Pop art appropriates everyday
objects and aesthetics to examine — or embrace, as the case may be — the very
culture of mass production and consumption in which they exist. Sinister Pop at
the Whitney Museum of American Art is more pointed—a method designers should
take to heart.
While it wasn’t always obvious
how technicolor pop art felt about the ever-broadening culture it represented
(Warhol maintained that he sincerely loved mass production and its cultural
fallout), the pieces in Sinister Pop usually have a clear target and the mood
is angry. They more overtly attack the darker backdrop of ’60s America (today’s
too): war, gender bias, racism, labor disputes, segregation, class war, the
death penalty.
This exhibition, aside from being
an enjoyable exploration of the dark side of pop, provides a helpful hint to
designers: Don’t bury “the lede” (journalism speak for the key part of a
story).
If there’s something very
important you’re trying to say, make sure you make the message loud and clear.
Imagery, tone and text should work together to create a message that’s hard to
ignore.
Peter Saul attacks the Vietnam
War in “Saigon” by making it disturbing to look at, with tawdry colors and
vicious imagery. He also includes the text “white boys torturing and raping the
people of Saigon.” In “L.B.J” Judith Bernstein takes on a president complicit
in that same war war, both visually and rhetorically, by masking his image in
steel wool and scrawling attacks against him in writing.
Milton Glaser’s United Farm
Workers’ protest poster, effectively titled “Don’t Eat Grapes,” says just that
front and center, right above a cluster of grapes arranged like a skull.
The Whitney wields its
substantial pop art holding to show a more varied array of artists than are
normally on a pop-art bill and a much darker side of the movement, one that is
also an exercise in saying what you mean. It’s worth visiting if only to show
that beyond pop art’s tongue-in-cheek, it’s all teeth.
Sinister Pop
Whitney Museum of American Art
Through March 31
Rani Molla has a digital media
master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School. She’s a journalism reader,
writer, photographer, videographer, data visualizer and general doer. Follow
her on Twitter.