Evening star., 1963-04-21
BY FRANK GETLEIN
Star Art Critic


at the Washington Gallery
of Modern Art has Sc works
by u of the best known Pop
artists and it's Dullsville.
Although warned against
1t, you can regard the new
movement as social satire If
you want to. The theory here
would be that by faithfully
and scientifically copying the
simple minded lines of a
comic strip panel, Roy Lich-
tenstein, for example, is ex-
posing comic strips as the
simple minded things they
are; or that by coloring four
prints of the late Marilyn
Monroe in ice-cream flavors,
Andy Warhol, for another, is
ruthlessly exposing our ma
tional worship of sex idols,
or possibly our national ne
crophilia.
One trouble here is that
any conceivable satiric target
in this material has already
been done to death by every
one from sociologists to tele-
vision comedians. While it
may have been hot stuff in
the European '20s to de-
nounce the Americans as
overly concerned with plumb
ing, a lot of water has flowed
down the drain since then:
Jim Dimes real, though nom
working, bathroom sink at
the Gallery of Modern Art
hasn't a tenth the punch
that Marcel Duchamp's urin-
al had 40 years ago.
Even more relevant: Satire
has to have some basic mini
mum of wit and of this there
isn't nit in the show.
Alternatively, following the
gay inSouciance of Alic e
Denney, who assembled the
show, you can dismiss al
questions of aesthetics and
meaning and ask only that
the show be fun" Only it
isn't. The stuff is too big and
too labored to be much fun
to look at.
Alternatively again, you can
follow the Introductory essay
by Alan r. Solomon, direc-
tor of the Jewish Museum,
New York, who goes on at
some length about what he
calls "the new art" breaking
down the boundaries between
art and life. For all that, the
stuff is being exhibited in
an art museum, it is being
introduced by a museum di-
rector and, in New York and
elsewhere. it is being mer-
chandised in precisely the
style of paintings and sculp-
ture. Robert Watts, for ex-
ample, shows the real DASH
board of a Pontiac, priced at
$3.50. If the art-life boundary
were really broken, you could
buy a whole secondhand car
for less, install it in your liv-
ing room and have a place to
sit down as well as a prime
example of new art.
Selected sentences from
Mr.. Solomon, distracted and
reassembled in the manner of
a collage, may yield useful
hints as to the significance
of the new art:
He writes, abstract ex-
preSSioniSm seemed to have
run its course among
the advanced observers and
collectors of contemporary
art, the new artists have en-
joyed a spectacular success
in a relatively short period
of time the way in which
the present group emerged
has a distinct flavor of
historical inevitability q.
they have enjoyed not only
a sympathetic milieu but
they have also arrived at fl
nanctal security with extra
ordinary speed most of
them are familiar middle
class types we are enter
ing a new world where the
old art can no longer func-
ton"
The last statement places
Pop Art in the grand tradi-
ton of all the historical in
evitabilities of our century:
FuturiSm, Surrealism, the
therapeutic nonobjectivity of
Rudolf Baur, American Scene
painting and abstract express
sionism. Every one of them
arrived with a mandate from
history as the only kind of
art now possible and every
one OF them is as dead as
the dodo.
Most of the show concen-
trates at the image or the
object from commercial real
ity. Parking meters and ra-
diators, reproductions of old
er paintings. real telephones,
real shower heads are en-
countered throughout. Jas
per Johns, one of the pio-
neers OF the movement, is
considered "painterly." be-
cause he Incorporates brush
strokes into his visions Of
numbers and flags. In the
context Of the show, he
paints like Rembrandt, but
actually there's nothing there
but the most superficial
brush manipulation.
The other standout is Claes
Oldenburg, whose Big Ham
burger" is carelessly painted
sailcloth stuffed with foam
rubber and 7 feet across. He
also has a Bacon, Lettuce
and Tomato Sandwich" made
OF plastics. Both objects sug-
gest those awful teen-age pill
lows OF a few years back
made In the shapes and col