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It is sad we don't hear much about the Contemporary Art of Africa. There's a lot of it, and some of it is incredibly interesting. There are several whose current work is 100% Pop Art, but with a twist that reflects the place and time of the art. One such work is She Need Love by Boris Nzebo.
The image is fascinating in many ways, but to me, it is an image of reflection. His subject is of the now, but her face shes the impressions of the past, or perhaps of a at least somewhat distant present. She is thoughtful, perhaps pained, maybe a bit angry, but she is staring, a strong stare, towards something that is next to us, just off-center of our direct gaze, as if looking over our shoulder at someone approaching behind us. The work reminds me of Chuck Close, only with greater emotional resounance. The style of Nzebo's work is clean, bringing to mind folks like Hope Gangloff Perhaps my favorite Pop Artist in recent years has been Marisol. Her sculptures are easily the most impressive of the first wave of Pop Art, what with their found object assamblage-feeling within a figurative presentation. When I discovered her work on my 2013 visit to MoMA, I was blown away in every direction.
Love is her most impressive work when it comes to expressing Pop Art as a movement, and particularly the idea that the markers of modern culture and the mass media are valid for use as art object. Here, and I shall be blunt, someone is deep throating a Coke bottle. The bottle is instantly recogniseable as what it is, and the positioning is suggestive not of the way it is actually used, which would be the piece on its side, but as the far more suggestive position of the face as the base and the Coke bottle vertical. What I've never had confirmed is that the contents of the bottle being actual Coke or not. An early slide of the work shows the bottle far more full than it appears now, which makes me think yes. The title is a big deal, and the real depth of the piece. The idea is that Coke is being force-fed to the masses, and they willingly accept it. Or at least on the surface they do. Is the drinker actually enjoying it, or is the title insinuating something much more layered, that the 'love' indicated by the title isn't an affection for the beverage, but a reference to the idea that'Love means never having to pay for a blow job?'In that case, the work is heavier, as it is is using the markers of the mass media, in this case the most iconic shape representing America of the 1950s and 60s, the Coke bottle, as a standing in for masculinity, for relationship dominance as it were. That view of American cultural imperialism is right in line with much of the political art of the early 1960s, but at right angles with much of the Pop Art of the time from the likes of Warhol that was celebrating that American Culture. There is a lot here, and it's a gorgeous piece of sculpture. The dirtiest painter in the game, Evelyne Axell was a master of Pop Art painterly expressions of sexuality within the mass media, and her work has a sensual quality you just don't find often enough to Pop Art.
Comments? Mail [email protected] An artist who was also a pro wrestler and produced some amazing work in the 1960s that works well as Pop Art especially if you understand the world of wrestling. Seems like something I should get into, right?
Comments to [email protected] Three Minute Modernist - Andy Warhol, Pop Art, and The Mass Media as Represented by Triple Elvis7/6/2017 Representations of the Mass Media is what most folks know of Pop Art, and Warhol was the master of it!
Send comments to [email protected] The artist with the name I misspell the most, Wayne Thiebaud is a fine example of what Pop Art does when it looks to capture the ways in which the modern world is staged as strongly as any artist would ever consider.
Three Minute Modernist - On Pop Art, Lichtenstein, and the Understanding of The Old Given the New7/5/2017 The Pop Art series begins with a discussion of why I'm interested in it, what Pop Art was saying, and who the hell do I think I am???
Like Manuel Neri, Christo is an artist whose pre-delivery process pictures are far more interesting ot me than the delivered ones. I've seen a couple of his pieces in person, including those gates in New York City (and possibly Running Fence, though I would have been very very young), but for artistic impact, it is the planning pieces that I love. There is an accessibility to them that is just lacking from his physicial, in the world works (save for the wrapped Dog House at the Schultz Museum) and they're just far more real to me.
This early work, a wrapped store front, is clean, and fascinating. Removed from the actuality of the situated store, without the environment to play off of, it is supposed to be meaningless, but instead, it is asking a question - what effect would this have if released into the world? In the stage of delivery, there is no question; it is merely a part of the built environment. In this stage, we are to place it within the contect that we experience, thus forcing us to access a memory where these forms can exist. |
Your HostChristopher J Garcia - Curator, Fan Writer, Podcaster, and a guy who just loves art. Archives
February 2019
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