Die Henning-Parthenon-Replik (German Edition)

Royal Academy of Arts, , p. We must look to history to understand the reasons for this, namely, the varying conditions of social and economic development, which are the result of differences in consciousness and which influence the current artistic situation in each country in specific ways. This is, however, not the same view of the reality of abstract art as was formulated by Western critics, such as Werner Haftmann, to describe its autonomous, spiritual dimen- sion and give tangible content to non-figurative art; a reality that was seen as distinct from the mimetic, material reality attributed to realism.

Haftmann is also author of a highly successful book, Painting of the Twentieth Century, which focuses on Western art practices. This book was republished many times, originally published in German: Werner Haftmann, Malerei im Akademie Verlag, , pp. To quote from one of these texts: Representation was thus seen to preserve its mimetic connection with a referential physical reality, from which it could never fully break free. The progression of Socialist Realist figurative artists towards abstraction was thus presented in a form that was acceptable to Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

Marian Bogusz, in Konfrontacje , exh.

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I take this opportunity to quote from a viewpoint that is representative of reactions to our exhibition: Yet the artists refuse to express these references in the usual ways; a movement, a climate or a colour interest them more than representing or interpreting reality. In this way, Ziemski brings forth in front of our eyes streaks of red, yellow and green set against earthy backgrounds that are delicately worked and infinitely evocative.

Furthermore, the extreme refinement of materials in the work of Gierowski and Kierzowski, and, particularly, the highly structured symbols in the work of Lebensztejn, which are created through an endlessly diversified treatment of thick textures, are far from gratuitous. The archives of the AICA contain transcripts of debates held at the congress. They conclusively prove that critics from Western Europe and the United States showed no particular concern for these issues. They did not consider that their own perception of internationalism could be challenged by an alternative model that embodied different values.

No mention was made of art scenes east of the Iron Curtain, apart from Poland, and the brief references to realist practices portrayed them as anachronistic. But rather than giving particular consideration to the topics presented by the Polish critics, he interpreted them according to his own modernist, progressive viewpoint.

The Library of Professor Leo Steinberg

He believed that art practices driven by a search for a Polish identity had no place in any modern tradition. His writings com- bine historical accounts and discussions of contemporary art, through which he portrays an image of Poland as peripheral and backward, a nation whose identity was defined by sources from a past era. Poland is presented as an epigone, or inferior imitator, of France and the United States—which Restany saw as the two hegemonic powers in the art world—a view he reiterated in the discussions held during the con- gress.

He considered Poland to be provincial, marginal, and the particu- larities of the socialist system and the national characteristics he men- tions—Catholicism, a young nation, romanticism—in no way alter his interpretation of Polish abstract art in terms of Western models. In a report on discussions held during the congress, Restany clearly expresses his views on the subject of returning to tradition.

Argan Italy , debate arose around the general issue of expressiveness: A trend appears to have emerged from these discussions favouring the search for a renewal of art through a return to the primary elements of national tradition. This is the justification today for so many cases of artistic nationalism and explains why we see such a proliferation of cultural inferiority complexes.

Yet tradition has always stifled new art, and it is only by breaking free of the straitjacket of localism that geographically localised art movements have been able to play their historical role to the full. However, it would be futile to expect any avant-garde proclamations from a congress held by the AICA or any other organisation. In , Restany believed that he had progressed beyond abstract painting. Restany was no stranger to the rhetoric of Polish art critics, who drew their references from the Parisian communist press.

Communist doctrine had evolved with the Thaw, and Restany had no alternative but to dismiss that which com- munism now tolerated. His position was fuelled by antagonisms resulting from the Cold War, and his views on art and the practices he defended were radically opposed to communism. Les Presses Universitaires de Rennes, In founding this movement, Restany was motivated by a strong desire to distance himself not only from abstraction, but also from all that communism had appropriated.

These forms of expression embodied values that Restany refused to acknowledge as part of contemporary art. The end of the s marked the end of the period of reconstruction and the onset of economic growth, the beginning of the great technological adventure into space. With Charles de Gaulle proclaimed first president of the 5th Republic in January , and again on his re-election in , the new regime endeavoured to detract from the internal conflicts that had disrupted France during and following the war. This was articulated through the propagation of myths of the promotion of social cohesion and national unity.

But nationalist sentimentalism won the day—Warsaw was reconstructed on its original site and the Old City was rebuilt stone by stone based on sketches by Canaletto produced around These reconstructed facades bring to mind a theatre set that is artificial and soulless, dehumanised, just like the metaphysical cities of de Chirico.

Restany vir- tually ignored Polish geometric abstraction, which, according to him, never took hold in an enduring way. While reasserting his state-hegemonic view of the situation, he discredited the legacy of Russian Constructivism, which is perceived as digressions from the main currents. In this way, Restany relegated all revolutionary art practices to the fringes of the international movement. The AICA Congress was held at a particularly interesting moment in history, when major shifts in East—West relations were beginning to take effect.

