Contemporary Culture and Pop Art

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Pop Art
Conclusions
Works Cited

Introduction

Imagination and reality, objective and subjective, art and products of the popular culture – the interrelation between these terms has always been a point to argue about for scholars, art critics, and other people interested in art and culture, as well as thinking and philosophy. This paper also focuses on considering the concepts of Art, philosophy, reality, imagination, and symbolism. Answering three seemingly separate questions, this paper aims at carrying out a comprehensive analysis of the pieces of the so-called pop art and the pieces of cinematographic and literary work that dealt with their analysis. Considering the works by Foucault (1983), Rosen (2006), and Deleuze (1983), this paper aims at presenting their critical examination with the help of the pieces of pop Art by Warhol (1965), Moore (1987), and Market (1983). Thus, pop art is given a comprehensive analysis accompanied by a critical assessment of scholars.

Pop Art

Foucault and Rosen

Beginning the analysis, it is necessary to understand whether pop Art actually deserves to be called Art and whose opinions are significant in this respect. The works by Foucault and Rosen can be of great help in this task. The famous book This is not a Pipe by Foucault and not least known documentary Who Gets to Call it Art? by Rosen are connected by their appeal to pop Art and the attempts to explain and help the audience to get used to this form of Art as the reality of today (Foucault, 1983, p. 32; Who Gets to Call it Art? 2006). Both Foucault and Rosen illustrate their arguments with specific pop art examples, and this fact also adds credibility to their works.

The boom and the documentary mentioned above have certain common grounds by which they can be related and connected. First, both these works aim at explaining pop art through the deep, either linguistic or discourse analysis of its specific examples. This is not a Pipe, apart from the variety of other examples, is titled after and focused on the famous French painting by Margitte that contains a picture of a pipe and a line reading “This is not a pipe” (Foucault, 1983, p. 32). Considering this item, Foucault comes to the conclusion that the line is right as the picture of the pipe is not the pipe itself. The same conclusion is applicable to any other pop art piece as according to pop art theory, people’s ideas about the real world are not what the real world actually is.

Accordingly, Foucault sees Margitte as the pioneer of the pop art idea of reality. This vision is similar to the vision of Henry Geldzahler as presented by Rosen in Who Gets to Call it Art?. Mr. Geldzahler’s life is the focus of the documentary that develops in the context of the pop art development in the 1960s in New York. The documentary answers the question set in its title and describes Mr. Geldzahler as the person who knew why pop art is an art as such and supported its development in the form of, for example, design solution and films by Andy Warhol (Who Gets to Call it Art?, 2006; The Life of Juanita Castro, 1965). Therefore, the attempt to explain and introduce pop art to the community is what connects This is not a Pipe and Who Gets to Call it Art?.

Foucault and Deleuze

To understand the essence of pop Art better, the connection between the This is not a Pipe by Foucault and Plato and the Simulacrum by Deleuze and the works of pop art can be of significant help. The major uniting point between the two literary works and the pop art as such is in the former’s being the means of explaining and understanding the latter. In other words, pop art creates pieces that are difficult to understand for numerous people, and the ideas expressed by Foucault and Deleuze show the actual hidden meaning of pop Art (Foucault, 1983, p. 7; Deleuze, 1983, p. 45). Thus, the works by Foucault and Deleuze are connected to pop art pieces as the theory is connected to practice.

In more detail, the focus of Foucault’s writing is the famous This is not a Pipe picture, and the essence of the author’s argument is that the objects created by human beings are mere simulations of the actual things, i. e., the same objects in their ideal form (Foucault, 1983, p. 37). The concept of simulation, or the phenomenon also known as Simulacrum, is central to the work by Deleuze as well (Deleuze, 1983, p. 45). Considering the views by Plato on the world of actual things and their human-made simulations, Deleuze arrives at the conclusion that the alleged absurdity of pop art can be, in fact, the literary understanding of the Platonic principles (Deleuze, 1983, p. 49).

Thus, the work of pop art can be considered as the practical expressions of the theoretical ideas discussed by Foucault and Deleuze. According to Deleuze (1983), Plato singled out two levels of Simulacrum, one of which was a good simulation of the actual thing and another one was a poor simulation (Deleuze, 1983, p. 45). Therefore, the pop artworks like Watchmen by Moore (1987) or The Life of Juanita Castro by Warhol (1965) can be examined in the connection to the above-considered works as the pieces of art reflecting their authors’ understanding and vision of reality, and what is also important, of their contemporary reality. Thus, for pop Art, the production of the real might be considered as the major factor that allows pop artists to express their personal and original vision of the real world.

Sans Soleil

Moving further in the discussion of pop Art, it is impossible to ignore the critically important concepts of this phenomenon, including the ideas of image, globalization, present, past, and future, and time as a whole. To better understand these phenomena, the documentary titled Sans Soleil by Chris Marker can be of considerable help (1983). This film is not a traditional documentary due to the filming techniques and the ideas expressed in it. Apart from ordinary things like living habits and customs of various nations of the world, Marker makes an appeal to the ideas of time, place, and space in this documentary, which makes the latter a philosophical work with considerable hidden meaning. Implementing the variety of images filmed in Japan, Guinea-Bissau, France, and the United States, the author manages to apply the concept of the image to the idea of time and place in the context of globalization (Sans Soleil, 1983).

If viewed in more detail, Sans Soleil tells the story of time, which is a single phenomenon, viewed and valued completely differently in different places. Starting with a T. S. Elliot quotation, the documentary proves the uniqueness of every time moment in every single place (Sans Soleil, 1983). For instance, considering the life in Guinea-Bissau, the author notices that customs there differ from the usual American or European ones while moving to Japan Marker (1983) considers the temple dedicated to cats in the context of value attributed to the time and the ways the time can be spent (Sans Soleil, 1983). Considered in the context of globalization, Sans Soleil presents parallels to Shaviro’s Connected (2003) in treating the world as a huge network in which pop Art can be the means of reflecting the reality as seen and experienced by artists. Time, as explicitly argued in the documentary, is different in various regions of the globalized world, and this provides for various pop art manifestations as well (Sans Soleil, 1983). Thus, Sans Soleil helps understand pop art in the context of place, time, and image concepts.

Conclusions

So, summing up the current paper on pop art and contemporary culture, it is necessary to state that pop art can be considered as a tool of reflecting the modern reality as viewed by contemporary artists. For a better understanding of pop art, the works by Foucault, Deleuze, Rosen, Marker, and Warhol can be of great help. On the whole, the concept of Simulacrum is important for pop Art as the latter is seen as the idea developed on the basis of Platonic views on the world of actual things and their simulations presented in the form of Art.

Works Cited

Deleuze, Gilles. Plato and the Simulacrum. The MIT Press, 1983. Print.

Foucault, Michel. This is not a Pipe. University of California Press, 1983. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1997 (trans. by Alan Sheridan, 1977). Part Three: Discipline; Chapter Two: “The means of correct training ” (pp.170-194).

Moore, Alan. Watchmen. DC Comics, 1987. Print.

Who Gets to Call it Art? Dir. Peter Rosen. Perf. John Chamberlain, Ivan Karp. Palm Pictures, Umvd, 2006.

Sans Soleil. Dir. Chris Marker. Perf. Florence Delay, Alexandra Stewart. Argos Films, 1983.

Shaviro, Steven. Connected, or what it means to live in the network society. University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

The Life of Juanita Castro. Dir. Andy Warhol. Perf. Marie Menken, Ronald Tavel. Sony, 1965.

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