WALKER ART CENTER PRESENTS GROUNDBREAKING

EXHIBITION INTERNATIONAL POP

MINNEAPOLIS, November 25 2014The Walker Art Center is delighted to present International Pop, a groundbreaking historical survey that chronicles the global emergence and migration of Pop Art from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Organized by the Walker and on view April 9, 2015 through September 6, 2015, International Pop will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art followed by the Philadelphia Museum of Art through 2016.

Pop is among the most broadly recognized phenomena of postwar art, primarily identified with Britain and the U.S. In truth, however, the Pop impulse was strikingly nomadic, contagiously spreading not only through Britain and the U.S. but also Japan, Latin America, and both Eastern and Western Europe. From its inception, Pop migrated across borders and media, seizing the power of mass media and communication to reach a new class of viewers and adherents who would be drawn to its dynamic attributes. Yet, as this exhibition will reveal, distinct iterations of Pop were developing worldwide that alternatively celebrated, cannibalized, rejected, or transformed some of the presumed qualities of Pop in the U.S. and Britain. This sensibility emerged in reaction to the rise of a new consumerist and media age, laying the foundation for the emergence of an art form that embraced figuration, consumerism, and mechanical processes with a new spirit of urgency and exuberance. Particular attention will be given to the specific socio-historical contexts in which Pop emerged, from the social democracies of Europe; to the politically and socially turbulent U.S.; to the military regimes of Latin America; to the postwar climate of Japan; and the restricted pop cultural palette of countries in East Central Europe.

Curated by Darsie Alexander with Bartholomew Ryan for the Walker Art Center in consultation with an international group of scholars and curators, International Pop asserts that Pop was not a singular artistic style or brand, but a roving spirit and ethos moving with unprecedented force through culture at large in the 1960s through a new abundance of everyday commodities, mass media production, and mainstream advertising. Featuring some 125 art works by over 100 artists drawn from over 13 countries on four continents, International Pop will be the first exhibition of its kind to explore such a vast and diverse array of Poprelated production.

A key ambition of the exhibition is to show artists in the specific contexts from which they emerged, as well as to create relations between works across time and place. The exhibition is therefore organized into contextual sectionsspecific places or institutionsand broader thematic sections:

THEMATIC SECTIONS

New Realisms

A new form of realism arose during Pops formative years, a period that saw artists more attuned to mass media imagery, an influx of new commodities, and the decidedly physical world of objects and human bodies. A partial list includes Antonio Dias (Brazil); Yayoi Kusama and Genpei Akasegawa (Japan); Martial Raysse (France); Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine and Andy Warhol (USA); Mimmo Rotella (Italy); and Jean Tinguely (Switzerland).

The Image Travels & the Archive Shifts

With rapid developments in print technology and other media, the image world proliferated during this period and artists increasingly engaged the found image, often exploring the striking nature of popular culture. Additionally this section examines artists strong impulse to cull from a newly-saturated image world, sourcing from magazines and comic books and other media sources. A partial list includes Jirí Kolár and Július Koller (former Czechoslovakia); Peter Roehr (Germany); Roy Lichtenstein and Bruce Conner (USA); Tanaami Keiichi (Japan); and Eduardo Paolozzi (Great Britain).

Distribution & Domesticity

One of the recurring themes of Pop globally is the subject of commodities and goods, especially in the west. This sections examines the circulation and availability of goods as a key driver of content and critique for Pop artists, who variously perceived abundance to be a particularly American theme. A partial list includes Erró (Iceland); Marisol (Venezuela); Cildo Meireles (Brazil); Paul Thek, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, Tom Wesselman and Robert Watts (USA); Ushio Shinohara (Japan); and Billy Apple (New Zealand).

Pop & Politics

Worldwide, the emergence of Pop was heavily shaped in the 1960s by political conditions and social unrest. This section presents works with this topical and often potent subject matter and imagery, including national flags, political figures and striking critiques of Western ideologies. A partial list includes Hélio Oiticica, Cláudio Tozzi and Marcello Nitsche (Brazil); Thomas Bayrle (Germany); León Ferrari and Jorge de la Vega (Argentina); Andy Warhol (USA); Öyvind Fahlström (Sweden); and Genpei Akasegawa, Tetsumi Kudo and Yoko Ono (Japan).

