With my background in art and art education my original observation of pop art I came to two conclusions. One, from the educators view, was all the history behind pp art, thinking about the artists that made this movement, and finally what it meant to the art community and the world. This view is very ridged, in some senses, because I think about dates, historical facts, and biographies. The second, from the artist’s point of view, made me think about pop art from a personal aesthetic view, thinking about the parts of pp art I like and don’t, about the artists in that movement that I feel were hacks, and the others that I liked from art style alone. One of these artists that popped up in both categories was Andy Warhol. Famous for his screen printing, most notably his Campbell’s soup image(s). My personal outlook and feeling when I look at some of his art I think “I could have done that.”, but when delving deeper in to the idea of op art one discovers that this was part of the idea. Pp art pushed ideas of what was art and why something was considered art. Take this into consideration, Soup can equals food, print of soup can equals art, all because no one had done it yet. A second part to Warhol’s soup prints is his underling representation of not making the art the focus, but the idea, or emotion it evoked. Campbell’s soup is all very common, noticeable, and easy, so is the medium Warhol used, printmaking.
The underlying idea is not the art piece, but its ability to be reproduced quickly and easily. The more it gets reproduced the further away from the original representation it becomes. Let’s take a l at the modern article about Ryan Gosling and Macaulay Culkin as an example. Both are wearing shirts with images of the previous one on it, this is a modern example of what Warhol was trying to represent. The art piece no longer is about them (it), to a certain amount, but about the idea, making the new image reflect back on the previous creating a chain.
Now this example was given to help me reach my own personal conclusion and connection to pop art and the idea. Being an artist and an art teacher some of the mentioned historical ideas and facts were already known and a certain level of understanding already achieved, but now after looking at the topic in a different way and taking into consideration our class reading(s) a new level of application and understanding has been achieved. It has made me think about the process of removal, not literally but metaphorically. I once heard one of my college professors once say that an emotion is the closest we will ever get to expressing ourselves and our ideas. This relates to the readings statement about having an idea and not being to fully describe it to another. Once we start getting into describing it, AKA connecting words to it, we start to solidify it, thus removing it from its purest form. So finally the furthest form of removal is the actual physical creation of a person’s idea. The process of removal has been something I have always known, but not fully understood until making connections and understandings with help from the class readings. This is why for my recreation of the idea behind Warhol’s soup can prints I have decided to create a visual representation of the removal process. The picture I have created to represent this has three levels of removal, the first being the word, the second being a drawing of what the word means to me, and finally the third and final being the actual physical item itself.
In conclusion I feel that through the effort, both mentally and physically, I have put into and gotten out of the journey through class and my chosen topic has helped me start towards a greater understanding of my topic, how I learn, and how to teach.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Please check out my video HERE with the representation of the ideas I discussed in the paper above.
gerehead's MAET year 1 