings at each corner.”
11
The
audience remained seated in their cars as they watched various liquids such as melting
ice, and soapy water splash against the pavement as the cars maneuvered themselves
through the lot. This occurred while a mixture of horns, radio and sounds of breaking
glass filled the night sky lit by flash lights and flares.
12
The event alluded to the notion
of the drive-in theater, the audience viewing the entertainment while seated
comfortably in their cars. Through Autobodies Oldenburg transforms the parking lot
as a space created to accommodate urban sprawl into a site for engagement.
23
Therefore, Oldenburg inverts the idea of the car as solely a vehicle of transportation by
transforming the mobile environment into a venue for entertainment.
Additionally, Oldenburg selected both foreign and domestic automobiles,
drawing from various models or vehicles available in the mass market, carefully
selecting automobiles that represented the Los Angeles car culture of the 1960s.
Advertisements and billboards depicted cars as having sexual undertones, displaying
women on hoods and going as far as alluding to the car as a substitute bedroom. The
event was visually cohesive as the car exteriors and the participants clothing were
black and white. Fliers also were made to promote the event, with a heading including
the separation of the word autobody into auto and body relating to the automobile and
the auto being an extension of the human body.
Remains of the event are in the form of a score composed of various poems,
allowing future generations to perhaps imagine and re-create the once-in-a-lifetime
event. Although reading like a poem, the words read as both preconceived stage
directions and as random, and arbitrary actions. The audience within the vehicles
participated through blinking headlights, blasting car horns, blinking lights, and
switching radio stations, just if they would if they were uninterrupted in their cars on
any given day.
Cecile Whiting explains, “Oldenburg’s Happening may well have been
informed by performative trends in poetry manifested in readings that restored kinetics
to words by emphasizing how the body enunciated with sound, breathing, and
gesture.”
13
Active participation from volunteers further connected the audience with
the machine, enacting on critical dialogue concerning urban and technological
24
advancement. Additionally, “The equal treatment given bodies, cars, and props as
enunciating entities and the exploitation of chance associations during the Happening
invited the audience to consider Autobodies as visual and aural enactment of
contemporary poetry in three-dimensional space.”
14
During the early 1960s
Oldenburg was affiliated with a group of avant-garde artists, poets, musicians and
dancers known as Fluxus who would arrange scores for short events performed as
concerts. Oldenburg would have been aware of Georg Brecht’s Motor Vehicle
Sundown Event, 1960, in which each participant manning a vehicle would be given a
list of actions including everyday automobile operations--such as turning on the
headlights or honking--that would be performed unison as a collective car concert.
Similarly, the parking lot set as a stage for Oldenburg’s Autobodies included arbitrary
movement, sound, and directives transforming the space from an empty asphalt grid
into a performance, which appear as random events. In both performances the
mundane asphalt parking lot comes alive during the interactive performance,
encouraging the audience and their surroundings to merge the body and the machine.
Claes Oldenburg: Multiples in Retrospect
The idea of reproduction through technological advancement that provided the
mass market with products which increased the homogeneity of the American culture.
It is in the age of mass production that multiplicity was born and appeared exploited
by various participants of the Pop movement such as Oldenburg and Warhol. The
25
multiple allowed the art to be not only accessible to the high art market but also the
masses, showcased in various museum, gallery, and even street-life environments. In
addition, Oldenburg suggests that his philosophy surrounds natural conditions of the
object and multiple explaining, “the transformations that I impose on them are very
systematic, so as to preserve their objectiveness and their references to a natural
condition, and objective condition.”
15
The relationship between the artist and his
public began to shift as obtainability and accessibility peaked interest in the art world,
projecting a celebrity-like persona onto the artist himself. The masses desired more
from the artist and the multiple made this phenomenon a reality. This was due to the
artist’s ability to create a larger body of work through mechanical reproduction. At a
time when Pop Art became not only an aesthetic phenomenon but also social one, the
Pop artist embraced the art scene and everyday life. Many incorporated the notion of
the multiple, commenting on accessibility in the age of consumerism.
The idea of the multiple has been fully integrated within Oldenburg’s body of
work while referencing commercial accessibility and consumer production culture
post World War II. The use of art and context began to re-contextualize in
Oldenburg’s work, dating back to the opening of The Store and The Ray Gun Theater.
Solway proposes that, “The Ray Gun Theater was, in fact, where the theater of pure
sculptural convergence began, where both meaning and the symbolic intervened, all
moving toward the very edge of the cultural proscenium and stepping onto the world
stage.”
16
The idea of the multiple grew out of the Duchampian aesthetic stressing a
focus on the object itself and then its recreation through multiple originals. The
readymade was a precursor to repetitious Pop forms, shifting the attention from the
26
artist’s originality to the appropriated object. Therefore, a natural progression
occurred as the Pop artists moved towards an industrial, more mechanized process of
creating art forms.
Solway expresses, “the American Pop multiple never lost its potential to be a
type of art object that one could acquire, and thus build a mini-art collection that could
inherently present a diversity of works and ideas by a variety of different artists.”
17

