Pop

by Hal Foster, Mark Francis (Editor), Adam Hooper (Designed by)

Overview

From the late 1950s to the late 1960s the word Pop described art, film, photography and architectural design which engaged with the new realities of mass production and the mass media. Unlike books which present Pop art in isolation, this is a comprehensive survey of Pop in all its forms across America, Britain and Europe.

In addition to the key artworks by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, Sigmar Polke, Martial Raysse and many others the book includes works of photography and avant-garde film, as well as what the critic Reyner Banham defined as Pop architecture, ranging from Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future to Archigram’s Walking City and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas.

Editor Mark Francis was former Founding Director of the Andy Warhol Museum and editor of ‘Les Années Pop’ (Centre Georges Pompidou, 2001). Survey author Hal Foster is Professor of Art at Princeton University, author of The Return of the Real and editor of the bestselling TheAnti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture and Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780714856636
Publisher:	Phaidon Press
Publication date:	06/23/2010
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	9.86(w) x 11.44(h) x 0.66(d)
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Mark Francis is a London-based curator and writer. A director of Gagosian Gallery, he was formerly Chief Curator of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, and its Founding Director. In 2001 he directed and edited the catalogue for the exhibition 'Les Années Pop', Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and a former Senior Editor of Art in America. He is the editor of The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (1983) and Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (1985), and the author of Compulsive Beauty (1993) and The Return of the Real (1996).

Editorial Reviews

"Modern art and design continues to fillet the movement once known as Pop, so Phaidon’s new monograph is a timely look back... Pop has it all, not just the iconic big-name images... Editor Mark Francis [...] has dug a little deeper and drawn together film, photography and even architecture."—Wallpaper*

"What makes the book indispensable is the inclusion of documents in which the artists, critics and theorists speak for themselves."—Martin Coomer, Time Out

"If you're looking for last-minute Christmas presents for your art-loving friends, you could do a lot worse than this. Divided into three sections - the survey by Hal Foster, a gazetteer of works and a selection of contemporary documents - this book could replace a whole bookshelf in your art library... It's a formula that should ensure that this book is one of the essential reference works on the Pop-art era."—Mark Rappolt, Modern Painters

"The many strengths of this absorbing, eclectically detailed survey are concentrated most in the cultural historical networking that is achieved between image and text. What results is in part a luxurious and luxuriating immersion in the sheer visual gorgeousness of much Pop material, and in part a digest and directory of Pop's great works, sources and related texts - Pop's greatest hits, so to speak... Pop art ought never to be consigned to some ever-expanding repertoire of stylish retro-aesthetics. It is the cultural link between Surrealism and Postmodernism, and often made statements about the modern world that have yet to be improved, or updated."—Michael Bracewell, Art Monthly

From the Publisher

In this latest addition to Phaidon's "Themes and Movements" series, curator Francis (founding director, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh) and critic Foster (art & archaeology, Princeton Univ.; Compulsive Beauty) provide an important survey of the international Pop movement in the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Foster's eloquent 35-page essay lays out the development of the Pop image, focusing on the assemblage of artists and intellectuals known as the Independent Group; Richard Hamilton, its founding member; Roy Lichtenstein; Andy Warhol; Gerhard Richter; Ed Ruscha; and the postmodern adoption of Pop imagery. Five chronological selections of artworks with extended commentary by Foster are then followed by a parallel selection of excerpts from documents, artists' statements, and other contemporary contextual writings. Despite its awkward-to-hold square shape and a difficult-to-read sans serif type and layout, this work is an important consideration of the electric-and, er, popular-period it chronicles. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Libs. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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