It offers a picture of the Thaw era, while bearing witness to the deterioration of gains made during this period of liberalisation. Even if it was out of the question for the Polish authorities to change gift from the Russians and the housing developments in the suburbs, which are still new but on the verge of collapse. All of these inconsistencies in town planning, which make Warsaw one of the most depressing cities in the world, reflect the intellectual uncertainties of the nation.

In , the Polish govern- ment enacted a restriction that no more than 15 percent of artworks in public exhibitions could be abstract. Although this Directive saw limited compliance, it remained in effect until the collapse of the socialist system in Poland. It reveals a prism of complex relations between art critics from the East and West as they focused on a common subject Art Informel and expressed their own perspectives, demonstrating at times their interdependencies such as the fact that both Restany and the Polish critics were familiar with Raoul-Jean Moulin , which threatened to aggravate existing antagonisms.

Furthermore, by turning our attention to the artistic debates that took place within a divided Europe, we are able to take into consideration the fragile interrelationships, the subtleties of viewpoints and the interactions that were played out on the frontline of the Cold War, which were of a different nature to the relations that existed between the two rival superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. This interpretation of these connections and interdependencies cannot suffice, but it repre- sents a process of vital and fundamental importance for the construction of Europe today.

Akademie Ver- lag, , pp. Royal Academy of Arts, The painter who is indisputable, or the pop artist? On the one hand, it did not come as a total surprise: Rauschenberg was greatly appreciated in Western Europe where he was regarded as a leading figure of the new international avant-garde. His receiving this major honour nonetheless caused a stir, or rather, to echo Cabanne, the fact that a Pop artist would be awarded this prestigious prize was disturbing and even shocking to many, even among those who appreciated the young Ameri- can.

Although they enjoyed his work, they did not see him as a proper candidate for this particular recognition. Without con- testing the validity of such an interpretation, we must recognise that it does not explain everything. Of course, each biennale had its share of recri- minations, but not to that extent and, while most of these scandals were quickly forgotten, the disputes surrounding the Biennale remain a decisive moment in the history of Western Art.

It needs to be taken seriously and to be studied carefully, using not only close reading of published texts and archive material, but also distant reading of data pertaining to the curatorial practices and transnational strategies of the time, as found in exhibition catalogues, following the methodology promoted by ARTL S. This recognition was particularly important, since that year all the international prizes had gone to Italian artists and thus regarded as invalid by the international community. Tobey is thus sometimes wrongly listed as the winner of the Grand Prize for Painting.

The MIT Press , 94— In a nutshell, ARTL S offers art historians a collaborative, integrated digital environment in which they can trace, compute, and map the transnational circulations of artists, artworks, and styles. At the core of the project is BasArt, a relational, geo-referenced historical database of exhibition cata- logs. BasArt centralizes, processes, and further disseminates information that art historians have theoretically at their disposal but do not have the means to practically access or process on their own. As Cabanne hinted, it was the symbol of something that went far beyond him and, I contend, beyond Paris and New York.

The late s and early s was indeed a period of social and cultural changes that was marked by the arrival of a new generation and the emergence of a distinct youth culture which sparked a crisis of values, strongly resisted by the older generations, and announced the social unrest and radical up- heavals of the late s.

Prunel, and Sorin A. And consult the website at www. Verso, , Ashgate, , — Oxford University Press, Bilanz did not include any young or upcoming artists; no Pop artists, not even Rausch- enberg who had been awarded the Grand Prize in Venice just a few days before the opening. Yet, the show did not generate any controversy or receive any special attention. It was regarded as a successful, standard retrospective. As the Paris based critic Herta Wescher explained in her review of the show, abstraction that had domin- ated the international art scene since the late s was relegated to a position of secondary importance.

Parisian abstraction was particularly mishandled. Fautrier, who had won the Biennale in , was not included either. For Wescher, the show was biased: In a show that was supposed to present the artistic production of the past ten years, to give such precedence to artists who had emerged only two years prior was regarded as deplorable, and this was because it did not reflect the history of the past ten years, but rather recent taste. And if artists from Paris dominated in Basel, it was in no small part because artists from the older generations were often based in Paris.

The strong representation in Basel of American Abstract Expressionism, which was slighted in London, brings further evidence that the shift was less geographic than generational. Switzerland was one of the very few Euro- pean countries where American art had been very visible since the War. In , as director of the Kunst- halle in Bern, he had organised a show of Alexander Calder. In , he had organised a show titled Tendances 3, which featured three American artists: Kunsthalle Basel, , — It was far more urgent to show Rauschenberg while he was still current and relevant.

The victims of this new approach to cura- torial practice were the older generation, Parisian and American, who were likewise overshadowed by the novelty of the rising stars. The London exhibition then exemplified the shift in the values of the Western art worlds, where museums were starting to pay more attention to novel than historical trends, so much so that success and recognition were more closely linked to the future rather than the past.

Postwar figuration under the Pop Art banner The growing importance given to the most recent artistic developments becomes particularly obvious when considering a series of exhibitions devoted to figuration that also took place in Obrazy z National Gallery of Art w Waszyngtonie, ed. National Museum of Warsaw, , — If both exhibitions manifested a similar desire to examine the renewed interest in figuration, their ways of approaching current interest illustrated two very different curatorial outlooks.

