Period Band C
Global Pop? Pop Art in a Global Context
Tutor: James Boden
Description
This module aims to investigate the current attempt to view Pop Art as a global phenomenon – as exemplified by upcoming exhibitions at Tate Modern and the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. The module aims to closely define the term Pop Art through a broad investigation of ideas such as consumerism, high and low culture, and the political potential of pop work. It will also look at the question of canonicity and centre and periphery in relation to the term.
The second half of the course will examine particular case studies of works made outside of the USA in order to test the claim that something like a global Pop art movement existed. This module aims to increase student’s awareness of art from across the globe and to think through the critical issues that work raises for the kind of terminology we use to describe it.
Objectives
By the end of the module, students should have acquired:
- a thorough understanding of the term ‘Pop Art’ and the critical debates that have framed it from the 1960s onwards
- a broad understanding of what is at stake in attempting to understand art in a global context
- specific knowledge of particular art scenes in a number of different countries in relation to the term ‘Pop Art’
- the ability to articulate carefully a number of contested positions discussed on the course in relation to class, gender, race, and nationality
- the ability to independently research particular case studies and present them clearly to the group
- the ability to present clearly and take into account the, perhaps conflicting, views of others
- the ability to formulate an independent argument in relation to the material studied on the module and locate it within the literature that already exists
Preliminary Reading
- Kobena Mercer ed. Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007)
- Jessica Morgan, ‘Intercontinental Drift: Global Pop’, Artforum, February 2013
- Global Pop Symposium, Tate Modern, March 2013, recordings on Tate Channel
- Hans Belting ed, The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2013)
- Rachel Weiss, To and From Utopia in the New Cuban Art, (Minneapolis: Minnesota, 2011)
- Claudia Calirman, Brazilian Art under Dictatorship, (Durham, NC: Duke, 2012)
- Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010)
- Doryun Chong ed, Tokyo, 1955-1970: a new avant-garde, MoMA New York, 2012
- Reiko Tomii, Shinohara Pops! The Avant-Garde Road Tokyo/New York, State University of New York Press, 2012
- Stephanie Barron ed, Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures, (Los Angeles: LACMA, 2009). Esp. pp. 153-169
- Andreas Huyssen,‘The Cultural Politics of Pop: Reception and Critique of US Pop Art in the Federal Republic of Germany’, New German Critique, no. 4, (Winter 1975), 77-97
- Andrew S Weiner, ‘Memory under Reconstruction: Politics and Event in Wirtschftswunder West Germany’, Grey Room 37, Fall 2009, 94-124
- Gerhard Richter, ‘Programme and Report: the exhibition Leben mit Pop – eine Demonstration fur den Kapitalistischen Realismus, Dusseldorf, 11 October 1963, in Hans Ulrich Obrist ed, The Daily Practice of Painting, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 18-21
- Benjamin Buchloh ed, Gerhard Richter, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009)
- Mark Godfrey ed, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, (London: Tate, 2011)
- Susanne Küper, ‘Gerhard Richter: Capitalist Realism and His Paintings from Photographs 1962-66’ in Eckhart Gillen ed, German Art from Beckmann to Richter, (Cologne: DuMont, 1997)
- Boris Groys, ‘The Other Gaze: Russian Unofficial Art’s View of the Soviet World’, Ales Erjavec (ed.), Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art Under Late Socialism, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 55-90
- Boris Groys, Alexander Kosolapov: Sots Art, (Bielefeld: Kerber Art, 2009)
- Regina Khidekel, It’s the Real Thing: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sots Art and American Pop Art, (Minneapolis: Minnesota, 1998)
- Joseph Backstein et al, Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, (London: Haunch of Venison, 2010)
- Julian Stallabrass, ‘New World Order’ in Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 29-72
- Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol China 1982, (Beijing, China : Timezone 8, 2007)
- Gao Minglu, ‘Post-Utopian Avant-Garde Art in China’ in Ales Erjavec (ed.), Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition, pp. 247-285
- Gao Minglu, Total modernity and the avant-garde in twentieth-century Chinese art, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011)
- Francesca Dal Lago, ‘Personal Mao: Reshaping an Icon in Contemporary Chinese Art’, Art Journal, vol. 58, no. 2, (Summer 1999), pp. 46-59
- Jiehong Jiang et al, The Revolution Continues: New Art from China, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008)
- Wu Hung ed, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, (New York: MoMA, 2010)
- Bradford Collins, Pop Art, (London: Phaidon, 2012)
- Amelia Jones (ed.), A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
- Steven Madoff (ed), Pop Art: A Critical History, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
- Annette Michelson (ed.), Andy Warhol, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001)
- John Russell and Suzi Gablik (eds), Pop Art Redefined, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969)
- Katy Siegel, Since ’45: America and the Making of Contemporary Art, (Reaktion: London, 2011)
- Paul Taylor (ed.), Post-Pop Art, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989)

Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism - Coca Cola, 2004
Module Code HOA00044H