Multiplicity gave way to accessibility, sharing ideas among not only artist circles but
also amid the public-at-large. Warhol would take this idea further as his art objects
became available through department stores including handbags, clothing and
dishware, an aspect of marketing that would coalesce in contemporary culture.
The idea of the multiple is exemplified through Oldenburg’s Wedding Souvenir
project in 1966. Oldenburg created rather large editions of plaster-cast wedding cake
slices for a wedding he would attend in Santa Monica California. Eighteen of the
slices were painted silver and presented to the couple as their wedding cake, while the
remaining slices were passed along to the guests. The rendering appeared almost
edible as the texturing of the fluffy white icing enticed the guests in attendance. It is
at this point in his career that Oldenburg seeks expertise to create the molds for
casting, entirely distancing himself from the creative process. Furthermore, the art
object appears as a token of happiness in reference to the ceremonial commitment.
Unknowingly, the guests become owners of their own Oldenburg, a sculptural
multiple reminding them of the joys of a memorable event. There also appears the
notion of the pleasures associated with consumption and the public’s desire to attain
not only the sensationalized products on the marketplace, but also the ordinary and
27
simple pleasures of sweets associated with childhood. Oldenburg would continue to
draw upon memory, associative iconography and the ordinary not only creating
multiples, but also larger objectified monuments. His ultimate objects of
transformative states are best exemplified through his experiments with large-scale
sculptural constructions.
The Monument
Oldenburg has challenged the traditional notion of the monument by utilizing
public space to heighten the monumental characteristic of the ordinary object. The
traditional classical monument is erected in an idealistic fashion often to
commemorate past events and achievement. The nature of the site determines the
memorial’s scale, as it must be cohesive within the physical fabric of the piazza,
square or entryway into the city to attract citizens and tourists encouraging them to
remember solemn and tragic events.
During the 1960s Oldenburg began to translate his familiar forms into objects
of monumental proportions. In his Object into Monuments series he brings familiar
objects into the public forefront by challenging their traditional uses and associations
while transforming them into architectural forms. It is through these objects that
Oldenburg challenges the traditional notion of the memorial and its associative
relationship with a public audience. Originally, Oldenburg referenced the idea of a
monument with large-scale proportions. Initially, it is not the notion of memorializing
28
that inspires him to create large-scale sculptural objects; the essence of these
monumental sculptures lies in their accessibility and realm of societal transience,
transformative, metamorphic quality. Transforming the ordinary, Oldenburg is
“giving them back to the public in the form of new and challenging obstacles . . .
erecting architectural devices which act as question marks and point to exhaustion,
decadence and cynicism in society.”
18
Therefore, these objects take on new meaning
as many appear contextualized and non-disruptive, while others obtrusive and almost
vulgar such as Soft Bathtub with its sexual references.
Often, the site provides a theatrical stage which enhances the grandiosity of the
monument in its entirety. Perhaps a more traditional and desirable monument is one
that can be seen from a far distance and becomes more dramatic as one approaches the
specific site of placement. R.H. Fuchs suggests, “A truly great monument is never just
an absolutist gesture by a ruling class towards its subjects. It also reflects how a
people or a community wishes to see itself – a collective dream on a national
fulfillment and honour.”
19
Perhaps Oldenburg has transformed the modern monument
into just this, a collective memory embodied within the ordinary of monumental scale,
representative of memory as a collective yet open to any meaning, association, joy,
sadness and knowledge welcoming public criticism and response.
Although many sketches for the Objects into Monument series remain as
markers of Oldenburg’s conceptions, few were actually realized due to fabrication
difficulties, expenses, overall absurdity or obstruction to the existing environment.
However, each object, realized or unrealized, serves as a sign of the past, present and
future and transforms meanings and associations with the progression of time and
29
generational response. The drawings themselves allowed Oldenburg to experiment
with spatial relations, moving beyond the initial sculptural concept to the “idea of the
formal and spiritual complexity of objects and of their communication.”
20
They are
not memorializing in a conventional sense, but challenge the notions of he consumerist
product, its integrity, disposability and perhaps to honor a specific place and time.
Ultimately, it was the immediacy of his surroundings that would greatly affect his
artistic vision. The American landscape proved to be very different from that of
European cities. In describing Paris he has said: “[T]he city has been determined for
so long and it doesn’t suit the imagery of the present. And here you have a constant
translation of the images into actuality everywhere.”
21
These European cities would
provide great challenges for his large sculptural interpretations in terms of creating a
synthesis between the legitimacy of objects of the past, present and the popularized
imagery and objects of tomorrow.
However, the translation and emphasis of images from popular culture took
precedence in the American society, allowing room for transience in the social and
physical fabric of the city. Oldenburg takes these iconic symbols and transformed
them into large-scale objects to challenge their validity as public markers. (Good
Humor Bar) Oldenburg felt that the objects themselves must be constructed at just the
precise moment to showcase the effects of gravitational pull and overall natural
movement. For example, Good Humor Bar, 1965, appears as an inverted chocolate
ice cream bar sitting amid the buildings of New York’s finest skyscrapers. The
chocolate bar challenges the height of the buildings in its surroundings but appears
playful, as the traffic below must travel through a tunnel in the form of a bite in the
30
lower right hand corner of the sculptural form. In addition, the stability of the
structural form, the melting of the ice cream and outer layer of chocolate coating are in
a constant state of tension. The object becomes anthropomorphic, almost leading a
life of its own as a result of Oldenburg inverting the image and juxtaposing the
transition from hard to soft form. Other monumental projects include, Clothespin,
1976, standing forty-five feet tall amidst the Philadelphia skyline, and those not
realized such as London Knees, 1966. The placement of the monumental object is also
contextualized, most often constructed or projected within an urban landscape or park
setting. Therefore, the environments appear to be a response to the immediacy of his
surroundings as he made his travels from New York, Los Angeles and throughout
Europe.
Moving beyond the more popularized preoccupation with consumerist
imagery, Oldenburg explored the tension between sexuality and aggression, a notion
quite familiar to the American climate during the Vietnam War. (Insert Scissors) In
1967, Oldenburg proposed the Colossal Monument to replace the Washington Obelisk,
Scissors in Motion therefore challenging the validity and historical relationship and
placement within contemporary culture. Both symbols, phallic in nature, appear to be
challenging the traditional role of the male dominant democracy as well as the power
of the antiquated idea of the memorial. The monument would appear to slice through
the physical and social fabric of the American landscape. The blades of the monument
were to open ever so slowly during the day and close upon nightfall and commented
on the division between the nation in time of war. Theoretically Oldenburg suggests
that he is,
31
Preoccupied with the possibility of creating art which functions in a public
situation without compromising its private character of being antiheroic, anti-
monumental, anti-abstract, and anti-general. The paradox is intensified by the
use on a grand scale of small-scale subjects known from intimate situations—
and approach which tends in turn to reduce the scale of the real landscape to
imaginary dimensions.
22
Therefore, the large-scale sculptures are not only the artists artistic vision, but have the
ability to challenge the audience to examine the perplexity of these objects in their
transformative state. In 1969 Oldenburg created the sculpture entitled, Lipstick,
Ascending on Caterpillar Tracks, erected upon Yale University Campus. The
caterpillar draws upon associations of war while the lipstick is most often shown in
relation to physical beauty and enhancement. Visually, he “shows them acting together
as a symbol, or as a mirror reflecting the human physiognomy; they are given equal
status” as the lipstick is adapted to the dimensions of the caterpillar.
23
The reference to
the power of sexual aggression is eminent.
For Oldenburg, his images are a reflection of the human body, and the human
experience and its effects on the natural and man-made environment. The quality of
metamorphosis is ever present, physically and perceptually. In a sense, each object
tests societal transience and fleetingness of the everyday object, while challenging its
artistic integrity. Most importantly, the sculptural forms are accessible to the public,
challenging the traditional notion of the monument, the memorial and the heroic by
serving as signs of now. Therefore, placing these objects within a public atmosphere
helps to question its commonplace and more familiar associative references, while
challenging the audience to question the viability of the object in its monumental or
transformative state. Most often, the structures obstruct the audiences view, as he
32
projects monumental clothespins, bowling balls, ice bags, and human limbs such as
knees which appear strewn across the physical landscape. However, the dimensions
remain challenging in production and integration within the public sphere, but
nonetheless result in critical discourse between the artwork and the viewer.
33
Chapter 2 Endnotes
1. Sylvester, David, Interviews With American Artists, (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2001), 212.
2. Mahsun, Carol Anne, ed., Pop Art: The Critical Dialogue, (Ann Arbor and
London: UMI Research Press, 1989), 55.
3. David Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2001), 210.
4. Sylvester, 215.
5. Thomas Lawson, “Candies and Other Comforts,” in Claes Oldenburg: Multiples in
Retrospect 1964-1990,”(New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1991), 11.
6. Christin J. Mamiya, Pop Art and Consumer Culture: American Super Market,
(Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1992), 46.
7. Lawson, 12.
8. Cecile Whiting, Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960’s, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006), 169.
9. Whiting, 169.
10. Whiting, 169.
11. Whiting, 170.
12. Whiting, 170.
13. Whiting, 176.
14. Whiting, 177.
15. Sylvester, 215.
16. Solway, Arthur, “Foreword.” In Claes Oldenburg: Multiples in Retrospect 1964-
1990”, (New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1991), 8.
17. Solway, Arthur, “Foreword.” In Claes Oldenburg: Multiples in Retrospect
1964-1990”, (New York: Rizzoli Publications, 1991), 9.
34
18. Tilman Osterwald, Pop Art, (Koln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, GmbH, 1999), 193.
19. RH Fuchs 97.
20. Baro, Gene, Claes Oldenburg Drawings and Prints, (London: Chelsea House
Publishers, 1969), 20.
21. Sylvester, 213.
22. Artnetweb.com, “Large-scale Projects,” (Artnetweb, http://artnetweb.com/
oldenburg/scale.html), 1.
23. Osterwald, 194.
35
Chapter 3
‘plastic inevitability,’ a state of affairs beyond surrealism in which the fake is
more real than the real.
1
– Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin-Dufresne)
The art of Andy Warhol, like that of Claes Oldenburg, infiltrates the public
sector by challenging and redefining the traditional notions of the artist and
