Art
PHOTOGRAPHS: TOP LEFT: COURTESY VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM; TOP CENTER: COURTESY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO; TOP RIGHT: ANDREAS SÜTTERLIN; BOTTOM RIGHT, BOTTOM LEFT: NATHAN KEAY; BOTTOM CENTER: COURTESY VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM
Write your Art
Superstudio, Passiflora lamp, 1968.
Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans II, 1969.
Ed Paschke, Ed Paschke HairBag, 1971. Hair Bag 1971
own review at
timeout.com/ wchicag
reviewchicago
Jones, Chair
Jones, Chair, 1969
Allen Allen 1969..
Edited by Zach Long
art.chi@
art.chi@
timeout.com @z_long
@z_long
Edited by Zach Long
George Segal, Box: Man in Bar, 1969.
Making the room pop
A pair of exhibitions at the MCA explores everyday design through the lens of Pop Art. By Kate Sierzputowski
his month, the Museum of Contemporary Art is gearing up to celebrate arguably the most popular art movement of the 20th century: Pop Art. For the “Pop Art Design” exhibition, the museum will borrow works from 40 museums and collections across the world, bringing some of the most iconic works of artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein—that’s Warhol’s famous portrait of Mao in the exhibit—to Chicago. But what will the exhibition tell us about the popular, extraordinarily influential movement that we don’t already know? According to MCA chief curator Michael Darling, it will show the powerful cultural currents that influenced the aesthetic and politics of Pop and, particularly, look at the intersection of everyday consumer design and art. “Pop
T
Art Design” is set to go beyond the soup can.
“The designers were following the fine artists, the fine artists were looking to the designers, and both of them were looking to the popular culture of the time,” says Darling. “Not one was better or earlier than the other. We are trying to look at them as one big manifestation of a certain zeitgeist.”
The exhibit will be broken up into a dozen themed areas that examine how art and design responded to the cultural consciousness of the 1960s and ’70s. For instance, the fetishization of the female figure in advertising didn’t just affect what artists did on their canvases, it shaped the way companies designed Tupperware and table lamps. Politics reared its head too, with the Mao portrait, for example, a serigraph produced by
Warhol in 1972 after President Richard Nixon visited China. The museum will also pay tribute to local and some lesser-known artists, with a companion exhibition, “The Street, the Store, and the Silver Screen: Pop Art from the MCA Collection.” It includes several pieces by Chicago painter Ed Paschke. “I am trying to mix in West Coast and European artists alongside the heavyweight New York folks like Lichtenstein,
Warhol and [Claes] Oldenburg, and, in the case of Ed Paschke, a Midwestern point of view,” says Darling. “I wanted to cast the net a little wider and show that Pop Art had several manifestations in different parts of the world.” Paschke tended to present a grittier version of the upbeat Pop imagery in much of his work through the ’60s and ’70s—his Pink Lady features a muted Marilyn Monroe face pasted onto a male accordion player. For Darling, Paschke’s style showcases an artist whose roots were firmly planted in Chicago. “His work had a much more underground feeling than the West Coast or East Coast artists.”
Studio 65, Bocca, 1970.
“Pop Art Design” and “The Street, the Store, and the Silver Screen: Pop Art from the MCA Collection” are at the Museum of Contemporary Art December 19 through March 27.
December 2015–February 2016
TIMEOUT.COM/CHICAGO 61
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76