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Bartleby
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Faces and Names: Memories From An Exhibition

Posted about 1 year ago
  • Artist:
    Lou Reed/John Cale
  • Album:
    Songs For Drella
  • Track:
    Faces And Names

[Lou Reed/John Cale - Faces And Names / 4:12]

From 11th October 2007 to 20th January 2008, the National Portrait Gallery in London hosted an exhibition called "Pop Art Portrait."

The exhibition itself was very and perhaps even too didactic showing some 50 works (including paintings, video projection, sculptures) by artists from Richard Hamilton to Andy Warhol, through to Peter Blake and Robert Indiana and Pauline Boty.

Looking at all the portraits especially those by the POPicons Lichtenstein and Warhol one gets an odd, and I must confess, disappointing feeling of déjà-vu. Indeed, Pop Art has become now so ubiquitous (from Apple ads to Flickr groups) that it has most of its insolence.

Andy Warhold, Self-Portrait, 1967. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 1867 x 1867 x 52mm

However, why should I have been so surprised to see so many familiar faces and quaint stances? After all isn't what Pop Art is about: brand/name recognition?

Here's what Andy Warhol said in POPism: "To be successful as an artist, you have to have your work shown by a good gallery for the same reason, say, that Dior never sold his originals from a counter in Woolworth's. It's a matter of marketing, among other things. If a guy has, say, a few thousand dollars to spend on a painting . . . He wants to buy something that's going to go up and up in value, and the only way that can happen is with a good gallery, one that looks out for the artist, promotes him, and sees to it that his work is shown in the right way to the right people. Because if the artist were to fade away, so would this guy's investment ... No matter how good you are, if you are not promoted right, you won't be one of those remembered names."

What connection could there possibly between a cultural movement originated the end of 1950s and music today? I hear you say. Just think about the concept of hype and the reality of our references... More than ever, today's bands and labels use the same technique as that recommended by Warhol to promote their names. The difference is the distinction between Woolworth's and Macy's is irrelevant as we are all in our own way the tools and agents of this hype... What with our blogs, personal podcasts, MySpace and so and so forth. We give names and faces to the industry. Or do we?

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Comments (19)