relationships between art and audience. Warhol successfully presents these challenges
by appropriating mechanistic forms; creating his artistic persona; inventing the studio
space better known as the Factory; and testing the threshold of the American public
through provocative filmmaking. Warhol is most shockingly introduced upon the art
scene as an odd-looking character with a silvery wig and a quiet disposition. It is this
persona that would highly influence his career and determine his success among the
highest of art circles and the masses alike. Warhol inevitably turned the traditional
notion of the artist inside out, creating a very public studio space and allowing himself
to become available for media scrutiny all while appropriating images from everyday
life. Some of these images were mundane and while others were quite outrageous.
36
The Birth of the Banal
When asked to associate Warhol with one particular work, one would most
likely imagine the iconic can of Campbell’s Soup, one of Warhol’s most notorious
images along with the multiplicity of Marylins, series of Elvis’ and repetitive, vibrant
images of Mao Tse Teng. Warhol chose not to isolate himself and his practice from
the outside world, yet appropriated and absorbed the world around him, only to project
the remains upon the silk-screened canvas. He was not shy to admit that he borrowed
forms and ideas from others, and he created the Factory where friends and artists
would fabricate his conceptions. A dear friend and accomplice would best explain his
fascination with the mundane imagery of the American populace, resulting in the
greatest art movement of the 1960s. Ultra Violet, born Isabelle Collin-Dufresne, first
encountered Warhol in a diner in New York City, which would ultimately become
birthplace of the iconic, repetitive soup cans. As they conversed, Ultra suggested that
Warhol paint the soup cans each aligned along the counter, because that is what the
American deserves, the boring and the banal.
2
Unbeknown to his counter-mate,
Warhol had previously painted the Coca-Cola bottles and cans of Del Monte peaches.
However, Andy does not hesitate to employ repetition at the risk of being mundane
and monotonous. Warhol suggests that if one idea has brought upon notoriety and
success, why stray or look towards new or innovative ideas? It is in these simple
interactions with Ultra that Andy proclaims that he does a painting rather than paint, a
philosophy that would continue to resonate throughout his entire career.
3
37
Associative Recognition
The image of the Campbell Soup can became synonymous with the image of
Warhol with his silver wig, pale complexion and awkward stature conjuring phrases
such as Prince of Pop, provocative instigator and naïve innocent. His appropriation of
popular imagery became almost immediately recognizable and drew upon associations
with the face of the artist himself; he did not succumb to using isolation as fuel for his
creative practice. In a sense, his recognition became a tool for the marketability and
commercial success of his artwork that was reproduced, packaged and made desirable
worldwide.
Critics and the public elevated him to a status of artistic desirability, un-
approachable yet un-avoidable, a pioneer who demystified the mythic status of the
traditional artist, and remained quite mysterious. Although readily in the public eye,
his persona became impenetrable, while simultaneously The Factory revealed the
inner-workings of the artistic process. Undoubtedly, Warhol elevated the status of the
artist to that of the celebrity and therefore, “what we have in the case of Warhol and
his art is a convergence of hollow praise, the trumpeting of the indisputable
correctness of certain aesthetic theories, and the smug celebration of the social gaps
separating those few in the know from the mass of wannabes.”
4
The incorporation of
popular imagery along with the mysterious persona created Andy Warhol and aided to
his ultimate success within the public sector. Not only would he become synonymous
with silk-screened reproductions of glamorous Hollywood, but in turn would create an
empire infiltrating the commercial market even decades following his death.
38
Ultimately, Warhol’s borrowed ideas and appropriation of popular media fueled his
career but he, as an artist was the mastermind behind his own success. Furthermore,
he had proven that a new breed of artists were upon the horizon, as the face of the
artist became almost synonymous with their artwork and determined their
marketability and fame.
The Age of Mechanization
Early in Warhol’s career he became fascinated with ridding the canvas of the
gesture of the artist. However, he appeared to be uncertain on whether or not one
could completely remove the hand gesture from the artwork and ultimately become
“noncommittal, anonymous.”
5
In August of 1962 Warhol began experimenting with
silk-screening to give his art a sort of “assembly-line effect.”
6
By using the silk-screen
technique, Warhol seems to be challenging and transforming the traditional notions of
the post-war art scene, steeped in seriousness, and critical theory, almost utterly
unapproachable by the masses at large. Warhol capitalized on the age of mechanical
reproduction, deducing the aura theorized by Walter Benjamin in his article entitled
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in 1916. As the art process
becomes mechanized, and the image a mere copy, the aura of the original and the
intrinsic experience of the initial spark of creativity, the birth of something new
begins, but reproduction efforts deteriorate and virtually eliminate the presence of the
aura within the copy. However, Warhol capitalized on borrowed forms and ideas, by
39
repeatedly presenting the image through the process of silk-screening. Warhol’s most
outstanding pupil and right hand man became Gerard Melanga, a young artist that
Andy meets in New York, and muse to which Andy could put his silk-screening into
action. This once again aided Warhol’s detachment from the actual production of the
final art form.
Perhaps the repetition of images and artistic forms become more alluring,
drawing attention to its consistencies and inconsistencies, forcing the image to become
imbedded in the viewers mind, maybe as powerful as say the presence of the aura.
Here, with printmaking, Warhol is testing the public’s ability to absorb and withstand
repetitive forms and processes for better or worse. Benjamin would view Warholian
theory and forms, deduction of the original idea and the interaction between the artist
and the art form, as lacking any true aura. Additionally, the artist acts as the
conceptualist but not perhaps the maker or producer. It is in the conceptualized idea,
the process and the form itself that the aura is born. Warhol would continue to
produce artwork with a mechanistic quality, borrowing forms and ideas from those
around him while absorbing images from his immediate surroundings. Furthermore,
his repetitive images are still impacting audiences today, challenging perceptions of
the media and one’s own personal landscape.
40
Icons in Repetition
Andy Warhol utilized the tragic image and capitalized and commented on the
idea of media and sensationalism. However, as the image is reproduced and repeated
over and over again in sequence, the effect of the image begins to lessen and become
utterly impersonal. Warhol’s repetitious images of celebrities commented on the
“painted faces of Hollywood,” and alluded to the manufactured quality of the celebrity
and their life-style and contributed to the mysticism of this removed profession.
7
The
colors overlaying the black ink are out of register and not in-sync with the image itself
and do not relate to that particular part of the face. This again confirms their
manufactured quality.
8
The colors are unnatural, or unreal, as they heighten the
exaggeration of celebrity beauty, wealth and fame. Repetition of the “image” helped
maintain their larger-than-life celebrity status.
9
Warhol also appealed to the masses by appropriating commonplace imagery
from popular media of disaster, devastation, and iconic world leaders. His ultimate
portrayal of popularized media presents itself during the New York World’s Fair in
1964, when he was invited to create an artwork for the 380 square foot façade of the
New York State Pavilion. The resulting work entitled, The Thirteen Most Wanted
Men, one of Warhol’s largest repetitious screen prints, depicted various images of men
sought by the police.
10
He received mixed reactions from the public, the Governor of
New York, and leaders of the New York Worlds Fair. Because some of the images
seemed discriminatory towards one ethnic minority, he painted over the figures in his
iconic silvery paint to disguise the men and their crimes. Later, he would again
41
appropriate the images of these allusive men and their crimes through a series of
repetitious silk-screened images.
Pop Philosophy According to Warhol
The Pop artists in the 1960s became immersed in both cultural trends and
consumerism. The immediacy of the environment fueled the creative process and
would be a constant source for their appropriated forms. Therefore, Warhol, like
many of the Pop artists, most candidly explains, “I was never embarrassed about
asking someone, literally, ‘What should I paint?’ because Pop comes from the outside,
and how is asking someone for ideas any different from looking for them in a
magazine?.”
11
But the artists and critics were unaccustomed to this particular
approach to art, they had become intrigued by the allusiveness of the traditional artist
and the creative process. The Pop Art movement began to stress an importance upon
the product rather than process to which the perception of the artist would ultimately
determine the perception of the artwork and the public, as audience and place.
Because the new artist was so readily available, the public façade would
ultimately determine the fate of the artist’s artwork and marketability. Warhol
commented, “Your looks are responsible for a certain part of your fame—they feed
the imagination.”
12
This particular mindset eventually led Warhol’s experiments with
portraiture and the marketing of the artist alongside the artwork. However, Warhol
did not strictly follow advice from outside sources and became a pioneer rather than a
42
follower of popular artistic trends. For example, he was the first to focus on
repetition, mechanization and quantity through the process of silk-screening. With
Warhol the focus began to shift from the artist in his studio to a heightened interest in
the artist’s more public life-style and the inner-workings of the artistic process.
Personality and appearance would ultimately determine the artist’s success in their
contemporary environment.
Warhol’s physical appearance attested to his allusiveness, physically present
but not actively engaged, appearing unaware of his surroundings. Although present in
body, his ability to separate himself from any investigation of the personal self is
quickly deflected. However, Warhol was subject to creating silk-screened images of
himself although they ultimately represented the provocative and celebrity-like
persona as opposed to the genuine Andy Warhol. Because the Pop artists became so
readily available, the public takes advantage by interviewing Warhol and his
colleagues, investigating the motives and interior of this new breed of artist. Warhol,
in particular, capitalized on the celebrity as spokesperson, marketing not only his
artwork but, also a public persona. Public exposure was no longer the enemy of the
artist. The artist and his public life had the ability to predict the success of the
artwork, its spectatorship and its likeability. Therefore, media and the idea of the artist
as commodity played a significant factor in determining the sustainability of the
artwork. Notably, Warhol was not a trustworthy comrade of the publicists but was
able to sustain surmountable public interest.
As a result of having a commercial background, Warhol, like many others,
had a greater understanding of publicity and utilized marketing strategies consciously
43
or indirectly. It has even been suggested that Warhol “had become a creation of the
media” influencing the public and vice versa.
13
Warhol would even respond to
interviews by asking them what they wanted to hear rather than a true response to their
interrogations. What appeared to be most important was “generating interest and
sustaining that interest so that one’s audience would keep coming back for more.”
14

