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| "Liz" 1964 Lithograph Print |
By Taylor Jones
Let’s take a walk down the streets of New York City. We pass by the hot dog stands, cross over lanes of traffic, and wander into Andy Warhol’s Factory, “a creative space for adults and kids.” Pop Icons, the current exhibit at the Monterey Museum of Art, displays the work of pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. I step through a door that leads to “The Factory,” an imitation of the Manhattan loft where Warhol lived and worked from 1962-1968.
After World War II brought an end to the Great Depression, Americans began to spend money again. The booming economy caused for a steep climb in mass production and mass media, which were both exploited in pop art. Working with commercial products, Warhol became fascinated by Hollywood lifestyle and American consumerism. He surrounded himself with groundbreaking artists, musicians, and movie stars, to serve as his main friends and critics. Pop art seeks to portray what is in the media and relevant to youth culture, resulting in Warhol’s use of newspaper clippings to make his prints.
The first image in the gallery is Warhol’s lithograph (a print made from a silkscreen reproduction of another photograph) titled “Liz.” This portrays Elizabeth Taylor, a Hollywood star, with colorful and exaggerated features. Her solid black hair doesn’t have much detail, making it look hand painted. She wears turquoise waves of eyeliner that flow over her tan skin. Cartoon red lips are positioned over her own, matching the red background.
In the next piece, titled “Campbell’s Soup I (Onion),” Warhol demonstrates his interest in American consumerism. He felt America was great in that people of different social statuses purchase essentially the same goods. Portraying many commercial products such as Coca-Cola, Warhol commented, “a Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” Like Coke, Campbell’s Soup is a product that almost all Americans are familiar with. Beside this three-foot-tall can of soup is a smaller can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Although this particular can is orange and turquoise, it makes me realize that most people in America can associate with this image, having seen it around their kitchen cupboard countless times. Warhol’s art inherently connected with the young people of his time because it highlighted what they were seeing in the media and brought value to images of the everyday.
As advertising became more prevalent in peoples’ lives with the development of television, politicians latched onto this medium of broadcasting to drive their campaigns. Thus, politicians seemed far more accessible to the average American. Warhol observed the youth in Americas’ plight and how their attention was drawn to politics. Taking advantage of their limelight, Warhol reproduced many prints of the Kennedy family. While I study a piece from 1966 called “Jacqueline Kennedy III,” my eyes drift between four different photos of the former first lady. In one frame she looks happy, in the next two she looks concerned, and in the last she is attending John F. Kennedy’s funeral. The print is entirely black and blue, and the misaligned photos appear to be simply thrown onto a desk, signifying the frenzied state of mind Jacqueline must have felt around her husband’s assassination.
Serial imagery—when an artist creates a series by relating subject matter or a theme over several works of art— is a widely used practice in pop art. Similar to photojournalism, serial images go together to tell a story. Warhol’s print titled “Electric Chair” speaks against capital punishment by presenting the death penalty in various perspectives. He took a gritty old photo of the electric chair and printed it in many different colors, each with an individual mood. I believe one interpretation of this series of images is to exploit how people may have become desensitized to the practice of capital punishment as it grew more widely publicized.
Roy Lichtenstein’s art is displayed on the other side of the room. In the early 60’s, his comic-book style was inspired by cartoons he saw on his child’s bubble gum wrappers. Lichtenstein popularized the pattern of Ben Day dots, using small, closely placed dots to form a complete four-color image. As an art enthusiast, Lichtenstein made statements in his art that relate to stylistic themes of Picasso, Monet, and other painters. One of these connections can be seen in his rendition of Monet’s series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral. Monet portrayed the cathedral at different times of day, which Lichtenstein represents in six different prints. Each frame conveys the outline of the cathedral in only two colors, created from the Ben Day pattern. The mood of the prints changes from bright yellow (a sunny afternoon) on the left, to dark blue (the dead of night) on the right.
By challenging assumptions about the value of art, Warhol and Lichtenstein opened the creative doors to artists of the future. They presented their art in a form that everyone could recognize, through reproducing prints of advertisements, political figures, and celebrities. Art evolves in accordance with culture, and as the media grew evermore prevalent in the lives of American people throughout the 50’s and 60’s, popular art changed to depict real-life events and culture in a colorful, interpretive fashion.
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