  1. 1234chainsaw
    1234chainsaw says I saw this exhibition too, and found it fairly narrow and insubstantial. The Marilyn Monroe series was interesting; otherwise predictable and below my expectations.
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  2. Bartleby
    Bartleby says Apologies to all those who have to read this with the botched lay-out due to an unknown technical in MOG (persistent since mid-January.) - For a more user-friendly lay-out please, check my MOG home-page *here*
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  3. Bartleby
    Bartleby says Hey, 1234Chainsaw. Unsubstantial is the word. I really like the self-portrait in red of Warhol. The red clashes with your sight and hurts your eyes... It's hard to find something that matches the optical sensation of this piece. (You know, between proper eye-soreness and hypnotic vortex)
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  4. bloodtea
    bloodtea says (A lot of things came across my mind while reading what you've wrote there.. I'll try to be brief as possible.) We must take in mind that, back in the 50's, Pop Art was severely criticised because it was putting at stake the true meaning of art, and that it emerged as a reflex of a popular culture based on consumerism. This iconoclast movement fought the battle against the act of consuming by making its art consumable (funny, huh?) - I believe it was the way artists had to achieve their goal. So.. comparing it to today's music might be a bit unfair.. but still, I guess there's a chance both may meet at one point down the road, after all: lack of passion (they simply do music because it's nice being a musician and appear on MTV) resulting in music of fast consumption (like there's a "best before: 01/09" tag stuck on the track). Music and art sure evolve. And the more you're promoted the better. But it doesn't mean you're selling out good stuff. By the way.. I hate Pop Art.
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  5. I am
    I am says Most of the exhibits from these artist tend to be anemic in their offerings. I guess it is because of private collections and the tendency of museums to snatch up the few remaining pieces so they can display something from the 'Pop art" era. Want a good Warhol dose? Go to the Warhol museum in Pittsburg, PA. Being his hometown they (mostly his brother and family) have put together a wonderful collection of Factory artifacts, letters, movies, and the more conventional art from the white haired freak. I am with you Micheal, I do get an "its alright" feel from viewing most semi-contemporary art. Growing up the way I did I was surrounded by many artists (some incredibly famous) but it was their take on the art that came before that I latched on to. To this day I get weepy looking at art pre 1700. It has a lot to do with the reasons and approach of the artist. Something we find little of in the 20th and 21st century.
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  6. lilja88
    lilja88 says The Internet is a splendid tool for shameless self-promotion. Andy would have loved it, I think. "No matter how good you are, if you're not promoted right, you won't be one of those remembered names." Don't we all just want to be remembered?
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  7. SA
    SA says Pop art is tricky, me things, because some stuff is brilliant, and other stuff I wonder why the heck they made it in the first place, let alone it actually meaning something. I didn't see that exhibition, but in the other musea in London there's a fair amount of Pop Art to be seen me thinks. I think actually, in terms of music, that the internet and blogs and stuff like that take the pop out of music. Because studios market what is mass consumable, and force those names on us. What you get with blogs and those type of things is that there is a lot of word-of-mouth going on. So if you are doing great gigs, chances are you'll get on blogs, then on independent websites like Drowned in Sound, Pitchfork, or Gigwise or whatever, and then your audience increases. In other words, qualitively good music is what is prevailing. It is no longer the studios selecting a mass consumable product and then promoting it, it is a sort of grassroots movement. You don't have to have someone promoting you anymore, if you play great gigs, you promote yourself and it will spread accordingly.
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  8. Spike
    Spike says "Faces and Names" has a such comforting and harmonious arrangement, melody and singing, different from the few post-Velvet Underground recordings by Cale or Reed I've come across. The lyrics quote Warhol, right? That Warhol self-portrait is beautiful, to me at least. (Maybe one way to prevent image-stretching is to use software to add white to the side of an image.) Insolence was never a major requirement for pop art. Pop art was not so much a protest against advertising and commodification as a celebration of it. Perhaps if it had a major message, it was: look at how beautiful some commercial imagery is! Warhol was right about the advantage of finding the right gallery. Paying for an expensive piece is always an extremely irrational act, and buying from a prestigious gallery strengthens the customer's faith in the piece's future resale value. Most people can't afford aesthetometers to evaluate accurately the beauty of a work of art OR of a musical performance, so corporate hype provides valuable help for them. Remember, the public is a fickle tyrant.
    Permalink posted 02/02/2008
  9. leftoverking
    leftoverking says ultimately what i find something exhilarating about pop art or any print media for that matter, is the simplicity, the immediacy, and the repeatability of a print. it's all about sharing your message with as may people as possible. really cool. hell i love photocopies.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  10. Bartleby
