POP CONNECTION: A selection from the Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection

May 18, 2013 – September 15, 2013 POP CONNECTION: A selection from the Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection Exhibition opens at Sasuntsi Davit Garden Gallery of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts on May 18. 

"Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short term solution), Expendable (easily-forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young, Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big Business…
This is just the beginning…

Richard Hamilton, 1957

Pop Art was a reflection of a growing industrial and commercialized society, which mirrored the American consumerist culture in a symbolic structure of images and signs, offering a new artistic vision of American life.

POP was a response to the emergence of a new consumer society and the explosion of popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s, which revealed a new ideology of values and icons related to commercial America. Monumentalizing and elevating popular objects and icons to the realm of fine art, deliberately or not, Pop artists broke the recognized boundaries of “high” art encouraging democratization of art production. Drawing upon the imagery of advertising, Hollywood, comic books and industrially designed products, Pop artists addressed such issues as class, political change, gender and consumer culture. They also made allusions to many patriotic symbols and historical episodes of America’s story, reinventing these as commercial idols of mass culture.
  
Pop Art emerged independently in London, then in New York, and almost simultaneously. Despite similarities in imagery and production forms, there were ideological differences between approaches to the style. America, with its flourishing cities and capital, was a symbol of freedom and the future, incorporating the images of mass production and consumption. The British protagonists of the new style wanted to establish the American “dream” through the means of an art accessible and equal to everyone, beyond the barriers of social ranking. The American advocates of Pop tendencies had a more critical and ironic view of America’s commercialized society. Whether it carried a celebratory or satirical spirit, Pop Art featured a new contemporary vision. 

Introducing recognizable images of cultural icons, consumer products or modern conveniences, Pop Art is not realism in its conventional form. Transforming an image into a symbolic fragment, pop objects communicate the message through a language of metaphoric signs representing mass culture. The exhibition POP Connection: A Selection from the Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection presents the works of the first generation of Pop artists, who contributed to the establishment of Pop Art and its development as a major force in contemporary art — including Americans Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Larry Rivers, and Ronald Kitaj Brooks, as well as British artist Allen Johnes. The exhibition provides an insight to the iconography of Pop Art, offering an elucidative presentation of its main characteristics.