Pop Art and the Critics

“Controversy and confusion persisted as to whether Pop (art) presented a worldview that was optimistic or pessimistic, whether it was an art produced for the masses or the elitists, whether it was selling out to the philistines or was actually a higher form of social criticism, whether artistic expression was being corrupted by commercialism or liberated by an artistic protest against the restraints and rigidities of traditional forms,”. Carol Anne Mahsun “Pop Art and the Critics”.

If there has been a fair amount of discussion on the manners in which ‘culture’ affects the art we make, how perceptions of progress and/or decay have more than tweaked our creative tasks, in Carol Anne Mahsuns book “Pop Art and the Critics” we are encouraged to wonder if there might be a more common or commercial division of culture imposing itself that is more internalized through raw images than droning or gathering psychosis. And it might once again cause us to confront the seemingly impotent inclusiveness of aesthetic possibility as it moves our thoughts and hands in the visual arts.
Assignment: For the sake of digging a little deeper into the ‘meaning’ of art lets talk a bit about the nature of originality, accessibility or non-accessibility (of content), the de-mystification of the art object and the forsaking of the idea and the process, or, the prospect that forsaking the idea IS the idea and forsaking the process IS the process. And if the purpose of this course is to invite internalizations into our own approach to our own work, how might these particular windows into the work of the pop artists written about be applied?

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