Columbia Museum of Art

Photo © 1998 by Gary Knight and Associates

Columbia, SC

803-799-2810

http://www.colmusart.org

Pop Impact! From Johns to Warhol

January 27 - April 8, 2001

Forty major Pop Art works from the Whitney Museum of American Art 's permanent collection opens at the Columbia Museum of Art on January 27, 2001. Considered controversial when it first appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pop Art is now acknowledged as one of the most significant art movements to have emerged since World War II.

The Whitney Museum holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Pop Art of any museum in the world. This exhibition will mark the first time these important works have been assembled for a major exhibition in over twenty years. (left: James, Rosenquist (b. 1933), U-Haul-lt, 1967, oil on canvas, three parts, Whitney Museum of Amencan Art. New York, © James Rosenquist/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)

Included in the exhibition, are icons of the '60s by 17 notable artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana, Marisol, Edward Ruscha, George Segal and Wayne Thiebaud.

Pop Art evolved out of a turbulent period in America, one that witnessed dramatic changes politically, economically and culturally. Pop Impact! seeks to re-examine this significant moment in art-making and to address the divergent artistic approaches that emerged. (left: Marisol (b. 1930), Women and Dog, 1964, wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, taxidermied dog head and miscellaneous items, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York)

Director of the Whitney Museum, Maxwell L Anderson says, "This exhibition inaugurates a dedicated program of touring exhibitions of works from the Whitney's collection that is intended to reaffirm the Museum's national reach by providing communities across the country with a first-hand look at important works from the nation's preeminent museum devoted to modern and contemporary American art. We have embarked on this program with a sense of pride in the contributions that the artists represented in each exhibition have made to American culture, in our unswerving dedication to championing new work and situating it in a larger artistic cultural context, and in our commitment to extending the Museum's services to communities across the United States and overseas." (left: Tom Wesselman (b. 1931), Great American Nude #57, 1964, synthetic polymer on board, Whitney Museum of American Art. © Tom Wesselman/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)

In the catalogue introduction, Shamin M Momin writes: "The 1960s was a decade of great change and contradiction -- social, political, economic and artistic. On the one hard, the postwar American economy was thriving, as evidenced by the unprecedented explosion of commercial culture, exemplified by the proliferation of new consumer products and visual media. On the other, resistance to commercial culture was emerging with the birth of the counter-culture movement, which rallied against what was felt to be a misguided notion of progress and looked instead to a nostalgic and even mythical ideal of the past, expressed in the hippie lifestyle. Politically, America had begun to assert itself as a leading world power and had advertised the guaranteed freedoms of its citizens as evidence of its "more Perfect Union." But at the same time, awareness of the civil and human rights abuses suffered by increasingly vocal minorities inspired resistance movements, revolutionary political groups, and public manifestations of discontent that defied the status quo."

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See our previous article on Pop Impact! From Johns to Warhol (9/18/00). For more on the 1960s Pop Art movement see other earlier articles. from this magazine.

rev. 12/28/00

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