POST 7: Art Exhibition Review

Pop Art Myths, Thyssen Museum, Madrid (www.museothyssen.org) from June 10 to September 14 (now over).

This summer in Madrid, weather was so hot you could use a fresh place to hide in the afternoon. The Thyssen museum offered this with additionally a very nice trip back to the 50's and the 60's, or the mythical Pop Art years. The exhibition (which stayed for 3 months) was a perfect resumey of different parts of this innovative art (for the time) and is divided in different categories which show very well the principal values of this movement. It is a very light exhibition with no more then 9 rooms and 4 to 5 pieces by room but the art pieces were chosen so well you do not feel like you are missing anything at the end.

What is very well thought out in this exhibition is how they organized the room and the paintings with themes that are proper to Pop Art: emblems, comics, myths, portraits, urban erotism, history, and of course, above all, everyday objects. Andy Warhol has a great place in this exhibition for his emblematic role in the Pop Art movement and we can see some of his famous work like the Marylins, one of the many One Dollar Bill silk-screen work or an incredible self portrait that correspond to his character and artwork. Of course, Roy Lichtenstein's "cartoons" are obviously a classic in a pop art exhibition and 3 or 4 good pieces are exposed in the first room. A part from theese two, a lot of different pop art artists are represented in this very heterogeneous art show. Although i was quite impressed and very satisfied with the work shown in the exhibition, i still think they were missing Warhol's silk-screen work of the campbell soup and coca cola bottles which are classics of the ideas artists had at the time about the beginning of consumerism society.

I am now in my 2nd year of litterary studies and Pop Art has always been one of my favorite art movement. Andy Warhol, which is a kind of american Yves Saint Laurent and not only his personnality really fascinates me but also his point of view on society and the way he revolutionned painting. Which is why i chose to present S&H Green Stamps, created in 1965 by Andy Warhol:

S&H Green Stamps, Andy Warhol

We can associate this painting of a lot of other silk-screen works by Warhol with Campbell soup cans, coca cola bottle or even the face of Marylin Monroe or Liz Taylor. With the silk-screen technique, Warhol wanted to say how society had made everyone and everything look the same, so plain, but yet with differences, because not a single stamp is the same as his neighbour if you look loser to the painting. It is the same for all of his other silk-screen pieces. I liked the way Warhol painted that society in a what seemed a really deep way of thinking thought he actually didn't have that much work to didn't care that much about each of his paintings. His atelier was more like a factory and yet he managed to provide pieces of art that will stay forever in our culture like myths.

Campbell's Soup Can, Andy Warhol, 1962

Four Marilyns, Andy Warhol, 1964

Green Coca Cola Bottles, Andy Warhol, 1962

Ten Lizes, Andy Warhol, 1963

Also, if you are a Pop Art lover and happen to be in Paris, a nice way to see a few but great Pop Art pieces at le Centre Georges Pompidou, in the permanent exhibition where you can see for instance the Ten Lizes by Andy Warhol.