Pop Departures

Pop Art's influence continues to be felt more than a half century since its advent, as this engaging book deftly shows. Early Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol adopted alternately critical, embracing or ambivalent attitudes towards America's rapidly proliferating consumer culture and its representations. Key works by these artists are illustrated as the foundation for this look at the ongoing relevance of Pop Art and its interrogation of American culture into the 21st century. Following Pop's heyday in the early 1960s, new generations of artists have returned to the questions surrounding consumerism and media culture. Works made in the 1980s and 1990s by Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and others reveal new methods and visual strategies that addressed these issues in a very different political and social climate. The innovative work of younger contemporary artists such as Elad Lassry, Josephine Meckseper, and Ryan Trecartin demonstrates that commodity culture, display and the cult of celebrity maintain a strong resonance and are critically examined by today's artists. The catalogue will also include short texts by several artists, curators and art historians, including Josephine Meckseper, James Voorhies, Richard Meyer, and Hal Foster.