Figuratie Defiguratie represented the more traditional genre of exhibi- tion, in which the historical perspective dominated. The older artists whose work is now part of the history and source of the art of today; the younger artists whose art is in full evolution and promises new possibilities. In between is the generation of mature and established artists.

As such, the show provided the perfect example of a historical out- look in which recognition came from the past. Works by Klein and Rauschenberg were validated by being exhibited next to more established 14 Karel J. In contrast, Nieuwe Realisten represented a newer type of show strongly grounded in the present, even though legitimacy was historically based.

The idea for the exhibition came about in the autumn of , when Wim Beeren visited New Images of Man.

The Library of Professor Leo Steinberg

Intrigued, Beeren undertook to further explore and then exhibit the diversity of postwar figurative trends. As he was finalising his selection, Beeren experienced the opportunity to view works by Lichtenstein, Warhol, Segal, Oldenburg and Rosenquist at the Gallery Sonnabend in Paris, and was completely taken aback. The exhibition, which opened in The Hague in June , just a few days after Rauschenberg won the Grand Prize in Venice, was divided into four sections: The core difference between these outlooks is best exemplified in the exhibition catalogues: Nieuwe Realisten The Hague: In September, a slightly modified version opened at the Museum des As this new title suggested, the Viennese show placed further em- phasis on the newest trends gathered under the generic Pop banner.

Moreover, several historical figures such as Rivera and Shahn had been omitted. With the exceptions of Duchamp and Bacon, the older generation was not presented at all. The works of the older generation were replaced by works of the younger Parisian and American artists. Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and Dine had now five works on display 17 Werner Hofmann, ed.

More than New York, it was youth that triumphed in Brussels. The shift was clearly manifested in the physical appearance of the catalogue, a stylish pink booklet, next to which, the original Dutch catalogue looked like an old newspaper. The place of youth at the Venice Biennale The temporal discordance apparent in the curatorial practices and ap- proaches to contemporary art of the time was particularly obvious in the French and the American selections at the Venice Biennale. Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts, Vanessa Theodoro- poulou and Katia Schneller Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, , 49— Whereas the French presented artists at the ends of their careers, the Americans presented artists at the breakthrough moments of theirs.

In contrast, for the French, it was a place of consecration and honours. Until , the historical approach had dominated the Biennale. In the years following the War many countries, including Italy, saw this event as the opportunity to look back at their previous national artistic production and to educate the public about modern art which had so often been mishandled at the time of its creation before being suppressed by Fascist governments.

In , for the first postwar Biennale, the organisers ac- cordingly planned a didactic panorama of the visual arts in Europe since the late nineteenth century. The exhibition, the first important presentation of Impressionism in Italy, was a popular success. Edizioni Carte Segrete, Ashgate, , After the vicious Nazi attack on the visual arts, there was a strong desire to look back at the history of modern art, especially at the German contributions.

In , for their first official participation at the Biennale since the war, the Germans asked Eberhard Hanfstaengl, who had been the curator of the German pavilion in and , to serve again. In , he opposed the abstract and figurative trends of modern art through a retrospective exhibition of Paul Klee and Oskar Schlemmer. In , he examined the Surrealist vein with Max Ernst.

These historical presentations, responding to the need of the public and the general curatorial practices of the Biennale, received public and critical acclaim. As a matter of fact, throughout the postwar period, French artists scooped up most of the major awards: In , things changed with most of the pavilions adopting the con- temporaneous outlook that had been that of the U.

That year, Edouard Tier became the curator of the German pavilion. Der Deutsche Beitrag — Stuttgart: Enzo di Martino Venice: Papiro Arte, , — In an unpublished essay, Pierre Restany analysed the events of Venice with great insight: The school of Paris was not betrayed by the decisions of the international jury, it was harmed on good faith, this is the worst! But to have entrusted the young Restany with that selection would have required the French officials to change their perspectives not only on the function of the Venice Biennale, but also on the place of youth in the art worlds, and in the society at large.

Synonyms and antonyms of Parthenon in the German dictionary of synonyms

This was all the more difficult for the French since in they had created the Biennale de Paris, which was restricted to artists under thirty- five years of age, in order to counterbalance the Venice Biennale and to 26 Becker and Lagler, Biennale Venedig: Der Deutsche Beitrag — Cercle d'Art, , In their mind, young artists such as Rauschenberg should be presented in Paris in a space devoted to the discovery of new experiments, while Venice should be reserved for the consecration of established artists.

In Venice, young artists could be recognised through the David Bright Prize, which recognised artists under age forty-five in the three categories of painting, sculpture, and print. In , Ipousteguy was awarded the David Bright Prize for sculpture—an honour which was seen as an appropriate recognition for a young artist at that moment of his career. Had he received the Grand Prize of Sculpture, it would have been deemed inappropriate, French or not French. In the catalogue of the XXe Salon de Mai, which took place in Paris in May , Gaston Diehl, the president of the Salon, conveyed the anxiety that many felt at seeing novelty being embraced everywhere as the highest artistic value: Is all that lasts suspicious and is it important to deny as soon as possible ideas introduced the previous day in order to respond the demands of the current area and eternal youth?

