Pop Revisited

An exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum reexamines pop art 40 years later.

By: Matt Smith

	Roy Lichtenstein’s "Bread and Jam" (1963), above, is part of the exhibit The New Vulgarians: New York Pop at the Princeton University Art Museum.

   In its day, "pop art" was on the cutting edge of the New York City art scene. Some 40 years after the heyday of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, you can find these once-controversial works on the wall of every college dorm room from here to South Dakota.
   An exhibit on view at the Princeton University Art Museum, The New Vulgarians: New York Pop, aims to reposition pop within a context that allows its more challenging and discomforting aspects to be perceived, says curator Branden Joseph.
   "Pop art is fun, pop art is bright and cheery…it’s a poster we can buy in the shop," says Mr. Joseph, who is finishing up a three-year post-doctoral appointment at Princeton University. "The idea of the choices in the exhibition is to cause people to question and re-evaluate that."
   Mr. Joseph, who is teaching a concurrent undergraduate course called "Contemporary Art: Pop and Disorderly," says the instantly digestible mass-media replications of pop art over the past four decades have marginalized the artistic and political intent of the movement. "To my mind, the state of pop as we know pop is something that you can assimilate in a second."

Above, "Decoy II," 1971-73, by Jasper Johns.

   The exhibit’s title is taken from a March 1962 article by art historian and critic Max Kozloff, "‘Pop’ Culture, Meta-physical Disgust, and the New Vulgarians." Writing in Art International, Mr. Kozloff sounded an alarm to the art world: "The art galleries are being invaded by the pin-headed and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers, and worse, delinquents." The pop artists "depend too much on the repulsiveness of their imagery," he added.
   "He had a very moralistic tone to his argument, which is not at all what I want to replicate," says Mr. Joseph, who recently wrote one book about Robert Rauschenberg and edited another. "The exhibition explores what is potentially disturbing about the works, on a conceptual, intellectual level as well as on a sort of perceptual, museum-going level."
   Andy Warhol’s "Brillo Box" from 1964 sits at the center of the exhibition as a standard pop-art reference point. The 17 selections surrounding it are less comfortable and familiar to the museum-goer.
   Rauschenberg, whose works can be interpreted as desecrating the legacy of abstract expressionism, is represented by two pieces. The mesmerizing solvent transfer drawing "Quick Sand" (1965) appropriates countless pop-culture icons into a three-dimensional mess. "Street Throng," a drawing from 1959, uses stacks of images and colors to depict two nearly identical city-sidewalk scenes.
   Roy Lichtenstein’s "Bread and Jam" (1963), and Warhol’s penciled soup cans and bottle caps — essentially tracings from an overhead projector — illustrate how pop appeared to some as a debasing mechanization of drawing skills.
   Other images in New Vulgarians make a more overt statement. "Electric Chairs" (1971) and a silkscreen of a Chinese political assassination (1964-65) — both by Andy Warhol — are much more in-your-face than the white-haired enigma’s images of Marilyn Monroe or Jackie O, for example.
   A pair of early works by Claes Oldenburg, "Truck/Pants" (1960) and "Nutella" (1964), are grotesque in their depictions of commercial objects interwoven with the human sphere. Jasper Johns’ print "Decoy II" 1971-73 features a frightening representation of a severed human limb — not exactly something you would want to display on your dorm-room wall.
The New Vulgarians: New York Pop is on view at the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University campus, through July 13. During construction, enter through the west side of the building, across the green from Dod Hall. Branden Joseph will give a gallery talk, Pop Culture and Metaphysical Disgust: On New York Pop, May 2, 12:30 p.m.; Dr. William McManus will speak on Warhol’s Moving Image May 4, 3 p.m. Gallery hours: Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 1-5 p.m. For information, call (609) 258-3788. On the Web: www.princetonartmuseum.org