The public’s perception of the artwork had proven to be connected to the public’s
perception of the artist.
15
When asked almost any question, Warhol would tactfully
ask the interviewer what they wanted to hear or instead supply a multitude of mostly
incorrect answers. For example, he even provided misinformation on the year that he
was born, a question most easily answerable, but quickly avoided. The allusiveness
was a conscious choice, which contributed to effect of the persona projected by the
artist. This approach left many critics, interviewers and public confused, but
eventually many began to catch on. Questions surrounding Warhol’s personality
remain unanswered because the motive behind such ambiguity is not completely
formulated. Therefore, Warhol had become the most sought after artist, yet perhaps
the most unapproachable, leaving a wake of confusion in his path.
Most importantly, Warhol sought to sustain public interest and to emphasize
his desirability. For example, Warhol promised to give a series of lectures throughout
college campuses but inextricably sent an impersonator instead to appear and perform
the speech. Months later the charade was uncovered causing much debate in which
the universities demanded Warhol return to speak himself, a controversy which
ultimately provided much wanted publicity. Cresap suggests that Warhol has the
ability to, “take traditional habits of the trickster—wiliness, sexually charged
44
invention, boundary-crossing duplicity, gleeful disruptiveness, insouciant mockery
and wit—and put a metropolitan, 1960s, and double-jointedly queer spin on them.”
16

