And the bad part about Pop art is that it was much more than a fad. Many famous pieces are worth truck loads of cash today.

I got much of my bootleg info on modernism not from art school but from lectures on post modern philosophies and critics like ts elliot. Trying to appreciate modernist word smiths is even more infuriating than groking the painters. But they give better clues to understanding modernism.

BTW your blog is packed with awesome stuff.

As far as I can see, most (if not all) postwar modernism was just warmed-ever Dada with, as David pointed out, the “ism of the month” tacked on it, propped up with a ludicrous theory from a self-important critic.

The difference was that the Dadaists, though they proclaimed themselves “anti-art”, did it with such style, wit and imagination that they created wonderful art anyway, they couldn’t help it. The modernists, on the other hand, particularly the Abstract Expressionists, were so bereft of imagination, so pompous, arrogant, lifeless and artless, that they truly did create “anti-art”. What an accomplishment.

I don’t mind that so much, if someone wants to create soulless artworks based on obscure theories so weak-minded patrons can prove their intellectual superiority by buying them in the face of their obvious lack of visual appeal, go for it.

What I do object to, and strenuously, was the deliberate and concentrated campaign by the postwar modernists to denigrate and devalue representational art, making it difficult for artists to pursue that path for over 50 years!

That is unforgivable.

But even the inveterate art snob patrons didn’t have a strong enough stomach to deal for long with the Big Secret (that even they found it b-o-r-i-n-g), and when Pop Art critics like Steinberg “blessed” Pop as non-representational, even though it contained recognizable images, the patrons ate it up, because they really did want something they could look at after all.

Oh my, I seem to be ranting again.

My statements about the “goal” of Pop art, and poatwar modernism in general, reflects my own cynical observations, of course, and not the stated opinions of the artists. I absoultely agree it had nothing to do with virtuosity, it was completely anti-viturosity. I’m not.

Not only did the panels not need to be “elevated” to the status of art, Lichtenstein’s renderings of them (image above, right) were flat, lifeless and seemingly clueless to the appeal of the original panels (above, left). This is possibly deliberate on his part, but the effect is a drab one regardless, and I have never seen anything from Lichtenstein that demonstrates an ability to draw as well as even the least talented second string comic artists whose work he cavalierly “borrowed”.

This passage thoroughly represents your misunderstanding of post modernism and of pop art in particular. Pop art has nothing at all to do with the artist as virtuoso. It has very little to do with the particular images either - it is about ideas.

“The goal of Pop art was to make the art buying elite comfortable with representational art again, in the wake of Abstract Expressionism”.

This statement is nonsense. I assure you that pop art had no such goal. It had nothing to do with comfort at all. The “art buying elite” has been hung up on representational art since the enlightenment. It needed no such help.

Thanx for the stimulating conversation. :)

Thanks for your comments, but I have to disagree.

To my experience, the postwar modernists, including the Pop artists, despised Dada, probably because the Dadaists had done it all, and better, half a century before.

It’s true that the Pop artists’ elevation of “pop culture” items from trash to treasure was on par with Duchamp’s signed urinal and other “readymades”; but that reinforces my contention that the Pop artists were taking something that was “not art” (comics) and proclaiming it “art”.

The goal of Pop art was to make the art buying elite comfortable with representational art again, in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, by proclaiming the representation of pop culture items as non-representational. (Actually, the goal of Pop art was to make gallery owners and certain artists rich; and make certain critics, notably Leo Steinberg, famous, but that’s another diatribe.)

BTW, other readers should check out macmcrae’s blog, Mac McRae Illustration, which is beginning to be populated with fascinatingly odd creatures.