Under the growing demographical pressure of the baby-boomer generation, the Western world was undergoing social and cultural transformations that overwhelmed and frightened the older generation. Rauschenberg, as an American Pop artist, embodied both youth his own and that of his country , and modernity.

As long as the Pop artists remained confined to space and position deemed appropriate for young artists, such as com- mercial galleries like the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris or the Paris Biennale, their works could be appreciated for what they were: Not only did it contradict all established values, it also tapped into a rampant anxiety surrounding youth. The younger generation was seen as the one capable of renewing France culturally, spiritually, and politically. The media, feeding on such a fear, featured sensational articles that told stories of violent crimes committed by youngsters who feared neither god nor man.

Stan- ford University Press, , 2. The book covers French youth in all its different aspects of, from the school system and the colonies de vacances summer camps to military service and sexuality. As Arthur Marwick explained in his studies of the Sixties, very few in France realised that the younger generation was different.

Born at the end or after the War, in a time of economic prosperity and radical transformation, they had different models, values, and aspirations. By , however, it was no longer possible to ignore the existence of a growing youth. By then, 33 percent of the French population was under twenty, and nineteen million under twenty-five.

Salut les copains had started in as a weekly radio programme that played American, British, and French pop music. Very successful, the show was turned into a daily programme and a magazine. Salut les copains provided French youth with a space of their own where they could listen to their they quickly minimized its importance, noting: On the blousons noirs and the discourses that surrounded them, see Drew M. The concert of June was intended to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the magazine.

Organisers expected maybe 15, fans—but some , showed up that night. This was an aston- ishing event that broadcasted the mounting importance of French youth, and consequently generated much anti-youth propaganda. He argued that adolescence appeared because the transition from childhood to adulthood was henceforth happening gradually over several years, thereby leading to this transition period of adolescence.

Le Seuil, , — In they will be the leaders of the Nation. They were born and are living in a fast-changing world. They are a new race of Frenchman that their elders do no longer understand. What is their vision of the world? What import- ance do they attach to love, money, politics, faith? To what kind of new morality are they giving birth? Beyond the triumph of youth, it was the tri- umph of urbanisation, modernisation, and popular culture.

Youth was simply the standard bearer for all these transformations which threatened traditional French values, and were building a new country, even though most structural and institutional changes would have to wait until the explosion of May to take place. It was upsetting to many, because it tapped into a larger social crisis, when the mature and established generation was then feeling particularly over- whelmed by the arrival of a younger one.

Clutching on to the ancestral French values, they attempted to resist the decline they feared their country was bound to undergo. It was not merely anti-Americanism and chauvinism. Such feelings were most certainly there, but it was more complicated than that. French critics could fully support American artists, such as Alexander Calder or Mark Tobey, receiving Prizes in Venice, because they were established artists representing traditional artistic values.

Rauschenberg, on the other hand, was too young, too popular. In their eyes, he was to painting what the Beatles and Johnny Hallyday were to music—even if one did not dislike listening to them on the radio, one could not regard them as serious musicians. Art was being betrayed from with- in, hence the urgency with which Bosquet called artists to resist under the banner of the great modern masters that were still alive.

Painters must realise what threatens them. Not by Pop art, in any case. The power structures of the international art world were indeed being reshuffled during this strategic year, but this should not be reduced to a simple shift from Paris to New York. The values of the Western art worlds were changing, as novelty and youth became more important than tradition and historical con- tinuity, even in museum circles, and art institutions saw their mission to prospect and recognise new talent, instead of retrospectively consecrating past achievements.

Bibliography Primary sources Albert-Levin, Marc. The Young Face of France. De Menselijke Figuur Sedert Picasso. Museum Voor Schone Kunsten, Secondary sources Becker, Christoph, and Annette Lagler, eds. National Museum of Warsaw, Publications de la Sorbonne, The Rise and Fall of American Art, s—s: A Geopolitics of Western Art Worlds. The European Triumph of American Art. The MIT Press Riding the New Wave: Stanford University Press, London Whitechapel Art Gallery, Note that only major countries of residency that accounted for a significant number of artists are represented in this graph.

Sois jeune et tais toi. Poster realized by the Atelier populaire of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Serigraphy, 96 x 76 cm. The MIT Press, For a graduate student whose dissertation topic was Robert Rauschenberg, it seemed very curious that Monogram Figure 3. The question caused me to fly to Sweden in March in order to conduct research at the museum, which has owned the work since In fact, I was quite nervous about this visit: As I approached the museum entrance, though, the sight of its entrance astonished me: I found this utterly puzzling: Even before setting foot in the museum building, I knew therefore that I was already onto something very important.

This chapter will discuss how this shift in cultural climate affected the reception of Monogram in Stockholm, and will compare this case with that of Tokyo—another marginal, yet important, site on the international art scene, where many artists produced Pop-inspired works during the s. By doing so, I will examine the challenge that any peripheral cities such as Stockholm and Tokyo had to face in order to strike a fine balance between their transnational ambition and localism.