    Bartleby says *Bloodtea*: Muito obrigado for your insightful comments. I agree with you that Pop Art was a new reaction to the domineering Abstraction in art. I meant to delve into the repercussions of POPism and so on so forth but realised I was going over intellectualise (especially my light brush on regionalism). -- The comparison between Pop Art and hype was a compromise (a short-cut of sorts). It's true that many names won't be remembered in our post MTV world... *I Am*: Pop Art exhibitions are bound to be restrictive but this one at the NPG was particularly "Spartan" and unsubstantial as 1234C suggested. -- "Small Town" (in "Songs For Drella") refers to Pittsburgh: "Where did Picasso come from / There's no Michelangelo coming from Pittsburgh..." I think Warhol was a bloody good "conceptualiser." The only thing with POP Art is its pervasiveness. It seems that people can only think of serigraphy... *Lilja*: I'm sure Warhol would have loved the I-net. But you wouldn't the Factory with this virtual thing. Now, I wonder what something like that would like in "Second Life." *SA*: Thanks for popping in. What you said about the blogs and so on corroborates my suspicions... Things have become more diluted but you still a critical mass in order to achieve efficient promotion. Warhol's always advocated self-promotion and with the emergence of "nebulous" tools such a blogs the critical mass is lower, as it were. *Spike*: I'm really glad that the music caught your attention. Yes, the song partly quotes Warhol as does the rest of "Songs For Drella." I really enjoy the retinue of this rather problematic collaboration (Reed didn't want Cale's name on the album at all). -- What you say about the beauty of commercial imagery touches on another part of what I wanted to say about POP Art i.e. the importance of copyrights. Had the owners of all those materials recycled by POP Art claimed their royalties, I wonder where this movement would have been. *Leftoverking*: Photocopies are indeed very POP arty. I do enjoy the immediacy of familiarity which Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton offer but sometimes it's a bit close to home, if you get my meaning. Thanks for your comments.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  11. AA Coppertop
    AA Coppertop says I don't think Andy was being ironic or putting anyone on about his intentions. Spike says everything I'd have said, but perfectly, so go read his comment again. I have listened to "Songs For Drella" dozens of times, and lines from it pop into my head at odd moments. Andy had a special kind of quotability, far beyond the "15 minutes" thing. On a cross-country trip once I brought along a whole pile of discs and listened to almost nothing but "Drella". I'm glad you are drawing attention to it today, B.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  12. ivylander
    ivylander says I also concur with Spike. Pop art did as much to blur the high-low distinction as any cultural event of the last 40-50 years. Whether that's a good thing or not is another question, and not one I'm inclined to touch...
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  13. Spike
    Spike says Bartleby, you mentioned copyright royalties. I read somewhere that Warhol had to pay some disgruntled photographer some money for having used his image. Recently the N.Y. Times had an article about a gallery exhibit by the artist Richard Prince, showing his enormous enlargement of a photo used for an old Marlboro ad, showing a cowboy riding toward a cow in a snowy forest. The article said that the photographer was a little perplexed about Richard Prince expropriating his image, but that neither he nor Marlboro had any legal right to prevent Prince from doing it, which I found surprising.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  14. Bartleby
    Bartleby says *AA Copertop*: "Songs For Drella" is one of those records I keep coming back to. It's like meeting up with an old companion, every time you hear a different story. Great album. *Ivy*: The blurring between high and low, the questioning of uniqueness of a piece of art (all those serigraphs)... These are the reasons why POP art is not so surprising to us any more. I'm not saying that it didn't shift and/or re-assess our ideas on art. After 60 years, these things seem a bit contrived even though POP art has never lost its influence in Western societies. *Spike*: I've heard of Warhol having to pay a hefty sum for using someone's else photo. It's kind of ironic because he was himself very protective of his own works. - What I was trying to get across is the idea that POP art has invented the remix culture... Hence this question about copyrights. Thank you everyone for humouring me and bringing so many great and good points to our discussion on POP art.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  15. AA Coppertop
    AA Coppertop says Bartleby, Can you humor us (me), and post a "Small Town" mp3 if you have it? The piano on it conjurs up images of old-fashioned "physical culture" demonstrations , calisthenics, muscle men, that sort of thing. Damned if I can say exactly why. Must be an old, old TV cliche. All things Andy would appreciate.
    Permalink posted 02/03/2008
  16. Bartleby
    Bartleby says AA, I will gladly oblige tonight or tomorrow - I was listening to the album yesterday as a matter of fact.
    Permalink posted 02/04/2008
  17. RGM
    RGM says Wonder how internet will affect this in the long run. With downloading instead of a CD or Album covers. Wonder if there will be a point where the artist\musician just abandon artwork all together. at one point and be concerned or focused with their music only. I remember when TOOL didn't want to sell there music online at first and focus more on selling their music on CD or record. I read a more recent Rolling Stones article that said most of the music sold last year where on CD's, but the industry wants it all to switch to itunes. In my honest opnion the sound quality is better on CD's then mp3's.
    Permalink posted 02/04/2008
  18. Bartleby
    Bartleby says I agree with you 100%, Ray. The sound of an mp3 has nothing to do with a CD (back in the days, there was a brilliant write-up on the I-net entitled "128kbps is not CD quality" - I wish I could find again). Besides, nothing can replace the tactile pleasure of handling a disc (CD or vinyl).
    Permalink posted 02/04/2008
  19. Jonh Ingham
    Jonh Ingham says On the copyright question, I'm surprised that no one has yet invoked the pop artists - or the collagists of the 20s and 30s for that matter - in fighting the ever lengthening term of music copyright, plus usage in samples, mashups etc. The original copyright term was framed in language that said the period was long enough for the owner to recoup and make a profit, before culture as a whole benefitted from it being in the public domain. Like it or hate it you cant deny that the results of pop art raiding found imagery has hugely benefitted culture as a whole - the effects still reverberate 50 years later. Perhaps that should be 'effected' rather than 'benefitted', depending on your view. Me - I love pop art.
    Permalink posted 02/06/2008

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