Love & Despair

An abiding fascination with themes related to desire, death, sex, and the body can be found throughout the 1960s, which saw a resurgence of figuration that coincided with the rise of Pop Art. This section features artists who engaged the body from a position that can be seen as subverting and questioning representation in popular culture of the period: a partial list of artists includes Evelyne Axell (Belgium), David Hockney (Britain), Pino Pascali (Italy), Wanda Pimentel (Brazil), Marjorie Strider and Andy Warhol (United States), Jerzy Ryszard Jurry Zielinski (Poland), and Jana elibská (former Czechoslovakia).

CONTEXTUAL SECTIONS

Britain: The Independent Group & the New Scene

This section highlights the activities of the Independent Group (Britain), a collection of artists, architects and critics often associated with the emergence of Pop Art in the early 1950s, as well as a second generation of British Pop Artists who emerged in the exuberant context of the swinging sixties in London. Artists include Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier, Colin Self, and Clive Barker. Curatorial consultant Erica Battle, Associate Curator, Philadelphia

Museum of Art

Germany: Capitalist Realism

During the German economic miracle of the 1960s, four artists founded a short-lived movement titled Capitalist Realism, which cast a critical eye on the importation of U.S. popular culture, as well as developments in West Germany which they satirically paralleled with the Socialist Realism of communist East Germany. This section features Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Manfred Kuttner and Konrad Lueg.

Brazil: The New Consciousness

The story of Pop Art in Brazil during the 1960s is one of the most vivid sections of the exhibition. While many artists turned to a Pop style at various points, often incorporating its use into previously established movements such as Neo Concretism and Concretism, the artists were largely distrustful of U.S. Pop, which was associated with a U.S. government that propped up Brazils military dictatorship. A partial list of artists includes Waldemar Cordeiro, Nelson Leirner, Antonio Manuel, Antonio Dias, Anna Maria Maiolino, Raymundo Colares, Rubens Gerchman and Antônio Henrique Amaral.

Argentina: The Instituto Torcuato Di Tella & Pop Lunfardo

In the decade of the 1960s, Argentina saw a radical and unique emergence of Pop Art that quickly transformed into a more political, dematerialized conceptual art. Much of these activities were collected around the Insituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. This section concentrates on the artists associated with the earlier Pop phase, whose flair for self-promotion and media savvy engaged a version of Pop that was highly participatory and event-based. French critic Pierre Restany coined the term Pop Lunfardo (Vernacular Pop) to describe these artists who include Delia Cancela, Pablo Mesejean, Marta Minujín, Dalila Puzzovio, and Edgardo Giménez.

Japan: The S?getsu Art Center & Tokyo Pop

Much exciting production in Japan of the 1960s was organized around the S?getsu Art Center, a leading experimental institution in Tokyo that became an international meeting place for artists (including Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg). It largely features Pop related artworks (often sophisticated responses to the dominance of U.S. popular culture) produced in Tokyo by Japanese artists including Ushio Shinohara, Keiichi Tanaami, Shinjiro Okamoto, Tadanori Yokoo, and Tiger Tateishi. Curatorial consultant: Hiroko Ikegami (Associate Professor, Kobe University)

INTERNATIONAL POP IN FILM AND VIDEO

Developed in collaboration with Ed Halter of Light Industry and presented in a dedicated gallery, the film and video program will feature five one hour programs daily and a series of five more individual programs on the Walkers Target Free Thursday Nights. This extraordinary resource lends another perspective as it will examine cinema as an extension of Pop practice in the work of several artists-as-filmmakers, such as Derek Boshier (UK), Peter Roehr (West Germany), and Tadanori Yokoo (Japan);look to independent filmmakers who responded to the Pop moment by documenting its artists, artworks, and events; and will analyze select examples of international cinema that, like Pop, chose to reflect back upon the nature of mass media and consumer images.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