It was the many facets of Warhol’s façade that would continue to mystify his
audiences worldwide and would add to his desirability reaching beyond the art world
and into the realm of popular trends.
The Manufactured Image of the Celebrity and the “Mythic” Status of Andy Warhol
Warhol exemplified the aura of the celebrity whose life paralleled various
aspects of what indeed publicizes and exploits those associated with Hollywood.
Although very much in the public eye, projecting personal and artistic availability, the
real Andy is never truly revealed, creating a misconception about his personality and
also his everyday life-style.
Warhol had the ability to infiltrate public imagination, fueling and integrating
the American identity within the popular culture of the 1960s. The major difference
between Warhol and Jackson Pollock or even Picasso is that they never fully
connected with the public realm as Warhol did. Warhol had inextricably become part
of the realm of artist and celebrity in which, “Being simultaneously famous and
notorious means the individual’s assaults have carried him or her beyond the confines
of museum and gallery walls and into the public arena.”
17
He had the ability to turn
the ordinary into extraordinary by using symbols constructed from simple and familiar
details. His work paralleled imagery and symbols of popular culture, extracting
45
images from Hollywood and making them his own through repetitious forms, almost
testing the American population and their ability to handle boredom and the
fascination with the celebrity. His appeal connected with those audiences with
questionable taste and received admiration from art world elitists, a spectrum
encompassing critics and the masses of popular culture alike. In the mind of the
critics, “Warhol’s use of well-known images simultaneously subverts something deep
in American culture and connects high minded sophisticates with the mass of know-
nothings.”
18
His appeal deeply connected with American culture including the
consumerist mindset and the experimentation with popular trends including everything
from mini-skirts to drugs.
In 1965, Warhol’s popularity became quite apparent as a result of an exhibition
at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The expectations were highly
exceeded as masses gathered for the exhibit which ultimately resulted in the removal
of the all of the work for fear of safety. Warhol took much pleasure in the turn of
events by exclaiming, “It was fabulous: an art opening with no art!”
19
Throngs of
crowds gathered around Andy and friend Edie Sedgwick verifying or perhaps
challenging the mythic and celebrity status of the artist. Undeniably, Warhol’s
persona “transcended the art objects themselves.”
20
Warhol also appeared on a
television episode of the “Love Boat” playing himself and exemplified the artist as
celebrity by becoming a spokesperson for Diet Coke as well as designing the
packaging for the Campbell Soup Company in the 1980s, once again capitalizing on
the artist and artwork as commodity.
46
In 1968, Warhol’s world was about to transform along with the already popular
vision of this extraordinary artist. The climax of his career seemed apparent through
his European retrospective in Stockholm at the Modern Museet, and his showing in
Documenta 4, events that would catch the attention of major art circles and those
interested in the direction and shifts in art during. Undoubtedly, Warhol had gained
popularity internationally, a man that was seemingly untouchable in artistic practice
and lifestyle. However, on June 3, Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist and author of
the Society for Cutting up Men (S.C.U.M.) Manifesto attempted to end Warhol’s
superstar status by shooting him in the Factory, his New York studio, and then fleeing
the scene. Later she turned herself in, declaring that Warhol did not pay enough
attention to her when making one of his films and accused him of degrading women
within his line of work.
21
Although severely injured from gun shot wounds, Andy
returned home after a week in intensive care, but appeared emotionally and physically
scarred. Subsequently, he would be prone to spells of paranoia and would at times
become withdrawn from friends and colleagues. The event did not go unnoticed and
appeared as front-page news as word spread quickly of the attempt on his life.
Ironically, the event was sensationalized through the media and drew throngs of
crowds to the hospital, most of whom intently prayed for Andy’s successful recovery.
As a result, the international attention caused Warhol’s sales to increase rapidly,
perhaps, a foreseeable consequence of his superstar status.
47
The Factory:
The Factory, name for Warhol’s studio space in New York City and coined by
Billy Name, an in house photographer, inextricably referred to the creativity, art,
films, superstars and chaos generated within the space. For Warhol, the creativity and
prestige is encompassed within the concept and not the rendering. Removing himself
from the actual process exemplifies the divide between the Pop artists and the Abstract
Expressionists. Complete detachment resulted from Warhol’s eventual refusal to even
touch the artwork itself, being the ultimate removal of the gestured hand.
The Factory, the safe haven for Warhol and his entourage, was the site for art
and non-art activities alike. Although Warhol had shared an apartment with his
mother on Lexington Avenue, the space was not conducive to his rapid art making.
He initially purchased an entire house, spacious, but in a state of disrepair. Because of
this, within six months, the studio would move to an abandoned factory near Grand
Central Station. The studio was that of an industrial factory-like space encompassed
by picturesque “silvery reflections and refractions.”
22
The Factory appeared to be a
space providing all of the needs of the artist in order generate creative thought.
However, the studio hosted and even encouraged provocative behavior among its
visitors which would be reflected in the fluorescently illuminated foiled walls. Even
the color of Warhol’s most notable wig was made of silvery strands, allowing his
persona to blend into his environment physically and metaphorically. The mirrored
walls reflected the visitors and the drug-related, superstar exteriors, but rarely revealed
48
inner emotional turmoil, unable to break the surface much like the iconic faces of
Hollywood appropriated in his series of silk-screened portraits.
3Warhol’s Factory served as a “base camp for gender bending forays and glitter
rock.”
22
As if the art and film world were not enough, Warhol involved himself with
the underground punk scene, creating artwork and stage settings for the Velvet
Underground. The environment of the Factory attracted various personalities, some
looking to blend in while the majority looked for stardom in Warhol’s fabricated
Hollywood. Additionally, the studio became a meeting place for actors,
photographers and those closest to Warhol ultimately becoming his small inner-circle
and personal entourage. He no longer felt it necessary to disguise his homosexuality
but rather embraced his lifestyle, while still keeping personal relationships behind
closed doors.
Not only are Warhol’s silk-screens paying homage to plasticity, but to the
aesthetics of his surroundings encompassed his fascination with artificiality. He
covered the windows with layers of silvery foil, generating the artificial light rather
than the natural light from the North favored by artists in their studios. But then again
Warhol departed from his predecessors not only in persona, but also in practice,
surrounding himself with the notion of plasticity and artificiality that he inevitably
produced.
The factory-like atmosphere paid homage to Warhol’s industrial technique. It
is here that Gerard would execute Andy’s artistic desires from 1963-1970, efforts
rewarded by $1.25 an hour minimum wage for an artwork that would eventually
produce millions of dollars. He would continue to borrow ideas of others only to
49
return the favor, choosing bits of creativity from his colleagues, and then completing
the projects himself. No one complained as they continued their assignments because
Andy was not overbearing or demanding and was, most importantly, always a
wonderful host. The atmosphere within the Factory reflects Warhol’s childhood, a
youngest child, coddled by his mother always projecting a need to be around family
and loved ones, but never speaking out about his own wants or needs. He was always
sure to have a role model or crush in mind such as Cecil Beaton, Truman Capote and
Jean Cocteau who legitimized his artistry and homosexual lifestyle. These role models
contributed and fueled Andy’s need for fame, businesslike attributes and need for
acceptance in outside social circles. In a sense, the Factory is Warhol’s Hollywood,
bringing in nameless faces and giving them superstar-like personas. Overall, the
Factory proved to generate much creativity while producing artwork in a mechanistic
fashion. The allusiveness of the studio’s activities continuously courted the public’s
imagination. Therefore, Warhol created a synergy between the artist’s private studio
and a very public gathering place in which to socialize and create art forms in various
media.
Films
It appeared to be the very nature of the film industry to make a major impact
on society at large, projecting and reflecting the desires of the contemporary culture
back upon the audience. In July of 1963, Warhol would continue on a journey to
50
fulfill one of his childhood dreams: filmmaking. Along with the mechanical
reproduction of images came Warhol’s repetitious concepts and forms appearing on
film. It is through filmmaking that Warhol created a most shocking atmosphere in
which the audience became absorbed in the projection of monotony and confusion.
Although many were shown underground, Warhol’s moviemaking would reach a wide
range of audiences, testing their ability to withstand unnerving and perhaps graphic
subject matter.
It was during this year of 1963 that Warhol bought his first movie camera and
quickly delved into the world of alternative filmmaking, a popular form of media
allowing for crude experimentation and vulgar subjectivity. His filmmaking within
the Factory attested to his desire to create his own personal Hollywood. Most often he
would approach friends and strangers wandering around the Factory, or those
acquaintances met at parties to come to his studio to star in a film. Many of the films
required little or no written dialogue or stage direction, which allowed the films to
capture the essence of everyday life. Through film, Andy could further test his public
and their ability to withstand the monotony of everyday routines and uncomfortable
situations and subject matter. Again, Warhol plays on repetition throughout his
filmmaking for reasons that relate to his peculiar contemporary culture. Andy
explains mechanistic repetition by saying, “Because the more you look at the same
thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.”
24
Warhol’s statement is particularly relevant to his appropriation from newspapers in the
Disaster Series, where images of death and destruction became so familiar and
accessible, the meaning began to deteriorate as the audience became numb. Therefore,
51
monotony and controversial moving images, rather than the static, would again
continue to appear in his films.
