By Nabila
Pathan |
Pop art
has long been associated with the names Andy Warhol and David Hockney. Whilst
the pop art movement originated in the UK and is often associated with its
fixation on American mass culture, its spread to the East is not so well known
in the West.
However, a
new exhibition at the London-based Saatchi Gallery aims to examine the
relationship between Western Pop Art and its lesser-known Eastern counterparts
including “Sots Art” in the Soviet Union and “Political-Pop” or “Cynical
Realism”, which has flourished in Greater China since the turn of the
twenty-first century.
The “Post
Pop: East Meets West” exhibition currently on display at the Saatchi Gallery is
a celebration of Pop Art’s global reach and legacy. The collection of pop art
has been organized by the Tsukanov Family Foundation, an educational charity
with an emphasis on promoting Russian and eastern European post-war art. Their
collection of Russian Pop art forms a central aspect of the show.
Whilst the
exhibition is a showcase of Pop art emerging from four distinct regions of the
world (USA, UK, the former Soviet Union and China), the works are presented in
relation to each other through the framework of six themes: Habitat;
Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media; Art History; Religion
and Ideology; Sex and the Body.
The
pop-influenced works span across the past 40 years. According to the Saatchi
Gallery, pop art is “widely regarded as the most significant art movement of
the last century, ...[it has] exploited identifiable imagery from mass media
and everyday life to reflect on the nature of the world we live in.”
“Although
from fundamentally different cultures and ideological backgrounds, the artists
in this exhibition play with imagery from commercial advertising, propaganda
posters, pictures of the famous as well as monetary and patriotic motifs in wry
and provocative works that unmistakably reference the Pop Art movement which
emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.”
The
familiarity of pop art's critique of mass culture on British and American
society is echoed in the collections from the Western region; Whether it's Jeff
Koons’s basketball sculptures or the pastiches of Warhol paintings by Gavin
Turk.
It's the
insight into the unfamiliar, via the art installations from China and Russia
which highlight the expansive nature of the pop art movement. According to the
Evening Standard, these collections resonate with an “everyday reality...
dominated by glorious leaders, hammers and sickles and party propaganda.”
The art
installations' connection to pop art may not be instantly recognizable, but
they intrigue and provoke curiosity. According to the Telegraph: “The Pop Art
spirit is alive and well, and thriving most in territories where those Pop
staples, mass-consumerism and advertising, barely existed until recently:
Russia and China.”
Andy
Warhol, a leading figure of the Pop art movement once stated: “Once you 'got'
Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop,
you could never see America the same way again”. But through this collection,
it's not just America that is seen and nor is it dominating. The Saatchi
Gallery’s collection of 256 works by more than 100 artists, is a chance to
compare and contrast pop’s influence in the West and the East.
Much of
the non-Western exhibits have not been seen before in London. “Post-Pop: East
Meets West” will be showcasing at the Saatchi Gallery until 23 February 2015.