This dynamic new volume is the first major survey to chronicle the emergence and migration of Pop art from an international perspective, focusing on the period from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Including original texts from a diverse roster of contributors, this catalogue provides important new scholarship on the period, examining production by artists across the globe who were simultaneously confronting radical cultural and political developments that would lay the foundation for the emergence of an art form embracing figuration, media strategies, and mechanical processes with a new spirit of urgency and/or exuberance. International Pop amplifies the scope and tenor of what we understand to be Pop, exposing the tremendous variety and complexity of this pivotal period and subject matter, and revealing how artists alternatively celebrated, cannibalized, rejected, or assimilated some of the presumed qualities of Pop advanced in the United States and Britain. Anchored by an expansive 48-page visual chronology, the book features in-depth essays by a range of scholars examining developments in Britain, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and Hungary as well as Western Europe and the United States. The volume includes some 320 illustrations, including fullcolor plates of each work in the exhibition, which integrates many classics of Pop art with numerous rarely seen works. Published by the Walker Art Center in English and designed by its award-winning in-house studio, the hardbound 368-page publication will be produced in an edition of 8,000 and distributed by Distributed Art Publishers.

Edited by Darsie Alexander with Bartholomew Ryan. Texts by Darsie Alexander, Erica Battle, Claudia Calirman, Dávid Fehér, Ed Halter, Maria Jose Herrera, Hiroko Ikegami, Godfre Leung, Luigia Lonardelli, Bartholomew Ryan; and Charlotte Cotton with Martin Harrison, Hiroko Ikegami, and Tomá Pospiszyl.

IN-GALLERY VIDEO PRESENTATION

A 20-minute in gallery interpretative video will explore the exhibitions core themes and discoveries. Narrated by the exhibitions curators it will feature first hand interviews with a range of artists from the exhibition, together with installation footage, and a dynamic range of ephemera, and moving image sourced from the exhibitions film/ video program.

EXHIBITION TOUR

Walker Art Center

April 11 September 6, 2015

Dallas Museum of Art

October 11, 2015 January 17, 2016

Philadelphia Museum of Art

February 18, 2016 May 15, 2016

OPENING WEEKEND EVENTS

After Hours

Saturday, April 11, 2015

9 pm 12 am

Get a sneak peek of the exhibition before it opens to the public and celebrate the opening with cocktails and complimentary small bites, art activities for adults, a Pop-themed photo booth, and records spun by hot local DJs.

International Pop: Opening Day Symposium

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Introduction to International Pop

Speaker: Darsie Alexander

The Internationality of Pop

Moderator: Darsie Alexander

Featuring: Dávid Fehér (Associate Curator, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), Hiroko Ikegami (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University, Japan), Erica Battle (Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art, María José Herrera (Art historian and Director of the Tigre Art Museum, Argentina).

Argentine Pop and its Dematerialization

Moderator: Bartholomew Ryan (Assistant Curator, Walker Art Center) Featuring: Delia Cancela (artist, Buenos Aires), Eduardo Costa (artist, Buenos Aires), and María José Herrera (art historian, Buenos Aires)

Tokyo Pop

Featuring: Hiroko Ikegami (Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University, Japan), Ushio Shinohara (artist, New York), and Keichi Tanaami (artist, Tokyo)

Closing remarks

Speaker: Olga Viso (Executive Director, Walker Art Center)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

International Pop is organized by the Walker Art Center. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is generously provided by Judy Dayton, Lyn De Logi, Martha and John Gabbert, the Robert Lehman Foundation, the Peyton Family Foundation, Robert and Rebecca Pohlad, Judith and Stephen Shank, Marge and Irv Weiser, Annette and John Whaley, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf. Support for the exhibition catalogue is provided by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Walker Art Center publications.

The Walker Art Centers presentation is sponsored by Briggs and Morgan, P.A. Media partner Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.

Media partner