Andy Underground
Perhaps it is Andy’s films that would best attest to his preoccupation with
challenging the public’s fears, desires, attention span, and threshold. The subjectivity
and execution of his underground films shocked audiences again through repetition of
the senses exploring sexuality, promiscuity, homo-eroticism, and topics unexplored by
mainstream Middle America. After viewing a film entitled Blow Job, Ultra describes
her experience as being, “visually assaulted and insulted at the same time.”
25
The
shock value of Warhol’s filmmaking is almost unnerving as the audience awaits in
anticipation, most often left with unmet plots, character development, questions and
desires. Another film, Blue Movie, 1968 starring Viva, one of Warhol’s manufactured
superstars and a young gentleman together in bed was filmed during one long
afternoon film shoot. The notion of sexuality and sexual expression was most often a
topic explored frankly throughout many of Warhol’s experimental films. Because of
indecency and sexual explicitness, the police eventually confiscated the film. For
quite some time, Warhol’s film endeavors had caught the attention of the FBI resulting
in their close observation of his films use of obscene images, words and gestures.
26
One of Andy’s first films entitled Sleep 1963, appears to be the ultimate test of
the public’s ability to withstand monotony. The film begins and ends with John
52
Giorno, an avant-garde poet, asleep. Warhol films him from various angles,
consisting of eighteen identical sequences, each playing for a span of twenty minutes
and then repeated for a total film time of five hours incorporating one minute of stills
at the end of each segment.
27
The identical sequences recall Warhol’s silk-screen
prints, the idea of the multiple never quite leaving his artistic grasp. In contrast to
Hollywood, Warhol referred to his actors as superstars, but without the intent of
manufacturing celebrities which had become commonplace in Los Angeles.
Warhol would continue his experimentation with repetition throughout his film
career, in the movie entitled Empire created in 1964 in collaboration with Gerard
Melanga and John Mekas. Shot from a nearby location, Warhol projected a
continuous, unchanging image of the Empire State Building, shot during a period of
seven hours. Again, he plays upon the ideas of the monotonous and repetitious forms
and the ability of the audience to keep interest in the single image. Although his films
lacked organizational narrative, he was able to obtain an independent film award and
various others for his directing efforts. His first film to be commercially distributed,
Chelsea Girls, was to be included in the Cannes Film Festival, but was quickly
removed due to a fear of obscenity.
28
The film, shot during several months, was
shown simultaneously through two projectors with the soundtrack moving from one
projected image to the other. This film would inspire Warhol to create his own film
company entitled, Andy Warhol, Films Inc. In addition, Andy never confined his
works to the constraints of the traditional artists moral and social codes, but allowed
his artistic freedom to aid in his experimentation with illustration, fashion design, high
and low art and ultimately filmmaking. Like the series of silk-screened images, the
53
motion pictures allowed the static to become mesmerizing while presenting
shockingly unavoidable subject matter. Warhol’s art making proved to be his life and
proved his life to be a work of art. There appears to be no delineation between
everyday life and art as Warhol continues to experiment in various media throughout
his career.
54
Chapter 3 Endnotes
1. Isabelle Dufresne, Famous for Fifteen Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol (San
Diego: Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1993), 92.
2. Dufresne, 90.
3. Dufresne, 90.
4. John Yau, In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (New Jersey:
The Ecco Press, 1993), 23
5. Andy Warhol & Paul Hackett, Popism: The Warhol Sixties, (New York: Harcourt,
Inc., 1980), 7.
6. Warhol & Hackett, 22.
7. Christin J. Mamiya, Pop Art and Consumer Culture: American Super Market,
(Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1992), 99.
8. Mamiya, 99.
9. Mamiya, 107.
10. Bauer, Claudia, Andy Warhol, ( Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2004), 28.
11. Warhol & Hackett, 17.
12. Warhol & Hackett, 17.
13. Mamiya, 140.
14. Mamiya, 138.
15. Mamiya, 139.
16. Kelly Cresap, Pop Trickster Fool: Warhol Performs Naivete (Urbana & Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2004), 16.
17. John Yau, In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (New Jersey:
The Ecco Press, 1993), 1.
18. Yau, 15.
55
19. Mamiya, 140.
20. Mamiya, 140.
21. Bauer, 41.
22. Dufresene, 11.
23. Cresap 17.
24. Warhol & Hackett 50.
25. Dufresne 33.
26. Bauer, 49.
27. Bauer, 47.
28. Bauer, 49
56
Chapter 4
The appropriation of media and the continued interest in popular forms from
the 1960s was revived by artists working in the 1980s. Jeff Koons encompassed the
Warholian persona and incorporated the everyday image into public space as Claes
Oldenburg did with his performances and monumental sculptures. The work of Jeff
Koons elevated the notion of commodity by incorporating the consumerist product
directly rather then through abstraction or appropriation. His work also resonates with
the Duchampian readymade by taking a man-made object and completely
transforming its perception in the context of the gallery setting.
Following closely in the footsteps of his Pop predecessors, Koons did not
originally begin his career in the art world: he initially pursued a career as a New York
stockbroker. Koons’ business savvy became apparent as he, “presented commercial
hype as the contemporary substitute for artistic aura” gaining him much notoriety and
eminent success in the art world. Koons seemed to envelop himself in the power of
commodity as sign and symbol all the while heightening the idea of the media
manifested celebrity through self-promotion, creating an aura of his own to fulfill the
dissipation of the Benjamin aura since the mid 20
th
century. He directly incorporates
branding within his sculptural forms. This is exemplified through his work entitled
Two Ball 50/50 Tank in which he suspended two Spalding basketballs in an aquarium
fish tank, almost imposing a surrealist effect. Therefore, the popular image is
57
presented to the viewer in pure form rather than appropriated and presented to the
public.
Koons would also infiltrate the art world and his audience by projecting his
artwork into the public arena. For example, in 1992, he created Puppy, an almost fifty
foot-high topiary of a Terrier puppy rendered in various foliage and flowers. The
Puppy has since traveled from its temporal home in Bad Arolsen, Germany and was
re-erected in Sydney Harbor, and then eventually purchased by the Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The spirit of this work is a reminder of the playful and
whimsical nature of Oldenburg’s earlier sculptural constructions of everyday objects.
Both have showcased the unexpected to a wider public audience on an extremely large
scale, while capturing the attention of each passerby.
This continued relationship between the artist, the artwork and the viewer
broke down even further in the 1990s. Nicholas Bourriaud, art critic and French
Philosopher, first coined the term “Relational Aesthetics” as he began to notice that
many emerging artists and their artwork relied on social interaction and the responses
of others. These works included performative and interactive elements, which
encouraged the role of the audience to shift from observer to participant, collapsing
the divide between the artist and the public. Therefore, the artist is truly the catalyst,
setting the stage for various performances and interactions outside of the museum and
gallery system, relying on audience response to complete the artwork. This wave
throughout the 1990s further collapsed the divide between the artist as the sole-maker,
and in a sense, created opportunities for the viewer to become artists themselves.
58
The revival of popular imagery and the relationship with the audience
continues to impact the contemporary art realm. Maurizio Cattelan and Takashi
Murakami produce work consistent with the Pop Art sensibility, while exploring the
relationships of popular culture within an international framework of globalization.
Both have proven to be highly influenced by their Pop predecessors, encouraging
interactions between the public and highly controversial sculptural forms and the
rendering of popular animation. In addition, the consciousness of Oldenburg and
Warhol is very much apparent, as both have successfully managed their art careers,
sustaining and elevating their marketability. Their works appear playful, humorous
and yet ironical drawing upon associations derived from the encounter with
appropriation of popular forms. The boundaries between life and art continuously
deteriorate as one begins to explore the realm of art in the 21
st
century.
The Influences of Pop: Maurizio Cattelan
Born in Padua Italy in 1960, Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught artist, never
traditionally instructed in an art school unlike Oldenburg and Warhol. His early
artistic endeavors lead to experiments with furniture design stressing meaning in
functionality. It was soon thereafter that he began to make works that combine
sculpture and performance while exuding irony and humor. Cattelan takes on the
contemporary art scene by challenging and provoking unconventional appropriation of
figurative forms, icons and image. They resonate with global audiences. It is
59
undeniable that Cattelan’s works have received as much criticism as praise,
heightening the complexity of everyday forms suspended between reality and the
surreal. Cattelan undoubtedly encompasses the Warholian aura, projecting himself as
a trickster of the contemporary art world, while interrupting the gallery and natural
landscape with challenging sculptural forms.
Maurizio Cattelan’s body of work recalls the public persona of Warhol,
Happenings, and the playful approachability of Oldenburg’s monuments. For an event
paralleling similar concepts appears in the performance during the Jackson Pollock
exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Cattelan created a large caricature of
Pablo Picasso outfitted in a striped t-shirt and sandals worn by an actor. Not only was
this a caricature and Disney-fication of one of the most respected artists of the 20
th
century, it commented on the marketability of museums such a MOMA. The
performer like Mickey and Minnie Mouse awaited the incoming visitors at the gates
and welcomed the public as they entered the museum. Unbeknownst to some gallery
visitors, Pollock’s untimely death came in 1956, while Cattelan’s welcoming
performance occurred more than four decades later. As a result of Cattlelan’s ultimate
comment on the mass marketing of the museum he did not expect them to acquire the
piece Untitled 1998.
1
Here, Cattelan engages the audience by interrupting the
museum environment in its sterility, and creating an atmosphere humor and irony.
An aspect of Cattelan’s work that closely parallels Oldenburg and Warhol lies
within the questioning of art and reality testing the potential impact of the art object.
Cattelan capitalizes on images from popular culture, most of those men and women of