Among many artists he met in the city, Rauschenberg was special. Another important 2 For the history of the museum, see Anna Tellgren, ed. Brill Academic Publishers, , pp. Moderna Museet Press, , p. Among others, 4 Americans of is noteworthy, as it was the first museum exhibition in Europe to focus on post-Abstract Expressionist American art. Artists used to go to Paris to learn to paint and never left the city entirely.

But this is not the case anymore […] After World War II, the greatest adventures in visual arts have played themselves out in America, the most interesting painting coming out of New York. The generation of Pollock, Kline, de Kooning, is apparently only the beginning. The artistic activity in New York has an enthusi- asm that has an inspiring effect on European art. In however, it was a daring statement for any European, or even an American institution, to make. When prac- tically the same statement was made by Alan Solomon as commissioner 5 For the marketing of postwar American art in Europe, see Ikegami , pp.

Moderna Museet, , p. The benefit seemed mutual: Of the four American artists in the exhibition, Rauschenberg caused the biggest stir among the local artists. Of course, Rauschenberg was the most shocking of the 4 Americans. People came to the museum only to see the Bed and the Goat [i. If one is asking a young painter under 30 which artist impresses him the most, you would very often get the name of Rauschenberg.

The critic Ulf Linde observed, for instance, that 4 Ameri- cans differed from Movements in Art because the exhibition focused on postwar American art so much that it felt like a promotional campaign. As far as Linde was concerned, the truly collaborative and international spirit that had characterised Movements in Art was already gone.

University of British Columbia, , p. One art history professor at Lund University even mistook the stuffed Angora goat for a live one, and called for a boycott of the whole show. Faced with the most shocking and unsettling work in the grim collection—a stuffed goat from an old textile-factory with his coat dragging on the floor, beauti- ful horns and a disgustingly painted snout, standing there on a painting instead of a pasture—all this is enough to make you surrealistically old-Swedish in your sensibilities. Monogram and Elgin Tie It is helpful at this point to take a close look at Monogram, the object in question.

On the other hand, the work has been repeatedly read as an icon of same-sex love, as Robert Hughes succinctly articulated the homoerotic reading of Monogram: Museum of Contemporary Art, , p. Solomon, Robert Rauschenberg, exh. Jewish Museum, , not paginated. Seldom noted in the past is the fact that it is actually constructed as a kind of vehicle. With four casters attached beneath the canvas panel, one push will set it in motion. Looking at its details, furthermore, we can see that the work includes many aspects related to spatial movement: These words probably refer to the story of how the artist encoun- tered the goat at a second-hand furniture store.

The owner of the store found the goat at a post office sale in an unclaimed crate, which would have borne similar stencilled words. Menil Foundation, , p. Rather what is present is the opposite; the flying away, the taking off. It seems to me that there is a lot about an absence of gravity, meaning that the elements, the parts do not appear to have a lot of matter, or be very material. It seems that he enjoys that, that they become poetic metaphors. They have no weight.

The year was indeed special, as Rauschenberg joined the first world tour of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the same year as costume and set designer, and visited thirty cities in fourteen countries. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, , p. OK Be persistent and pound on him as soon as you see him! Although Edy de Wilde had replaced Sandberg in , the new director also expressed a strong desire to acquire a major piece by Rauschenberg.

First, he performed a short piece entitled Shot Put in the dark, and then climbed to the roof of the museum and waited there. So the audience could not see the performer when the light was turned on. Emerging soaking wet, the performer slipped into a pair of boots on a wagon and tied a white tie around his neck, which was the signal for a farmer to bring in a cow.

The perfor- mance ended as the farmer led the cow off to the exit and an assistant pulled the wagon, on which Rauschenberg kept tying and untying his Elgin tie.

Indeed, as Ulf Linde noticed at the time of the performance, many aspects of Elgin Tie appear to correspond to those in Monogram. A cow, a barrel, and wagon wheels in the performance have their counterparts in the Combine: Thus, Elgin Tie can be seen as a performed commentary on Monogram, the work that took him five years to complete and that had just found its new home in Stockholm at the time of the performance. In March , then, Monogram entered the museum as a symbol of the strong connec- tion of the local museum to the centre of world art. As Patrik Anders- son pointed out, the original Dylaby exhibition, held at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the summer of , had created enough conflict and tension between Rauschenberg and the European artists, making any further collaboration difficult.

But there are problems […] it would have to be an enormous castle. Jean and I both feel that this collaboration would be something sufficient in itself. Why have an enormous hamburger next to it? Rauschenberg also may be unnecessary. Ultvedt provided Andersson with the translation of these coded letters in Letters were sent to Ultvedt from to He had already developed a critical view of Rauschenberg in , when he wrote from Stockholm to Ultvedt, who was then visiting New York: It is, after all, Andy Warhol who has the patent on silkscreening.

