John Thomason
To reference an idiom often
attributed to Sigmund Freud, sometimes a hot dog is just a hot dog. Other
times, it’s much more, as in the two fine-art hot dogs displayed (one of them
under glass) in the Boca Museum of Art’s rollicking new show “Pop Culture:
Selections From the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.” Jean Wells’ “Hot Dog”
mosaic is made from shards of cut glass, the colors of gold and ruby, fashioned
into a frankfurter fit for a queen. Betty Spindler’s “Pink Hot Dog” is no less
haute, a foodstuff of questionable edibility elevated to a ludicrously
ornamental ceramic artifact.
These artists intend to draw
attention to the objects that drive our shallow consumerist economy, satirizing
them through an ironic sort of glorification: If it’s what people want, we’ll
rub their faces in it. One person’s chintzy diet is another artist’s pointed
subject matter.
This was always a rebellious
undercurrent of the Pop Art movement, which thrived in the 1960s, in part, as a
reaction to the perceived pretentions of abstract expressionism. Rather than
conceal their messages in frenetic splatters of paint or monochromatic slates,
Pop artists made the act of representation their very subject—a comic book panel
or a Campbell’s Soup can, freed from their original marketplace shackles and
exalted as museum-quality art. Modifications to these objects needn’t
necessarily be made: The pieces made their points about American values simply
by existing.
Some of these artists’ names
and their key works have become just as ubiquitous as their subject matter, and
many of them—Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist and Haring—are duly represented
in “Pop Culture,” a comprehensive and personally curated survey of Pop Art from
its American genesis through to the present day, where it has become a global
phenomenon. And while it’s always great to see these familiar masters on museum
walls, I was most taken with the artists still carrying the Pop torch decades
after its fashionability declined.
Some, like Greg Miller and his
“7-Up” collage, seem like direct descendants of the original Pop Artists,
creating work that hearkens less to 2014 than to 1964. But others seem more
forthright in their subversion: Andrew Lewicki’s “Oreo Manhole Cover,”
positioned on the floor, playfully points out the aesthetic similarities
between the sandwich cookie design and street manhole covers, while subtly
suggesting that the unhealthy snacks belong in our sewage system, not our
bellies. Likewise, Blake Boyd’s “Super Girl 2” reinterprets the image of the
buxom comic-book superhero for a post-feminist America. And speaking of gender,
wait until you see how the artist LA II reflects on biker machismo with his
fluorescent, hot-pink motorcycle.
In other places, American pop
culture invades the art of other nations, mirroring the rise of globalization.
In Dong-hyun Son’s “Two Birds,” Daffy Duck appears on what looks to be an
ancient Korean scroll, and in a pair of superb works by Masami Teraoka—one a
silkscreen, the other a watercolor—McDonalds and Baskin Robbins infects the
muted beauty of traditional Asian art, a pair of chopsticks sitting
ridiculously next to a cheeseburger.
Elsewhere, we get biting
commentary on such subjects as corporate uniformity—Michael Speaker’s stunning
wood sculpture “Team Xerox” depicts a man sticking his head in a copy machine,
with identical wooden heads resting on its trays—and the ultimate Pop
distraction, television: The robotic concoction in Nam June Paik’s “Michelin
Man Laser Robot” is festooned with a handful of TV screens, which are
transfixing despite the fact that they’re only broadcasting the same abstract
transmission. Yet we can’t stop looking.
But look onward. This is the
kind of exhibition that rewards the sustained gaze, and sometimes double takes
are required. Some of the best pieces in “Pop Culture” trick the eye,
suggesting one thing while actually being another. Wayne White’s “Cornmeal
Sweat Gasoline Pork Grease Burlap Motor Oil” (pictured above) is a bronze “word
sculpture” that looks remarkably like a cardboard construction, a pair of brown
packing boxes from which the titular words spring from the top, as in a pop-up
book. Keung Szeto’s “Art Work” painting simulates a corkboard so vividly you’ll
want to try and remove one of its thumbtacks. And Richard Sigmund’s “Stop” uses
splattered acrylic to create a large-scale replica of a concrete street.
An exhibition like this can
seem overwhelming; it takes up three rooms in the museum and covers so much
territory and so many artists that it can feel like several exhibitions crammed
into one—a testament to the eclectic nature of Weisman’s collection.
Luckily, the Boca Museum’s
curatorial team did a bang-up job of presenting these works with thematic
cohesion. Roughly speaking, urban visions give way to comic book revisionism,
words and language, food, sexuality, the human anatomy, and finally fashion. If
that’s not all of human experience, it’s certainly a good chunk of it contained
in one sprawling show.
I’d like to close by going back
to the food art, because it’s the most impactful portion of the show. The
modern-day apotheosis of Pop Art may be Pamela Michelle Johnson’s “American
Still Life” series of giant paintings of piles upon piles of junk food. Three
of them—Pop-Tarts, Hostess cupcakes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—are
presented here, and under Johnson’s brush, this in-your-face comfort food looks
utterly disgusting. If nothing else, this exhibition will surely make you
rethink a Twinkie for an apple next time you’re in Publix.
"Pop Culture" is at
the Boca Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, through April 23. Tickets cost $6 to
$14. For information, call 561/392-2500 or visit bocamuseum.org.