Pop (Themes & Movements) [Hardcover]

Mark Francis (Author), Hal Foster (Author)

Book Description

Series: Themes & Movements | Publication Date: November 1, 2005

Edited by an internationally recognized expert on Pop art and culture, this book surveys Pop across all artforms and gives equal coverage to its American, British and European manifestations. Survey: Renowned scholar and critic Hal Foster contributes the survey essay which focuses on the Pop image as it developed over the period: Reyner Banham, The Independent Group and Pop Design; Richard Hamilton and the Tabular Image; Roy Lichtenstein and the Screened Image; Andy Warhol and the Seamy Image; Gerhard Richter and the Photogenic Image; Ed Ruscha and the Cineramic Image; Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and the Postmodern Absorption of Pop. Works (each image accompanied by an extended caption): Section 1: Revolt into Style (1956-60) surveys the birth of Pop culture and its images, including the Beat generation photographs of Robert Frank and William Klein; Kenneth Anger's early films; futuristic architecture by Disneyland's 'imagineers'; artworks by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the French Nouveaux realistes, Richard Hamilton and the 'British Pop' of the Independent Group. Section 2: Consumer Culture (1960-63) follows American Pop's explosion, from Roy Lichtenstein's cartoon-based paintings to Andy Warhol's Factory, the hamburger, cake and ice cream sculptures of Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Indiana's Eat/Die. Section 3: Colonization of the Mind (1963-66) chronicles the era of 'high' Pop when it became a dominant international style in art, design, architecture and cinema. Section 4: Spectacular Time (1966-67) looks at the more self-reflexive work in art, film and architecture that coincided with the publication of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message and Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. Section 5: Helter Skelter (1968) traces Pop's meltdown in the late 1960s: the emergence of the vernacular in architecture, with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas; the spiralling mayhem of films such as Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg's Performance, starring Mick Jagger, and the final destructive crescendo of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, as an exploding house and its contents are synched to a soundtrack by Pink Floyd. Documents. A compendium of original artists' statements and interviews, often from hard-to-find, out of print sources; key writings by critics such as Reyner Banham, Donald Judd and Jonas Mekas; extracts from key contextual writings, from Jack Kerouac to articles on Pop culture.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark Francis is a London-based curator and writer. A director of Gagosian Gallery, he was formerly Chief Curator of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and its Founding Director. He has been the curator of major exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Kunstpalast Dusseldorf, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, where in 2001 he edited the catalogue for 'Les Annees Pop'. He is the author of numerous essays and catalogues on artists including Richard Hamilton, Dan Graham, Douglas Gordon, Andy Warhol, and the Situationist International. Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. A Founding Editor of the journal October, he is the author of Compulsive Beauty, The Return of the Real and Prosthetic Gods (MIT Press, 1993; 1996; 2004) and editor of The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture and Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Bay Press, 1983; 1985; reissued by The New Press). A former Senior Editor of Art in America, he has contributed to numerous periodicals including Zone magazine, Diacritics, Documents and Artforum. Editor's Residence: London Survey Author's Residence: Princeton, New Jersey

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; Edition Unstated edition (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714843636
• ISBN-13: 978-0714843636
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The rich, in-depth art and cultural survey which sets POP aside from any other., January 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pop (Themes & Movements) (Hardcover)

Mark Francis is a London curator and writer, Hal Foster a Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton: the two combine forces in POP. Pop described art, film, photography and architectural design from the 1950s through the 50s, which used mass media and mass production as inspiration. Other histories have presented Pop art as an isolated form: POP surveys all its various forms around the world, providing a rich key to the art and influences of artists from Warhol to Sigmar Polke. Full-page black and white and color examples appear throughout, but it's the rich, in-depth art and cultural survey which sets POP aside from any other.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars well illustrated, August 1, 2011

By 

Jason Hill (los angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pop (Paperback)

but the extremely helpful collection of primary and secondary sources gathered in the appendix for the hardcover version is not present in the paperback. be warned.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, December 10, 2011

By 

Sam Andrews (California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pop (Themes & Movements) (Hardcover)

Lots of pictures and tons of artists featured. Great book for an amateur or even professional artist that wants to learn about Pop art.