Is there no Restany over there to keep an eye on what artists are doing? This anti-American turn in the Stockholm art scene actually coincided with a political conflict between the United States and Sweden over the war in Vietnam. In July , Olof Palme, then a young Minister of Trans- port and Communications, delivered an exceptionally harsh critique of American militarism in Vietnam, which caught the attention of Washing- ton.

After this incident, Swedish officials, especially Palme—who would become the next prime minister in —took a more active approach to criticising American militarism. In other words, readers of these 38 Ulf Linde, quoted in Andersson, , p. In the summer of , the afore- mentioned HON SHE , a woman-shaped cathedral, was built in the museum, followed by a solo exhibition by Oldenburg, an American Pop artist of Swedish descent. Still, New York and Stockholm had another falling-out in Since Five New York Evenings filled the entire festival, followed by Robert Morris and Yvonne Rainer as main per- formers in the Festival, the Festival was expected to be another collaborative project between Swedish and American artists.

But the problem was that the art and technology project required a much grander budget. Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute. We intend to try every means to make a reality of the Festival of Art and Technology. Meanwhile, Fylkingen discontinued the Stockholm Festival after and stopped inviting American artists. As the Swedish-American relationship deterior- ated even more, the presence of American artists in Stockholm diminished significantly after It originally started as an E.

After organising a series of E. Bob R will work with you to make up the collection. However, the timing could not have been worse, given the increasing anti-American sentiment among the Swedish public. The Swedish-Ameri- can political conflict over Vietnam was exacerbated towards the end of the s, as the Swedish government began providing refuge to American draft evaders and military deserters in Moreover, when Sweden became the first nation to recognise North Vietnam in , the U.

In this speech that received worldwide publicity, Palme went so far as to associate the Hanoi bombing with Guernica, which infuriated American officials. Their feeling was clearly stated as follows: Swedish artists published another critique against this exhibition, with a caricature drawn by Ultvedt.

In this debate, Monogram was nothing but a scapegoat, as the Swedish artists saw it as the beginning of the whole trouble, the symbol of the postwar invasion of American art and culture in their country. Accord- ingly, they concluded their critique by this statement: Although most of the American artists in the collection were against the war, the anti-American sentiment in Stockholm was so strong at the time that the engineering technology used in the collection was perceived as a reflection of Ameri- can military technology.

In fact, this criticism was not entirely off the mark: Om Experiments in Art and Technology, exh. The conflict surrounding the New York Collection nonetheless suggests an important insight about the dynamics of cartography in modern art. Although major and minor forces complemented one another globally, the power relation- ship was essentially asymmetrical in the America-centric art world of the day, which was comprised of only one major centre that is, New York and numerous minor centres. It was geographically more difficult to travel to New York and bring American artworks to Japan.

Penguin Books, , p. Interestingly, Rauschenberg became a special artist in Tokyo, as he did in Stockholm. How should this work be understood, is it a homage to the American modern master, or is it a critical parody of American Pop? It is a little bit of both, as Shinohara was aware of the overwhelming dominance of American art on the world art scene and still felt attracted to the latest modern art trend from New York. How would this work look in the eyes of Rauschenberg, then?

A documentary film entitled Some Young People, made in by Chiaki Nagano, captures activities of Japanese avant-garde artists as part of postwar youth culture in Japan. There are ample signs of Ameri- canization of Japanese culture in the film—drinking Coke, wearing jeans, dancing the twist, etc. Such was the cultural context in which Japanese artists came in contact with American Neo-Dada and Pop, and created their own form of Pop art. Accordingly, in their work, they often clearly displayed their ambivalent feelings towards the American dominance of art and culture.

Walker Art Center, , pp. Also, as the global trend of Pop art waned by the late s, superseded by new currents such as Mono-ha the equivalent of post minimalism in Japan , intermedia art, and conceptualism, the artists of Tokyo Pop started looking in different directions.

The loss of momentum of Pop had something to do with increasingly anti-American sentiments, caused by the renewal of the U. Like in Sweden and many other countries, the late s saw the political turbulence in Japan. In this situation, two graphic designers, Tadanori Yokoo and Keiichi Tanaami, made clever use of Pop style to express their critical ambivalence toward American cultural hegemony. Here, their acts of saving humans from evil are inseparable from mass destruction, intimating the admixture of fear and adoration Tanaami held for the United States. While Lichtenstein cleaned up and simplified the air combat by excluding the landscape from the original comic, Tanaami put the scene back into a con- crete background by adding the aerial photo of a bombed field, which the artist recollects was either German or Japanese-occupied land, attacked by U.

He also gave the bomber an aggressive face, thereby re-contextualising the fraught relationship between the attacker and the attacked. Tanaami adopted this strategy to a series of experimental animation films he made in Among these, Commercial War is particularly noteworthy, as he incorporated images and sounds of real TV commer- cials into his animated imagery. However, one particular question needs to be asked at this point: The attempt to situate their work in the larger framework of international spread of Pop art is just beginning, as will be mentioned in conclusion.