authority in the public arena. He undoubtedly explores the projected façade or
60
persona most often unavoidable in public life while simultaneously exploring the
power of gesture and the inner revelation of truth behind the image. Like Warhol’s
exploration of Elvis, the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe, Cattelan has appropriated
powerful figures in La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), 1999, he represents a figure of the
Pope who has been hit by a meteorite. One of his most iconic sculptures entitled Him,
2001, Hitler appears on his knees in genuine religious prayer and reflection. Cattelan
is not suggesting that the man most synonymous with evil is indeed genuine and
lovable, but ultimately is commenting on the deceit of appearances. Additionally,
Cattelan consistently challenges space, scale, and perception of the minds of the
viewer and the physical context or environment of the gallery or museum. His
objects, much like Oldenburg, interrupt the space, drawing attention to the
transformative sculptural object placed before them allowing room for questioning and
validity through historical and contemporary references.
An idea that has further coalesced within Cattelan’s works is the notion of
appropriating borrowed forms and ideas from popular culture and current events while
challenging misconceptions of popular media. As we know, Warhol’s success came,
in part, by incorporating others ideas into his work and allowing others to produce his
prints. It is also common in contemporary art practice that artists such as Jeff Koons
and Takashi Murakami use assistants to facilitate in the art-making process. It was in
July of 2005 that Cattelan’s former lover and artist, Vanessa Beecroft became
outraged and argued that he had stolen her ideas before they both became successful.
However, Beecroft most often uses live nude models in her installations, while
Cattelan makes figurative sculptures. As a result of the accusations, Cattelan
61
appropriately remained unalarmed and poses the question as to whether or not Warhol
has stolen Marilyn Monroe’s identity. Of course these ideas are absurd and invalid as
the artist continuously appropriates their surroundings adding, “So it is never a
robbery. At the most it is a loan. Unlike thieves, artists always give back the stolen
goods.”
2
Today, Cattelan continues on in the Warholian tradition by exemplifying
dichotomy of reality verses the persona in art making and the realm of the celebrity.
Cattelan has avoided true insight into reality much like Warhol in misleading the press
by projecting the persona rather than exposing the true self. The idea of the persona
creates instant fame and sensationalism around the artist in their lifetime, perhaps a
marketing strategy on the journey to becoming a celebrity. Therefore, Warhol fueled
his mysterious persona by allowing stand-ins to visit various university campuses and
perform lectures in his place. Much of the time, the audience had been fooled and
unable to distinguish the difference between the impersonator and the real Andy
Warhol. Cattelan comments on the act that anyone can become someone else, a
philosophy carried on throughout Warhol’s career through the use of impersonators
and various wigs, makeup and props used for his personal disguise. Like Warhol,
Cattelan has used a surrogate, Massimiliano Gioni, when asked to give public lectures.
In response to being asked why he utilizes stand-ins when invited to speak in public he
answers, “I always find other people more interesting than myself. Am I talking to
you now, or is it someone else? The Answer is inside you, and it’s wrong.”
3
In
addition, his actions and circumlocution of interview responses are similar to the
Warhol persona, justifying the idea of standardizing emotions, transforming and
62
becoming suspended in the realm of reality and the surreal. He is also known to
project a trickster persona, again a reminder of Warholian antics.
Both Cattelan and Warhol have managed to become accessible to the public,
yet completely isolated in their projected façade. However, their images consistently
appear within their artwork, Warhol most often depicted on canvas while Cattelan
through figurative sculptures. For example, Cattelan participated in the 2002 exhibit
entitled, Hello My Name is… at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
The work itself, entitled Spermini, 1997, is a series of sculptural masks depicting
Cattelan in various expressions. The repetition of forms appear upon the wall, each
similar in appearance yet with slight subtleties, much like brothers and sisters differ
and, ultimately, alluding to the works title. Cattelan has further transforms himself
through a series of Mini-me sculptures, circa 1999, where the figure appears on book-
shelves, clothing racks, and other various furniture. This sculptural Mini-me hovers
and hides in places as if scheming and watching in anticipation for the viewer’s
reaction. Through works such as these, he furthers the construction of the artist and
the persona, while appearing omnipresent within the artwork.
63
Murakami and Pop Appropriation
The works of Takashi Murakami remain closely tied to the Pop Art movement.
He borrows forms from popular culture, creates his work in a super-flat manner, and
produces sculpture and prints with the assistance of the Hiropon Factory. However,
Murakami appropriates his forms from the uber-popular realm of Japanese anime
rather than the consumerist products of the 1960s culture. In a sense, the genre of
anime is a large part of the Japanese culture of consumption and a highly marketable
art form spanning the globe. However, the realm of high art and low art is even less
distinguishable and more familiar in the contemporary art world than during the 1960s
Pop Art era. Just as Lichtenstein appropriated comic book imagery, Murakami
appropriates anime and his work exists simultaneously in high art circles and in
objects marketed to the general public obsessed with trends through popular images of
colorful comic-like characters.
First, the works of Murakami are created in the manner of Pop Art, but are also
based on traditional forms of Japanese painting and wood block prints. His images
utilize calligraphic brushstrokes in order to create a one-dimensional, flat pictorial
space. Murakami’s superflat
4
works reveal an absence of depth, while exploring,
“cultural, political, social and historical contexts concerning the relationships between
high art and subculture” not only between Japanese and American traditional and
popular forms, but also notions of capitalism and the realm of art.
5
Undeniably, Murakami’s artworks explore how the notion of how anime
represents “the exploitation of flowery, Disney-like, three-dimensional American
64
animation and its flattening by interpretation into an alien cultural dimension.”
6
One
of his most popular forms is the character named, Mr. DOB, who appears childish and
cute, but also transformed and cleverly re-represented within each unique work. Some
representations of his characters appear singularly and are often sold to high-end
galleries, while others constructed as multiples are mass-marketed to the public.
There is now an unprecedented connection between American and Japan,
referenced through exchanges within visual cultural networks. Just as the art of
Warhol has become integrated within the consumerist culture and vice versa, anime
has also become absorbed into mainstream culture. However, there appears to be a
greater collapse between high art and low art and its relationship with popular culture
and media.
Murakami continues to fascinate art critics and the public with his art theory
and logic, appearing at times absurd and contradictory in nature. His trickster persona
presents the public with the idea that art is both meaningful and meaningless. This
leaves the audience in a state of flux, because they are unsure of Murakami’s intent.
Also, Murakami is very aware of his own success and the methodical steps that must
be taken to ensure his impact on the art world in future endeavors. Most consciously,
Murakami constructed his own fate, guiding his career in such a manner to achieve his
goal of international success, perhaps almost reaching the realm of influence created
by Andy Warhol.
Murakami’s study of popular culture and his goal of ultimate infiltration upon
the art scene is apparent, luring various audiences while challenging perception and
societal codes embedded in the contemporary world. Of course, he could not achieve
65
his success alone and therefore created the Hiropon Factory in Osaka City, Japan and a
much smaller factory in New York City. It is here that art students produce
Murakami’s work as efficiently as possible with a high level of technical skill. When
the artworks are finished, they await approval from the visionary artist himself, their
ultimate fate awaiting international distribution. Many of the artists only remain for a
short period of time, eager to learn and experience the fast paced world of Murakami’s
art market. His authority appears to be overbearing, ensuring the most efficient use of
materials and time in order to create beautiful forms. Murakami embodies the
Warholian theory, concerned with beauty and the multiple. However, Warhol most
often allowed artistic freedom to his assistants, whereas the Hiropon Factory appears
to have rules, strictly enforcing the desires of Murakami, to ensure the pursuit of his
goals.
66
Chapter 4 Endnotes
1. EyeStorm, “Maurizio Cattelan,” EyeStorm, Whiteground Ltd., 2003, http://www.
Eyestorm.com/ED2n_article.asp?article_id=32&artist_id=95.
2. John Hooper, “Former Lover Accuses Cattelan of Stealing Her Ideas,” The
Guardian, Rome: 2005, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/
0,11711,1531420,00.html.
3. Katy Siegel, ed., “Army of One,” ArtForum International Magazine, Inc., 2004,
http:// www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_43ai_n6258572/print.
4. The “superflat” image is similar to the popular forms appropriated by the Pop
artists depicting simplistic lines and virtually eliminating the gestured hand of the
artist.
5. Yusuki Minami, “Takashi Murakami Strikes Back,” in Takashi Murakami Summon
Monsters? Open door? Heal? Or Die?, ed. (Tokyo: Museum of Contemporary
Art, 2001), 60.
6. Minami 58.
67
Chapter 5
__________________________________________________________________
Reinventing the Monument
In the early 21
st
century the works of Oldenburg and Warhol have continuously
proven to retain sustainability and marketability. Oldenburg’s artistic production in
collaboration with his wife Coosje van Bruggen is now spanning five decades,
interrupting the various landscapes throughout the world. The collaborative team of
Oldenburg and van Bruggen was commissioned in 2004 to create a sculpture in front
of the Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, adding to the re-beautification
of Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The sculpture, entitled Collar & Bow is
a large deconstructed steel and aluminum collar wraps itself around a circular bowtie
giving homage to the very obvious formal wear and perhaps the air of perceived
importance associated with the symphony and cultural events along Grand Avenue.
Coosje van Bruggen has described the piece as representing, “the point in a
performance when things are ready to become wayward, yet remain contained.”
1

