Celebrating the legacy of the Pop Art pioneer
ANDY Warhol left more in his legacy to the art world than a crateful of Campbell's soup tins.
The self-styled Godfather of the Pop Art movement has often been criticised for an empty obsession with consumerism and celebrity, but his choice of subject matter and pioneering techniques inspired a subsequent generation of artists from across the world.
A new exhibition at Bradford 1 Gallery explores the extent of Warhol's influence, with around 30 pieces of art which share the Pop Art philosophy that "low" culture can be turned into high art.
Curated by artist Richard Kirwan, Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop displays works by both internationally acclaimed and emerging artists working between 1962 and 2008.
It shows how Warhol gave legitimacy to a more technological and innovative approach to making art, and how the emphasis has changed from an adulation of consumerism in the Sixties to today's anxiety-filled relationship with capitalism and celebrity.
"The multi-media works in the show are based on Warhol's multi-media approach to making art," says Kirwan.
"I think he is a really important artist – he may be scorned in some quarters for his Marilyn Monroe images, but I think even in the Marilyn prints there is a certain melancholy. In fact, Warhol was incredibly prescient. In the Sixties, celebrity culture was in its infancy, but a lot of his ideas have grown since then through other artists."
Featuring painting, sculpture, video, photography and poster installations, the exhibition also demonstrates that Pop Art was not just an Anglo-American phenomenon. Following the "slacker"
art movement of the early 1990s, Pop Art found a natural environment in which to evolve in Japan, with the "Superflat" style pioneered by Takashi Murakami.
Just as Warhol commandeered Coca-Cola cans and the iconic faces of his generation, so Murakami appropriated the stylised flattened forms of Japanese Anim and Manga to comment on his own contemporary culture.
"Warhol took art out of the confines of the gallery," says Kirwan. "He was generous in his definition of what art was. Now art is everywhere, with some extraordinary images appearing every day in the media. It's questioning the nature of what we hold to be art."
The exhibition examines the Far Eastern branch of Pop Art's development, displaying works by the likes of Machiko Edmondson, Gajin Fujita and Moriko Mori.
"I think it's interesting that the influence of the East is so important in the show," says Kirwan. "Japan has been a major influence on the West in recent years, economically as well as artistically, and the visual impact of Japanese imagery is a key theme in this exhibition."
Notable artists in the Western tradition, such as Cindy Sherman, Rachal Bradley and James Howard, are also represented in the show. Sherman's grotesque clowns are an expression of the grief and anger that followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, as well as a comment on our fixation with so-called celebrities. Kirwan himself unveils a new piece at the exhibition. He employs repetitive geometric patterns but is uncomfortable with the notion of total abstraction.
"It's always a risk to welcome interpretation," he says. "I remember learning about Mondrian when I was younger, and being taught a specific way of looking at his art. Likewise with Rothko – it was presented as being strictly abstract, but I would see a sunset or a horizon. I think that idea of purity in art is not valid any more. We always corrupt images with our own interpretations."
Along with sculptural work by Haim Steinbach and Gary Webb, the exhibition draws together a wide and disparate range of artworks whose roots share a common ancestor: the innovative approach and pop cultural content of their equally reviled and admired Godfather, Andy Warhol.
"As in Warhol's work, there's a lot of darkness lying just beneath the surface."
Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop runs from Nov 14 to Feb 7 at Bradford 1 Gallery in Centenary Square.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Moriko Mori fuses futuristic architectural settings with ancient ritual in her video pieces, such as Miko No Inori, in which she employs ambient sound to mesmerising effect.
Gajin Fujita takes his inspiration from historical sources such as Japanese wood panel paintings and Samurai iconography, and blends these with the graffiti art that is prevalent in his home city of Los Angeles.
A series of photographs by Bridget Smith illustrates the tiny drinking dens of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, exploring how pockets of old Japan still survive in the midst of a modern commercial environment. Secretive establishments, the bars accommodate just four to six patrons and conversation is orchestrated by a presiding "mama-san".
Hong Kong-born Fiona Rae uses traditional paint and brush, interspersing her flowing abstract designs with stylised Japanese motifs of cartoon-like pandas, ponies and rabbits.
Rachal Bradley's lurid, digitally manipulated portraits are inspired by the language of stereotype and political correctness. Her deliberately exploitative work toys with ideas of identity and clich.
James Howard is displaying a number of digital posters that advertise fictional and highly unethical websites. His base and desperate images explore contemporary issues of cultural identity, immortality and body modification.
L New Yorker Tony Oursler uses the latest digital projectors to animate sculptural objects so that they become mumbling, moaning creatures lost in their own neurotic disorders.
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