Politics of Pop Art in Public

• Pop Art as a response to the changing urban environment

• 1st case study: Claes OLDENBURG’s exhibition ‘Ray Gun’ (1960)• Ray Gun and The Street as response to the abstraction of art

and the city

• 2nd case study: the WATTS TOWERS in the 1950s and 1960s• Re-imagining LA as ‘capital’ of popular culture • The double meanings of the Towers as American cultural

heritage and as hallmark for a local community

Old New York

• Mainly low rise development• Active street life• ’Congestion’• Diverse functions

• Slums and poor living conditions• Overcrowding

• Not a unique situation

What does it look like now?

Why this dramatic transformation of cityscape?

• Old city deemed impractical

• Slum clearance

• Symbolic discprecancy

New York Renewal Scheme

• Most violent during 50’s and 60’s• Robert Moses• Vision of a modern(ist) New York City• Inspiration from Europe and Le Corbusier• Sweden a good parallel

Stockholms City

Stockholm renewal scheme finalized 1949Changed and moderated during 1960’sLess focus on highways and traffic

Hötorgshusen1956-62

Monstrosities of 60’s and 70’s

Brunkebergstorg, Stockholm.1969-1976

MalmöCaroli60’s and 70’s

This is Claes Oldenburg’s New YorkThis is the New York of Ray Gun (1960)

Construction/destruction of Lincoln Center1955-65

Conceptually, what can we say about the modern(ist) city?• Rational

• Abstracted

• Legible

• Total

• Sculptural

• AhistoricLe CorbusierPlan Voisin, 1925

Alternative modernisms

Södra Ängby, Stockholm, 1933-40Sege Park, Malmö, 1936

GREENWHICH VILLAGE

Ray Gun, 1960

• Judson Gallery at Judson Memorial Church

• Young local artists

• Oldenburg’s ’installation’ The Street’ included

• Also series of happenings in relation to it. ’Snapshots From the City’.

• A ’childish’ and dadaesque reaction against renewal scheme

• Critique often focused on picturesque and romantic elements of old city. E.g. Jane Jacobs

• Oldenburg’s The Street is very different

• “I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap”

• An appreciation and love for the irrationalities and filth of the city

• Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York. Congestion

• “ I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does somethingother than sit on its ass in a museum.”

• An alternative vision of New York.

• An irrational, inconsistent, illogical and chaotic New York.

• “Carnivalesque delight in disorder and nonsense”

• ‘Snapshots From the City’

• A praise of life over abstraction

Rubens Gallery and rebirths

• Reborn a few weeks after

• New space

• Crisper, cleaner, clearer

• Sense of narrative

Importance of space

• What does this do to the work?

• Does this shift meaning and understanding?

• How important is the broader spatial environment for a work’s meaning, production and audience reception?