Therefore, the intent is to showcase the multi-dimensionality of the space and the
symphonic beauty of the concert hall.
Furthermore, the sculpture’s dimensions measure 66’high x 63’wide x
51’deep, which is in line with Oldenburg’s other objects of monumental proportions.
However, the fabrication process has led to various complications causing
inconsistencies in the fiberglass structure and jeopardizing the safety of onlookers.
68
The structural complications have caused the already four million dollar project to
require three million dollars more for repair costs which must be absorbed by the Walt
Disney Concert Hall. The necessary funds have not presented themselves, therefore,
the project, has been pulled from the renewal of Grand Avenue.
Because the sculpture will reside in a very public arena, many citizens of the
Los Angeles area have voiced their concerns, many impending on dissention. The
sculpture has proven to be unforgiving in its obstruction of The Disney Concert Hall,
detracting from its original beauty and innovative design. Others feel that the
sculpture could perhaps penetrate the monotony and starkness of the Grand Avenue
environment and provide greater visual interest. Perhaps, the sculpture could provide
an overall atmosphere of whimsy detracting from the original obtrusive nature of the
object itself.
Although structural challenges continue to present themselves within this
collaborative team’s work, many projects have been completed throughout the world.
Although the public today has become more aware of the artists infiltration upon the
city, and voiced opinions and dissention during the fabrication and installation
process, the team of Oldenburg and van Bruggen, have continuously challenged the
physical landscape and the perception of the urban environment as they create icons
for various cities, most often privately funded. Another controversial Oldenburg and
van Bruggen project entitled Cupid’s Span, was completed in November of 2002
along San Francisco’s Bay and was commissioned by Donald and Doris Fisher, the
founders of Gap Inc. The sited area consists of open green space including a
pedestrian promenade. The sculpture depicts a largely constructed bow and arrow
69
constructed of fiberglass and steel. The bow and arrow refer to ships in the harbor
beyond as the arrow depicts the sails and the extremities of the bow seen as the stern
and bow of a sailing vessel. There is an obvious visual connection to the aesthetics of
the Golden Gate Bridge and the verticality of the cables in relation to the arrow and
the overall inverted bridge-like shape of the sculpture. Additionally, the development
of the park and the incorporation of public sculpture was an effort to further beautify
the city. The project aligns itself with the transformative qualities of Oldenburg’s
earlier monuments, encouraging public dialogue, an aspect that resonates very closely
with the collaborative team. Together, Oldenburg and van Bruggen tend to avoid the
term “public art” and refer to their art forms as “private art in public place,” attesting
to the disruptive hierarchical structures and public opinion that can dilute the artistic
process in public art commissioning.
2
The works themselves are not to please
everyone, nor awaiting approval from a majority. They are to challenge the mind,
individually and provoke personal associations while drawing upon memory and
visual perplexity.
Although whimsical in nature, the team’s contemporary projects are not as
politically charged as Oldenburg’s former monuments such as Lipstick. They appear
to appease the citizens with simple, child-like sculptures that are not as substantial of
those in decades passed. It seems as if the commissioners are more concerned with
obtaining a sculpture from the team for namesake or branding, instead of an act of
quality. Although the sculptures may prove to be successful, the content, and
aesthetic appear diluted in comparison to Oldenburg’s objects of monumental
70
proportions. These inevitably challenged the audience’s perception of their
surroundings through the innovative placement of monumental everyday forms.
The Continuation of Andy
Although more than two decades since his death, Andy Warhol continues to
penetrate the public sphere through commercial endeavors. Cattelan perhaps best
sums up the sustainability of Warhol’s continuous recognition by stating, “I don’t even
remember where I first saw his work: Warhol is so much everywhere that you can’t
really say when you first encountered him.”
3
His image has proven to be so
omnipresent throughout contemporary popular culture such that one may associate his
work with commercials and billboards, fashion, jewelry and even tableware. The true
Warholian personality became so detached from the world but he undeniably became
a part of it while commenting on the falsities and yet the societal embracement of
popular media. His images are as “now” as they ever were, always conscious of the
present day and the plasticity of the images bombarding the American psyche.
As a populace we may not fully understand why we are drawn to the images of
Warhol. Perhaps it is their simplicity or directness that makes them so appealing.
There is no fooling the eye, just the image of the product or the celebrity, never
assuming that there is a meaning behind what is presented before the audience. The
images remind us of a time once past but yet a time very present as the American
culture continues to be an economy based on consumerism and the material world.
71
Warhol has proven to be more famous today than he was forty years ago. His art
continuously re-imagines appropriated imagery, re-presented and reborn in various
forms of media. Furthermore, The Warhol Foundation has controlled the images of
Warhol that continue to resonate with audiences globally once again infiltrating the
public sector and sustaining the idea of art as commodity.
Additionally, The Warhol Foundation has collaborated with a series of
designers and clothing manufacturers to produce the iconic images of Warhol. The
collaborative efforts of the Foundation have further validated the consumer-friendly
attitude once projected by Warhol and his accomplices. For example, the Foundation
has teamed up with designer Paul Frank and the retailer known as Urban Outfitters to
produce shirts, bags, wallets and endless amounts of retail paraphernalia. The
collaborative efforts have targeted a teen and young adult audience as well as those
drawn to the iconic imagery of yesteryear. Perhaps the ultimate act of appropriating
Warhol’s artwork is the more recent collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation
and Barneys, New York in a holiday campaign for December 2006. In homage to
Warhol’s earlier career as a commercial illustrator, Barney’s has appropriated his
iconic imagery of fashion, shoe design and artwork that is consumer friendly such as
his drawings of colorful cats, holiday ornaments, ice cream cones and series of lips.
Even the products themselves appear to be influenced by Warhol’s style, truly eye-
catching in their vibrancy, yet sophisticated and elegant in nature. Warhol would most
appreciate the merging of his images in catalogue form, recalling his earlier shoe
campaigns and love of commercial illustration. As Warhol’s work continues to be a
72
part of our everyday lives, it is consumer friendly, but also seems to remind us of the
plasticity in the world in which we live.
The Past, Present and Future States of Public Art and the Pop Sensibility
The birth of Pop art greatly shifted the relationship between the artist and his
public, a realm most often avoided or unexplored by their predecessors the Abstract
Expressionists. Although opinions have varied, the modernist avant-garde artists have
maintained a “hostile antagonistic attitude” maintained towards their public in their
careers.
4
Public art theory and practice can better help define and be applied to the art
of the 1960s and help exemplify the relationship between art and public in its
historical and contemporary context. In relation to the public, the Pop artist, and the
artists working today, have the ability to demystify the creative process and reveal
their work to the masses. It is most important that artist intervene within the social
fabric of the city in order to resonate with the public through exploring social identity
and the significance of art in our contemporary world. Performance and community-
based artist Suzanne Lacy expresses, “What exists in the space between the words
public and art is an unknown relationship between the artist and audience, a
relationship that may itself be the artwork.”
5
Art in any context most successfully
engages the audience when it is accessible not only physically but conceptually, it
questions our everyday environment, the significance of art, and social or personal
identity. Pop art successfully challenged traditional notions of the artistic process,
73
encouraging their audience to view the world around them with new hope and
perspective in the age of media.
Pop artists have chosen not to relate to one particular geography but rather to
the American landscape and community as a whole. Mary Jane Jacob comments on
the trajectory of modern public art and how her program, “Culture in Action,” proves
to be a major turning point in the relationship between art and public: “In the 1990s
the role of public art has shifted from that of renewing the physical environment to
that of improving society, from promoting aesthetic quality to contributing to the
quality of life, from enriching lives to saving lives.”
6
Having experimented with
varying media and formal approaches to their artwork, the Pop Artists are not unlike
public artists taking into consideration the role and place of public within their artwork
in modern day. However, the Pop artists’ and their images inform and demystify the
falsities of the consumer culture and help reveal the fabrication of the celebrity in
popular media. Therefore, the American public and consumerist landscape became
their source of inspiration and in turn explored common concerns of a society lost
among a sea of persuasions.
Although the Pop artists were radically different than their predecessors, the
artist prominently remained the artistic visionary. However, the public and popular
imagery greatly influenced their vision, all while remaining open to public response.
Art appreciation became accessible to the masses rather than isolated to exclusive art-
circles or for the art elite. Although the Pop artists did not fully involve the audience
in the artistic practice many invited and encouraged original and personal response to
their artwork, often welcoming ideas from the immediacy of their surroundings. The
74
development of public art in the United States had begun to change as the role of the
artist shifted from the traditional artist in their studio to the artist that was actively
engaged in society, willing to use their image and their artistry as a commodity. Few
artists, such as Andy Warhol, were willing to go to the extreme and turned their lives
and public persona into an art form. It is in this engagement that the artist began to
understand the growing consumerist culture of the 1960’s and would reference this
culture and its expansive changes within his artwork. The Pop artists and their
artwork had the ability to relate to a mass audience as a result of their focus on the
everyday image. For example Oldenburg was a pioneer in appropriating the everyday
object of monumental proportions into public space while others referenced the rapid
changes in consumerist products and homogenization of American society.
Pop art’s impact on the public, “[T]riggered a societal response that was
unprecedented. It piqued curiosity, captured the public imagination and was adopted
by many not just as an art style but as a lifestyle.”
7
In return, Pop art has the ability to
expand the viewing audience, inviting the public to think critically about art of the
everyday and realize the artistic potential of the mundane in the media driven society.
Without conviction, “This new style could neither have been encouraged nor
prevented, nor could it have been contrived; it has followed an organic course which
makes it an absolute product of its time.”
8
The Pop sensibility inevitably had an effect
on how the public views art, and the interaction that can occur when the American
vernacular is portrayed in an artistic medium.
The Pop artists intensely focused on the immediacy of their environment,
juxtaposing images that surpassed customary habits of looking and feeling, and
75
ultimately rejected the face-value of commercial imagery. Michel de Certeau, author
of The Practice of Everyday Life suggested that practices occurring within everyday
life appeared to be unconscious and repetitive. Additionally, the world is experienced
differently by each and every individual and is most often an unconscious mapping
and perception of the landscape in which they inhabit. By separating themselves from
traditional figurative painting, Oldenburg and Warhol had begun to change the
everyday perception of the American public. Both had the ability to interrupt the
natural landscape and shifted the perception and expectations of art in the mid 20
th
century. The work of the Pop artists was fueled by the artificiality of the consumerist
culture creating images resounding in plastic inevitability, while simultaneously
challenging the unconscious perception of perhaps a better-informed audience. The
art objects and concepts of the Pop Art movement have proven their validity in
relation to the contemporary and the nostalgic.
The ideas and aesthetic brought forth by artists Claes Oldenburg and Andy
Warhol would continue to resonate with artists throughout the next three generations
and would continue to break down the separation between the artist, their artwork and
the public. The post-Pop era led to experimentations in Minimalism which carried on
the notion of serial re-ordering through simplistic and repetitious forms, and ultimately
commented on the mass production and mechanization of the marketplace. The 1980s
era generated artists who not only began to appropriate the images of popular culture,
but actually incorporated commercial objects and branding into their artwork. As the
lineage continued, the artist and the public as audience, place, and source for content,
continued to converge. The following generations of the 1990s and those working
76
today, began to expand their market, exposing their works to audiences globally. The
hyper-commodification seemed to dominate their motive and aesthetic, and in turn
caused a resurgence in high market values.
Contemporary artists, Maurizio Cattelan and Takashi Murakami have echoed
the works of Warhol and Oldenburg with their consideration of appropriation of
popular media, whether through incorporating iconic figures or by appropriating
media trends including anime. Cattelan’s content and representations of famous
figures, has in turn, created much shock value, adding to his popularity. Murakami
appears to rely upon business savvy and running his art empire much like a factory.
However, artists working in the 1990s and today differ from the Pop artist in their
presentation of the self as projected to the public. Warhol created a public persona
and consistently avoided critical interrogation. In contrast, the more current artists are
complacent and appear openly candid about their marketing strategies and the creative
process. The hyper-commodified art market has also encouraged the contemporary
artist to take advantage of popularity and demand high market values for their artwork,
reminding us of the celebrity status of the infamous Andy Warhol.
The popularity of the artist and the relatable imagery of the Pop artist began to
break down the relationship between the artist and their public. Ultimately, the Pop
aesthetic infiltrated the marketplace within the gallery system, but began to expand
their viewing audience by infiltrating the public sector on a more direct level. It was
also through the artist’s active participation in their environment and the willingness
of the audience that an exchange began to develop. In questioning the validity of the
artwork and perhaps through active participation, a relationship evolved between the
77
artists, the artwork, the public and the physical space whether it be inside, or outside
of the gallery setting. The Pop lineage has encouraged the artist to create works that
would continue to resonate with audiences globally beyond the traditional gallery
space, and to react to the interstitial places between art and life. The public aspect of
art is no longer restricted to the appropriation and incorporation of popular forms to
conjure notions of “the public,” but can ultimately encourage the audience in some
way to become an active participant. It is in these interactions, and construction of
discourse of public artwork, the Pop lineage appears as relevant today, as if more so,
than during the 1960s.
78
Chapter 5 Endnotes
1. Gross, Jaime, “Just Back From Los Angeles: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen,” (Traveandleisure.com, December 2005),
http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/just-back-from-los-angeles-claes-
oldenburg-and-coosje-van-bruggen.
2. Baker, Kenneth, “Take a Bow: Sculptors Oldenburg and van Bruggen talk
about their ‘Cupid’s Span,’ which has dropped anchor on waterfront,”
(San Francisco Chronicle Online, December 2002), p.3, http://sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/23/DD234651.DTL
3. Katy Siegel, ed., “Army of One,” ArtForum International Magazine, Inc., 2004,
http:// www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_43ai_n6258572/
print,1.
4. Christin J. Mamiya, Pop Art and Consumer Culture: American Super Market,
(Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1992), 99.
5. Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity),
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004), 105.
6. Kwon, 109.
7. Carol Anne Mahsun, Pop Art and the Critics, (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1987), 1.
8. Mahsun, 53.
79
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis explores how the Pop artists innovatively synthesized the ideas of popular and public by infiltrating the public realm on a more direct level through performance, monumental sculpture, and constructing the artist persona. Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol became catalysts who demystified the elitist attitude of the art world by creating an approachable and tangible experience for the audience. Oldenburg's monuments questioned societal transience, and the transformative, sentimental, and accessible components of pop culture imagery. Warhol challenged the mythic status of the traditional artist by revealing the inner-workings of the artistic process, creating a persona that elevated him to a status of artistic desirability. Throughout the next five decades, the artist would continue to encourage the public to react, relate, and respond to their media-driven environment. These concepts further synthesized in the post-Pop generations, including artists Maurizio Cattelan and Takashi Murakami, inevitably effecting how the public views and experiences art.

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Creator Conway, Gina Marie (author)

Core Title A plastic picturesque: notions of public as projected through the works of Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 05/02/2007

Defense Date 05/05/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Andy Warhol,Claes Oldenburg,Maurizio Cattelan,OAI-PMH Harvest,pop art,public art,Takashi Murakami

Language English

Advisor Moss, Karen (committee chair), Bray, Anne (committee member), Levy, Caryl (committee member), Weisberg, Ruth (committee member)

Creator Email conwaygina@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m476

Unique identifier UC1292003

Identifier etd-Conway-20070501 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-485059 (legacy record id),usctheses-m476 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Conway-20070501.pdf

Dmrecord 485059

Document Type Thesis

Rights Conway, Gina Marie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu