pop art is - popular (designed for a mass audience ... (designed for a mass audience) transient...
TRANSCRIPT
Pop Art is - Popular (designed for a mass audience) Transient (Short term solution) Expendable (easily forgotten) Low Cost Mass Produced Young (aimed at Youth) Witty Sexy Gimmicky Glamorous Big Business
This is just a beginning.
Richard Hamilton,1957
hensive panorama of Pop Art in Great Britain.What exactly is new and different about this exhi-bition in terms of art and cultural history? On one hand, there’s the intense look at female protagonists of Pop Art, the strong focus on the future-oriented architects Alison and Peter Smithson, Cedric Price, and Archigram (each of whom was closely linked to the art scene), as well as the determined inclusion of music, magazines, television, and film as media of
Richard Hamilton’s trailblazing multimedia instal-lation “Fun House” was realized for the exhibition “this is tomorrow” in London in 1956. Exactly sixty years later, the retrospective survey “This Was Tomorrow” at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg brings together not only painting, sculpture, collage, archi-tecture, drawing and installation, but also film, music, television and photography in one multi-media, spatial mise-en-scène, to create a compre-
Eduardo Paolozzi, I was a Rich Man’s Plaything 1947 © Tate, London 2016
Michelangelo
antonioni
archigraM
DaviD Bailey
the Beatles
Pauline Boty
Peter Blake
Derek Boshier
Patrick caulfielD
antony DonalDson
richarD haMilton
Jann haworth
nigel henDerson
DaviD hockney
allen Jones
r.B. kitaJ
geralD laing
roger Mayne
lewis Morley
eDuarDo Paolozzi
Peter PhilliPs
ceDric Price
ken russell
JaMes scott
colin self
Michael seyMour
richarD sMith
alison & Peter
sMithson
lorD snowDon
the rolling stones
Joe tilson
the who
etc.
Allen Jones, Chair, 1969, More Gallery, Giswil, Switzerland © Christie’s Images Limited
equal value that also crossed borders. Second, there’s the expanded timeframe: the exhibition ranges from Eduardo Paolozzi’s early Parisian collages from 1947 to the climax and culmination of “Swinging London” around Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser, the star gallerist and pop-networker par excellence, in 1968.
Atmospherically dense interior spaces reflect the intense encounters among artists, the dreari-ness of the English capital in the post-war years, and the first future-oriented art and architecture projects. Nigel Henderson’s powerful, black-and-white photos of a reconstruction full of privation are juxtaposed here with the Smithsons’ models and drawings for their “House of the Future”. Comics,
science fiction, scientific book illustrations, adver-tisements, Hollywood films, and magazine pages are shown as sources of inspiration that go beyond classic concepts of high and low art. Following the spatial explosion of Richard Hamilton’s “Fun House”, which has been reconstructed in all its sensual details, including a jukebox and the scent of strawberries, visitors enter a veritable “city of the sixties” in the grand hall of the Kunstmuseum. In the 16-meter-high hall, visitors encounter streets, squares, and artist’s houses of various sizes and heights for the highly individual, and often closely related—in terms of both friendship and thematic content—stakeholders of the art and cultural
Pauline Boty, Colour Her Gone (Detail), 1962 © Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Richard Hamilton, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Gold), 1965/66, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016
scene of the “Swinging Sixties”: key protagonists such as Peter Blake, David Hockney, R. B. Kitaj and Allen Jones, along with generally lesser-known but essential figures such as Derek Boshier, Peter Phil-lips, Richard Smith, Gerald Laing, Patrick Caulfield, Antony Donaldson, Colin Self and Joe Tilson, as well as the often neglected, decidedly feminine stances of Pauline Boty and Jann Haworth can be experienced there in larger groups of works.In every case, it’s about exemplifying and bringing to life the numerous cross-connections, largely forgotten today, between the then increasingly fluid forms of culture and their creative stake-
Previous Page: Peter Blake, Children Reading Comics, 1954, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust, Carlisle © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016 / Left: Derek Boshier, First Toothpaste Painting, 1962, Museums Sheffield © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016 / Below: Peter Blake und Jann Haworth, 1967, Sgt. Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, Studio Album © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016
holders. The exhibition’s broad scope—ranging from the initial spark of Paolozzi’s early magazine collages and the works by Colin Self and Gerald Laing, which oscillate between nuclear fear and a euphoric belief in progress, to Hamilton’s pictorial relief of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser in hand-cuffs after being arrested for drug abuse—enables visitors to experience the artistic and cultural-historical significance of British Pop Art with all their senses, while presenting this period as an essential prehistory of our own present day.
the catalogue
Wienand Verlag publishes the eponymous, exten-sive catalogue of the exhibition, in both German and English. Edited by Ralf Beil and Uta Ruhkamp, the catalogue features essays by Ralf Beil, David E. Brauer, Anne Massey, Rainer Metzger, Uta Ruhkamp, and John-Paul Stonard; texts by Daniel F. Herrmann, Kay Heymer, Francis Outred, Sue Tate, Victoria Walsh, and others; as well as a chronology of the years 1947 to 1968. 432 pages, approx. 400 illustrations, 24 x 31 cm, hard cover, 38 € in the Museum Shop.
Peter Phillips, Custom Painting No. 5, 1965, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Männedorf, Switzerland © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2016
12.1.17 / 8 pmLen Lye, Color Box (1935) 5 min., Rainbow Dance (1936) 5 min., George Dunning, Three Blind Mice (1945) 5 min., John Halas, Automania 2000 (1963) 9 min., Lindsay Anderson, The White Bus (1967) 47 min.
19.1.17 / 8 pmPeter Clifton, Procul Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale (1967) 5 min., Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow Up (1966) 111 min.
9.2.17 / 8 pmTerry Gilliam, Story Time (1967) 9 min., Nicholas Roeg, Perfor-mance (1970) 105 min.
16.2.17 / 8 pmJames Scott, Richard Hamilton (1969) 25 min., Jack Hazan, A Bigger Splash (1973) 106 min.
Admission 5 €In cooperation with Braunschweig International FilmfestivalSubject to alteration
Fun House: WorksHop For FamiliesYou and your children discover the Pop Art City of the 1960s, and after a short, guided tour, everyone gets creative! 2 € per person, plus family ticket
3.12.16 / 3 – 5.30 pmPopUp: 3D postcards
14.1.17 / 3 – 5.30 pmTearing, Cutting, Gluing: The Art of the Collage
11.2.17 / 3 – 5.30 pmCity of Dreams – Do it yourself
26.1.17 / 6.30 pmGuided tour WitH tHe curator dr. uta ruHkamp3 € plus admission
28.-31.1.17 / 10 am – 6 pm Boom! crasH! BanG!comic-WorksHop For younG people From the idea to the comic: draw your stories, picture by picture, 20 €, including admis-sion and materials for 4 days
the PrograM
29.10.16 / 7 pmopeninGtHis Was tomorroW Party begins at 9 pm with Mr. Knister, admission free
art dialoGueAn intensive course on themes from the exhibition3 € plus admission
8.11.16 / 4 pmEarly Birds: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Independent Group
22.11.16 / 4 pmO, so British: at the artist’s house of Richard Hamilton
6.12.16 / 4 pmForever Young: David Hockney, Pauline Boty, Allen Jones and Peter Phillips
10.1.17 / 4 pmCity of the Sixties: Patrick Caulfield, Richard Smith, Alison & Peter Smithson
24.1.17 / 4 pmLost in the Fun House: architecture projects from the 1960s
7.2.17 / 4 pmLook! Feel! Smell! Listen! Pop Art and Music
10.11.16 / 6.30 pmGuided tour WitH tHe directordr. ralF Beil 3 € plus admission
13.11.16 / 11 am – 6 pmopen HouseAdmission free
17.11.16 / 1.12.16 / 19.1.17 / 2.2.17 / 6.30 pmart aFter WorkShort guided tours, sparkling wine and snacks in between work and evening10 € including admission
cinema at tHe HallenBad
1.12.16 / 8 pmLindsay Anderson, Oh Dream-land (1953) 13 min., Tony Richardson, A Taste of Honey (1961) 105 min.
8.12.16 / 8 pmRichard Lester, The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) 11 min., A Hard Day’s Night (1964) 87 min.
reGistration www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de [email protected] +49 (0) 5361-2669-20
R.B. Kitaj, Good News for Incunabulists (Detail), 1962, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich © Estate of R.B. Kitaj, Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art, London
Gerald Laing, Brigitte Bardot, 1968, silkscreen print in colour
Opening hOurs
Tuesday - Sunday / 11 am - 18 pm24.12.16 closed25.12.16 / 26.12.16 open31.12.16 / 1.1.17 closed2.1.17 open
AdmissiOns
Regular / 8 €Reduced / 5 €Family ticket / 12 €Annual ticket / 30 €Groups from 12 or more / 5 € p.p.School classes / by agreement
public guided tOurs
Saturday / 12 pmSunday / 12 pm and 15 pm3 € plus admission fee
Kunstmuseum WOlfsburg
Hollerplatz 138440 WolfsburgGermany
Phone +49 (0) 5361-2669-0Fax +49 (0) 5361-2669-66info@kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.dewww.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de