Monogram revived In lieu of a conclusion, I would like to return to Monogram. Film Art, , p. In , it was even featured as a billboard image in a financial appeal for support for the construction of a new museum building. In the billboard image, Monogram is heroically standing over Skeppsholmen, the small island on which this museum is located. Once a scapegoat symbolising American expansionism, the work has been revived as an icon of the museum. Both exhibitions, in each their own particular way, attempted to re-examine the transnational spread of Pop in a global context.

Ulf Linde, interview by the author, 12 March , Stockholm. Ulf Linde, interview by the author, 18 October , Stockholm. Oral History Archives of Japanese Art www. University of British Columbia, Boyer, Kathryn et al. Museum of Contemporary Art, , pp. Hopps, Walter and Susan Davidson eds. Moderna Museet Press, , pp. Ikegami, Hiroko, The Great Migrator: Steinberg, Leo, Encounters with Rauschenberg, Houston: Yokoo Tadanori, a statement in Kagayake nendai: Tomkins, Calvin, Off the Wall: Turrell, Julia Brown, ed.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram —9. Photo- graphs by Stig T. Ushio Shinohara, Coca-Cola Plan, Ink, marker, collage on paper 27 x 35 cm. I would be glad if you could help us with these plans, and speak to the artists about them. It has been described as a more or less effortless conquest of the European art scene, accomplished through the power of the strong images themselves, after the pop music and the film industry had paved the way. This essay has been further developed from my doctoral dissertation, which I defended at Uppsala University: On Moderna Museet —, Stockholm: Moderna Museet , pp.

The New Press, original title: Who Paid the Piper? A few years later he founded E. Less known is that he was crucial for some very early pop-related exhibition projects in the U.

Om Experiments in Art and Technology, Schulz: Brill Rodopi, , pp. Hans Richter showed Viking Eggeling films he owned. See also Hultman , p. Duchamp and the Armory show, etc. Although the large transatlantic exhibition drawn upon here never took place in Stockholm in the early s, the exhibition concept reoccurred in Paris in the s. Anna-Lena Wibom interviewed by the author 17 March Because this takes place in America, where they never have had autonomous art before, it is only natural that these artists choose America as the subject of their images.

They have a strong urge for self-expression and a need to be loved, but their emotions seem to be short-circuited, as if despite their efforts it is impossible to love this world of plastic and lacquered metal. Abstract expressionism is replaced by frustrated expressionism. In the statement he makes two important points—pop art is a way for artists to ventilate frustrated emotions and also, to distance themselves from politics and the society.

This position would reoccur but in a much milder version in the marketing of the American pop art show in Stockholm the following spring and affect its reception.

The statement is interesting as a mark in a process where con- cepts and ideas connected to pop art were still open and in flux. Shall we do a pop-exhibition this spring? Ileana is having a Segal-exhibition and thus has a good col- lection available in Europe. Leo would come there and I could talk with him then.

What do you think? Pop in spring, Europe-America in autumn, that would be nice. Ileana Sonnabend was a partner throughout the project and also helped with negotiating pieces that she did not own herself. For the art galleries it was important to establish a European market for American pop art at a moment when it had not yet been appreciated by 11 Letter from P.

The following quotation gives an impression their partnership: Can really nothing be done about that? Should I ask the Swedish ambassador in Rome to intervene? The Swedish king might give Panza an order? What can I do? Could not Tate take a new one? It is essential to show now, that Rosenquist is not only a Swede but also a great artist. Sonnabend, 15, Moderna Museet. She told me that most of those pieces that go to London will stay in Europe for a while.

She has a very beautiful Segal-show at this moment, as you know. She thinks that important pieces of these shows can be kept in Europe and go to Stockholm. This was also the interest of Leo Castelli, who was powerful in this regard. Early on he was aware of the fact that American collectors did not buy new American art before it had been approved in Europe.

A pop art field emerges in the U. The first years of the s, saw pop art as an artistic practice and theoretical discourse emerge on Manhattan. In a letter to Alfred H. How- ever, compared with the later canon of pop art, the selection of artists was much wider: The exhibition catalogue for Art — A New Vocabulary was made as a kind of semantic mapping of the new phenomenon and is a very interest- ing document of the development of the vocabulary around pop at that moment.

Guggenheim Museum in March to June Alice Denney, the curator of the show, was in dialogue with him on the possibility of letting the whole show travel to Stockholm. Sidney Janis Gallery, , n. Janis is referring as his source for the term The Factualists: Other titles applied to artists with this point of view: Burroughs novel Naked Lunch from , where the Factualists are a political party in a dreamlike city called the Interzone.

The Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Denney was responsible for the exhibition. They also played a part for the pop art show in Stockholm, and the selection of art works for that show. At the time of the planning of the pop show in Stockholm, Claes and Pat Oldenburg also prepared his first solo exhibition, entitled The Home, at the Sidney Janis Gallery. In other letters from this spring, there are suggestions that works by David Smith, Robert Breer and Andy War- hol should be acquired. Through its heavy emphasis on the determination of a development towards what art and what artist would become valid and important, it was a normative statement.

