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> But this type of Lichtenstein work never sat well with me. The transformation is extremely minimal - minor changes to the scene, a new cropping, and conversio

> But this type of Lichtenstein work never sat well with me. The transformation is extremely minimal - minor changes to the scene, a new cropping, and conversion from ink to painting. If I handed something like that in in school I’d get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!). The art from those like Lichtenstein, Warhol, Duchamp, Malevich, Hausmann, Pollock, etc., has to be understood within the broader international conversations around art at the time, particularly so-called "High Art" coming out of classical European traditions. It is intentionally subversive of what was the dominant mode of art at the time, because these artists broke through and fundamentally opened up 'art' to include literally anything. It is hard to describe how hostile the European Establishment of early 20th century High Art was to anything that was outside of the mainstream traditions. These artists were the Punk Rock of the time. - Malevich paints a single geometric black square on a white canvas, signs it, and puts it on a wall in an art gallery. Utterly unremarkable today, but it was such a scandal at the time when representational art was all people recognized as art. - Duchamp buys a mens' urinal designed and built by some random hardware manufacturer, signs it, and hangs it up on a wall in an art gallery. Duchamp later takes a print of the Mona Lisa, gives her a mustache, signs it, and puts it on a wall in an art gallery. None of this takes any technical skill in painting, sculpting, etc., which is part of why it was so subversive at the time. - Hausmann cuts out shapes from magazines, pastes them together into the figure of a man in such a seemingly-haphazard and crude manner that a 7 year old can do it 'better,' signs it, puts it on a wall, and titles it The Art Critic. The whole point was to raise a middle finger and say, "Who made you in charge of deciding what art 'really' is and isn't?" It intentionally takes very little of what has traditionally been considered fundamental techniques in painting, sculpture, etc. The point is that an untrained 10 year old child could do it just as "good" on a technical level of execution. So it shifts the skills required to constitute art from requiring years of expertise in technical execution of drawing, painting, sculpting, etc., to conceptual intervention. > If I handed something like that in in school I’d get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!). As you should be. When you take an art class today, you are almost certainly not training yourself so that you can shock the early 20th century international art establishment who can't see beyond the traditions of the old masters. Besides, that's already been done. They removed so many unwritten rules about what could or could not be considered art, but there is still a lot of value in the old traditions and techniques. It's like saying, "if I performed this punk rock song for my classical piano class, I'd get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!)" > To be clear, Lichtenstein is a very capable artist, and can produce very beautiful work that is (as far as I can tell) highly original. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cap_de_Barcelona https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cap_de_Barcelona . I’m just not sure about the types of work shown in the article. At the time, the art that they were appropriating was not even considered to be art as such. Not even 'bad art' or so-called 'outsider art' or god-forbid 'degenerate art' --- it wasn't even seen as art in the first place. A piece of porcelain designed to be an industrially mass-produced urinal wasn't seen as a creative expression worthy to be considered 'art.' Same with the design of a soup can, or comic books. Today, this seems ridiculous, especially with the recognition of design throughout many industries. But it wasn't at the time.

rendaw 4y ago
> The whole point was to raise a middle finger and say ... I'm all for subversive art, but that can be done _and_ credit the original. > At the time, the art that they were appropriating was not even considered to be art as such. I know you're saying that the idea, rather than the specific artistic merit of the contents, was the main point of these works, but this sounds super close to the "you should be thankful I published your study under my name, your work would never have gotten so much influence otherwise" argument.
kemiller 4y ago
This is great context; it can be hard to appreciate radical art from the past which is important precisely because it changed art so dramatically that we now take it for granted. But that’s not an excuse. They didn’t go far enough, and in the process aggrandized (and sometimes enriched) themselves more than they elevated the art they were supposedly freeing from the clutches of the Old Guard. Did Duchamp track down the anonymous artisan who designed his urinal and invite him to the cool artist parties where reputations spread? No? Well that just shows that the elitism these artists were rebelling against is alive and well, and that while they may have gained “low” art recognition, they did much less for “low” artists. And that’s the point of the article.
drewcoo 4y ago
Sure, but . . . When Warhol was painting a soup can or a well-known celeb, there was no doubting the source material or who produced the image. When Duchamp hung a urinal, there was no question about manufacture or who hung it in that way. With Lichtenstein things get blurrier. Where did those images come from? He didn't tell us. We were not privy (I wanted that to be a Duchamp "privvy" pun but failed) to the trail of provenance that some of us might have found meaningful in other art. No, he treated his sources as though they were worthless, where other artists seemed to exalt them but placing them in the public eye. All pop artists seemed like they were "getting away with something," but Lichtenstein seemed to be punching down hard to do that.

rendaw 4y ago

> The whole point was to raise a middle finger and say ... I'm all for subversive art, but that can be done _and_ credit the original. > At the time, the art that they were appropriating was not even considered to be art as such. I know you're saying that the idea, rather than the specific artistic merit of the contents, was the main point of these works, but this sounds super close to the "you should be thankful I published your study under my name, your work would never have gotten so much influence otherwise" argument.

kemiller 4y ago

This is great context; it can be hard to appreciate radical art from the past which is important precisely because it changed art so dramatically that we now take it for granted. But that’s not an excuse. They didn’t go far enough, and in the process aggrandized (and sometimes enriched) themselves more than they elevated the art they were supposedly freeing from the clutches of the Old Guard. Did Duchamp track down the anonymous artisan who designed his urinal and invite him to the cool artist parties where reputations spread? No? Well that just shows that the elitism these artists were rebelling against is alive and well, and that while they may have gained “low” art recognition, they did much less for “low” artists. And that’s the point of the article.

drewcoo 4y ago

Sure, but . . . When Warhol was painting a soup can or a well-known celeb, there was no doubting the source material or who produced the image. When Duchamp hung a urinal, there was no question about manufacture or who hung it in that way. With Lichtenstein things get blurrier. Where did those images come from? He didn't tell us. We were not privy (I wanted that to be a Duchamp "privvy" pun but failed) to the trail of provenance that some of us might have found meaningful in other art. No, he treated his sources as though they were worthless, where other artists seemed to exalt them but placing them in the public eye. All pop artists seemed like they were "getting away with something," but Lichtenstein seemed to be punching down hard to do that.