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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 11
Lesson 2: American and European Pop art- Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?
- Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America
- Warhol, Marilyn Diptych
- Why is this art? Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans
- The Case For Andy Warhol
- Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe
- Fashion and alienation in 1960s New York, Marisol's The Party
- Claes Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
- Oldenburg, Floor Cake
- James Rosenquist, "F-111," 1964-65
- Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V
- Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags
- Pop and after
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Oldenburg, Floor Cake
Claes Oldenburg, Floor Cake, 1962, synthetic polymer paint and latex on canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, 58.375 x 114.25 x 58.375 in. (148.2 x 290.2 x 148.2 cm) (MoMA) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is Pop art supposed to be serious, or purely fanciful?(5 votes)
- I think it can be both, depending on the artist. Not unlike the comedy of today's Lewis Black or Jon Stewart, something that's outwardly funny, but can result in some pretty serious reflections.(13 votes)
- How do these artworks make it to museums?
I know that the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder and we have different thoughts on certain artworks. But perhaps it made it to the museum because Oldenburg is famous? In other words, if it was some anonymous artists it wouldn't have been this important.
thoughts?(7 votes)- Museums have acquisitions departments.
Most museums use a combination of purchased and donated and/or loaned items to fill their display spaces.
As to why any particular "type" of art -- Often it has to do with the reputation of the artist, talent, perceived meaning or theme of the work, and the fact that a particular style "Stands Out" or "Stood Out" at a particular moment in time and captured the "public attention" and that perhaps it is/was considered different than what anyone else is/was doing and perhaps on a different scale and/or being unique.
Imagine walking through a museum. picture, picture, picture, picture, floor cake.
Ahhh..you say...now there's something different. It's something that causes you to stop and think, to stop and consider, to stop and wonder. It snaps you out of the "autopilot" mode of thinking and being.
It also helps to start earning awards for that talent...and have a brother who is a director of a Museum.
Who wouldn't want to have an award winning artist's works on display?
It lends prestige to the museum and draws in the crowds.
See Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claes_Oldenburg(5 votes)
- Do you think the sculptor thinks of this piece as being art? Considering the statement about what art can and should be, is this art because it is purposefully obtuse or just a statement about what art can or can't be?(6 votes)
- Claes Oldenburg is notorious for taking everyday objects and distorting the size, texture and appearance e.g. colour of the objects. I suppose he is forcing us to look at life in a different way and look outside the box, remind people of the abstract imagination. Ultimately that's a question for the artist -(4 votes)
- its really hard to hear them talk on the video its not really clear(3 votes)
- What is the second thing on top? Not the cherry, but the lighter one.(3 votes)
- do people eat cake off the floor?(2 votes)
- that depends, do you eat soup with a fork?(1 vote)
- It looks unguarded. Can you actually walk up to it and touch it at the museum?(1 vote)
- possibly, but i doubt they ( they being the museum personell ) would like that.
( sorry for mispelled words. English is a third language )(2 votes)
- was Oldenburg friends with Warhol?(1 vote)
- Is the cake representing something that is seems good until you get close to it?(1 vote)
- What does the bronze hero sculpture have to do with this?(1 vote)
- The bronze hero sculpture in the video serves as a comparison to Floor Cake, making the point of how different the bronze sculpture and the cake are from each other. The cake is soft and ugly when you get up close, whereas the bronze sculpture is hard and has a sort of dignified, graceful beauty about it. This video makes one really consider how different art can be, not just in color or what it is depicting, but in shape and material as well.(1 vote)
Video transcript
SPEAKER 1: We're once
again at the Museum of Modern Art in the
room devoted to Pop Art. And we're standing
in front of, sort of walking around
Claes Oldenburg, Floor Cake from 1962. And both of us are
smiling because it's just a hilarious work of art. SPEAKER 2: What's
really funny to me is that when we get
up close, it really doesn't look like cake at all. It looks like, actually
the giant cherry on top looks like a piece of poop. SPEAKER 1: Yeah, in fact,
the closer you get to it, the less appetizing it becomes. It's this piece of canvas that's
sort of disgusting and filthy. And it's wonderfully not edible. We should just
describe it first. It's gigantic. SPEAKER 2: Eight feet long. SPEAKER 1: A young woman who
was just in the gallery just a moment a go was
walking by and said, I want to lay down
and go to sleep on it. It actually kind of looks
like a gigantic bed. It's preposterous to
have food this large. But it's not just
that it's large because in no way
is it an accurate representation of
a piece of cake. In fact, it's sort of
wonderfully sloppy. And the thing that I find
incredibly endearing about it is the way it's
listing to the right. It's this gigantic,
soft series of pillows. SPEAKER 2: You know
cake is a floppy thing. It's a messy, gooey,
sensual experience. And the squishiness
of this reminds me of digging into the frosting
and having it smooshed down. SPEAKER 1: Right, right. But it's not sensual. I mean it is from a distance-- SPEAKER 2: From a distance. SPEAKER 1: And the
association is. Defiantly. But as you said, when you get
up close to it, it looks dry, and it's fabric, and it's
sort of badly painted fabric. And it's got all these
competing associations that are completely at
odds with each other. SPEAKER 2: It has,
to me, associations with over sweetness,
with saccharine, and American culture burying
itself in sweetness and mass produced foods. SPEAKER 1: It's looking at what
we as a culture will fetishize. This is 1962. It's incredibly early. If you think about where
Pop is at this moment, it's just being really
born in the U.S. Warhol is just creating
his first soup can. Lichtenstein is just at the
early stages of his cartoons. SPEAKER 2: So the pleasures
of American consumer culture, do you think? SPEAKER 1: Absolutely. SPEAKER 2: But it's sort of
undermined, really undermined. SPEAKER 1: Yes. And a tremendous sense
of humor as well. But you're right. There is a kind of
critical aspect here. Not only critical
towards American culture, but about what art
can and should be. There was that great quote,
what Lichtenstein said, by the early '60s after
Abstract Expressionism, you could take a rag that had
been soaked with paint and hang it up on the wall-- SPEAKER 2: Right, and
that would be art. SPEAKER 1: And it would
be considered art. So we just needed
to find something that was still difficult. It also raises questions about
what representation is supposed to be and what
representation is. If you think about
representation as something that traditionally, at least
coming out of the 19th century, is meant to refer to in
some very direct ways. This is really sort
of pushing against. I mean it identifies what it is. But then in so many
ways it's at odds with what it's
meant to represent. It is still maintaining central
identity as slice of cake. But when you look at it
in any way other than sort of that broad identity,
it refuses to be that. SPEAKER 2: What it
also reminds me of is this sort of heroic
tradition of sculpture. You know, it's not this
hard bronze or marble thing. It's this smooshy thing. SPEAKER 1: But not
only that, it's not this idealized human body. It's not this body of a god. SPEAKER 2: Right,
or something heroic. SPEAKER 1: Now we're looking-- SPEAKER 2: It's
the exact opposite. SPEAKER 1: It's hilarious. SPEAKER 2: It's the
everyday, it's the mundane, it's the lowest. SPEAKER 1: So it is
the lowest brought up to this absurd height. [MUSIC PLAYING]