Importing pop — the exhibition and its package In the communication from the museum about American Pop Art — Forms of Love and Despair, pop art was framed as historically determined and autonomous. The vulgarians does not work. Being the first exhibition ever in a European museum of American pop, the name of the show as well as its content had by that point been negotiated over a period of time, and the result was the somewhat odd title American Pop Art: A critical history, Berkeley: University of California Press, , p.

The visitors walked on a plain wooden floor. The two white plaster figures in Lovers on a Bench were placed in the centre of the room. The catalogue had a hybrid modern design, with pages in different colours as well as colour reproductions pasted in by hand. The main essay was written by Alan Solomon and followed by shorter contributions on the individual artists. Nils-Hugo Geber wrote about the extensive film programme in connection to the exhibition.

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Unsurprisingly the theme would reoccur in parts of the reviews of the exhibition. The pop artists have no social awareness and no political intentions. The Swedish situation In early , Pop art, as a notion and a concept, was already familiar among Swedish artists and critics via international art journals, not the least Art International. In the spring of , one year before the large American pop show, a show simply called POP was pre- sented at Galleri Observatorium—an independent, non-commercial gal- lery.

The camera rests on the green underground trains, on people walking the street, and super good looking blonde girls. This is followed by cuts from the Ameri- can pop art show at Moderna Museet, unlabelled, as well as by several images from the local art scene at local art galleries. The film displays a Swedish art scene with pop art expressions of its own, while pop art is interpreted as an artistic attitude rather than art by an established and well-defined group of American artists. The Swedish artists Rasmusson refers to are partly other than those in the exhibition: When the pop show opened in , it served as the basis for in-depth cultural criticism and discussions in several articles and journals.

The attention in the news was extensive; in the newspapers, TV, radio, pop art in general and the Moderna exhibition in particular were discussed and debated. When Ulf Linde published four articles on pop art in Dagens Nyheter one year later, he formulated his critique in a more elaborate, theoretical manner. He made a rather in-depth intro- duction to pop art, based on American art press and interviews with the pop artists in Art News, among other sources. In his second, extensive text on the American art show at the Moderna Museet, Bergmark examined the exhibition 43 Aktuellt, Swedish television, Andreas Huyssen, in his notable essay, offered an interpretation of how American pop art was understood in West Germany in relation to American popular culture in general.

This was most probably the result of the extensive exposure to American culture, as well as a spirit of strong cultural criticism following the tradition of Adorno in Germany. The Swedish criticism ten years earlier, had quite a different notion of the art that was shown in Stockholm in , discussing painterly qualities and ethical content. His early ambivalence, which was slowly turned into enthusiasm in the marketing of the show, still shone through and was noticed by parts of the audience.

Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, , pp. Recent research, such the one presented in this anthology, has of course acknowledged a much wider outreach of pop-related pictorial concepts in Europe and beyond. The title, the conceptual frame of the show, and the selection were not fixed until the last minute, and different con- stellations of artists had been discussed along the way.

Nationally, in historical handbooks of the s, it has been categorised as part of a group of shows that were a starting point for a new and open art practice. However, if one understands the Stockholm pop exhibition in as a step in the development of a discourse around pop art, one that was based on transnational strategies of different figures, a different image emerges. Glenn has read the development of pop art through ten important exhibitions, from an early prologue in , to the moment that 50 Lucy Lippard, Pop Art, London: Hal Foster, Pop, London: The final exhibition, the Postscript, stands for summation, broad consensus and the end of the magical period when American Pop Art seemed neatly definable and readily accessible.

When the Moderna Museet introduced the new avant-garde, female artists were glaringly absent, as were Swedish and other non-American artists who used a pop art lan- guage. In Manhattan, there were several female artists with similar visual 53 Constance W. Whitechapel Art Gallery, , and later exhibitions. Patrik Lars Andersson, Euro-Pop: However, the very same exhibi- tion can be seen in an oppositional way, as presenting a reduced, estab- lished and openly normative concept that excluded alternative selections during the process of consolidation—for example local versions of pop and female artists, both local and American.

It was produced as a result of the strategies of a number of interests both in Sweden and on the New York art scene, and to establish international art on the North European scene. Art — A New Vocabulary, exh. Whitney Museum of American Art and W. University of Chicago Press, Foster, Hal, Pop, London: On Moderna Museet , Stockholm: Wie wirkte er auf Athener, wie auf Fremde? Es sind diese Fragen, die sich stellen, will man urteilen, ob der Parthenon ein Wahrzeichen der Demokratie" war. S 17 32, 3 37 4 47, 4 24 20l l V Parthenon 9. Der Par— thenon als Zierrat eines Adolf Theodor Friedrich Michaelis, Walter De Gruyter Incorporated, Der Parthenonfries ist der Fries am wohl bekanntesten Tempel der griechischen Antike: Mit einem Spendenaufruf auf der After nearly five decades, The Parthenon —the beloved Greek restaurant in Chicago credited with starting the practice of lighting cheese on fire tableside—has Die Installation wird am About half the surviving sculptures were taken from the Parthenon in Athens by Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, and later bought by the British Greece looks to international justice to regain Parthenon marbles