Pop Art: A Reactionary Realism

Author(s): Donald B. Kuspit

Source: Art Journal , Autumn, 1976, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 31-38
Published by: CAA

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/776112

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Pop Art: A Reactionary Realism
DONALD B. KUSPIT

nessinand
In parody the implication is the perverse, and I feel that mybecomes the new reality. Modern realism involv
own work I don't mean it to be that. Because I don't dislike therelentless pursuit of the meaning of appeara
restless,
they are
work that I'm parodying.... The things that I have parodied I not so much faithfully reproduced-taken on
actually admire. value-as charged with fresh import. They are grasp
- Roy Lichtenstein physiognomies disclosing important social and perso
truths, rather than simply cannily yet neutrally mirrored
sense, the attempt only to imitate reality, as if the questi
its meaning
Lawrence Alloway writes that "Pop art is neither abstract nor was not part of its appearance or was set
shows
realistic, though it has contacts in both directions."' resistance to the truth about it, if not outright re
This
sion ofeven
article explores its contacts in the realistic direction, that truth.
taking it as a political articulation. Jean Cassou insistsNow
that any
"acontemporary American attempt to tell the truth
realistic movement in art is always revolutionary."2 about
This ar-appearances-to make appearances tell the truth
ticle shows, on the contrary, that insofar as Pop art isabout reality-seems handicapped from the beginning by the
realis-
mass media
tic, it is reactionary, and evades the social responsibility it at attempt to control appearances, for the specific
first glance seems to show. Cassou's remark is based purposes
on the of commerce and the more general goal of social
assumption that the main thrust of modern realism control. It is as though Pop art knew that all appearances are
is the
unmasking of reality to show its "ugly" truth, which corrupted
is re- by their possible media look: as though everything
pressed in ordinary recognition. Realism is not Americansimply was waiting, as it were, to make a guest ar. pearance
"bound to a concrete situation at a given moment,"3 noroutlet, and become patently memorable.4 It is the
on a media
does it only intend to showthat, in Goethe's words, lurking "no
presence of this expectation-of suddenly becoming,
object of the broadest world and the most manifold simultaneously,
life will newsworthy and glamorous (they seem re-
ciprocal),
be any longer excluded as unpoetical." Going beyond these and thus a celebrity-that had to be considered in
any attempt
superficial conditions, modern realism at its best causes us to to communicate an American content. The ques-
tion is: fi-
re-cognize reality, denying its appearances any "fictional how did Pop art come to grips with this fact in the life
nality," to use Alfred Adler's expression. Realism is of
notappearances
only in America? Did it, in its well-known use of
media
directed towards true reality, and as such radical, images-of
but is visual clich6s-transform them in a way
which showed
directed against the idealism of much art, which mediates a them up, indicating critical detachment-
mental independence-from
presumed ultimate sense, and reinforces the resistance of the world that created them?
The answer,
consciousness to the real sense of things by giving them ideal I hope to show, is no. Pop art did not simply
accept the media cliche image as a kind of lingua franca, the
meanings. (Realism is thus a debunking of the idealistic
approach to art in general, which looks for absolute inevitable
mean- communication code of a business society. For all
itsno
ings in its appearances.) For revolutionary realism, supposed
per- irony, Pop art endorsed and embraced these
mass images
ception can become a metaphysical resting place; there is a for the American world they signified-the infi-
perpetual transcending of the given in the name of nite reproducibility of the images suggested the inescapabil-
its sense,
ity and omnipresence of the world-thus putting an artistic
which in the course of being disclosed loses its mysterious-

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stamp of approval on the American status quo. The only clear ground for action; they are in effect a kind of propa-
sense of parody, as Lichtenstein spoke of it in the quotation ganda, generating strong belief and foreclosing on intellec-
at the beginning of this article, arises from the fact that the tual curiosity and inquiry.
pictorial slang of popular culture images should enter high Pop art, while it shares in the fine art/popular culture
art: Lichtenstein's feeling of parody is caused by this coming continuum, first makes itself apparent as a communication of
together of incommensurates, by his high-style treatment of media clich6 images rather than of fine art ideals. However,
low images (Fig. 1). its use of the media clich6 image gives that image a sponta-
Lichtenstein does not feel this parody is perverse, and he neous fine art-"higher"-meaning. The spectator, who ini-
feels free to express his admiration for his mass media Ameri- tially viewed the media cliche image as telling a kind of truth
can subject matter, because the possibility of "communion" about the real world or at least in some sense corresponding
between the worlds of high art and the mass media, which to it, finds that "truth" hypostatized, raised to seemingly
are usually thought of as having nothing to do with one absolute status, by Pop art's location of it in a fine art context.
another, if not intending to negate each other, is guaranteed Pop art gilds an already gilded lily, seemingly making it
by what Alloway has characterized as the contemporary fine sterling gold. Instead of enlightening the spectator by de-
art/popular culture continuum.5 This continuum presup- bunking the media clich6 image as an instance of false con-
poses the existence of fine art and popular culture as "paral- sciousness, Pop art gives it back to him writ large, with the
lel" or, at least, alternative modes of communication of the sanctity of an art aura around it, as though it were an icon-
same culture. As such, there is nothing forbidding transac- the image over the altarpiece of a commercial society. This
tions between them, even their interpenetration, for they generates some shame and self-preservative amusement
emerge from and are expressive of the same matrix of ideas ("camp"), some minimum irony at one's own expense: it is
and events. In a sense, Pop art is based on the discovery that strange to see everyday idols in a position of overt power,
fine art and popular culture are free to emulate and even exhibited for "aesthetic" appreciation as well as information.
borrow outright from one another, not only in the name of But on the whole such exhibition causes no trouble, stirs no
greater over-all success of communication, and not only souls to their depths, except among the self-styled cogno-
because they often have the same information content and scenti of the art world, the "purists" or aesthetes who still
point to their methods, but because underneath their appar- want an exclusive culture, not realizing that their culture is as
ent differences they are in the service of the same ideal of much a social disguise as popular culture, perhaps even
psycho-social control. They both exist as cultural "exhibi- more so.

tions"-mediums for making public-of the same ideology

of control, based on assurances of the exclusive excellence
of things American. Fine art and popular culture have the
same underlying logic: they are superstructures simultane-
ously disguising the real workings of the world they originate
in-workings that show it is not the best of all possible
worlds-and generating allegiance to it. They offer pseudo-
revelations of reality designed at once to please the individ-
ual sense of critical understanding of the given social order,
and to promote group loyalty to it. From this point of view,
the boundaries between fine art and popular culture seem to
blur; they seem aspects of a larger cultural "continuum."
They cannot be qualitatively differentiated because their sub-
tlety and efficacy are recognized as similar. In a sense, the
discovery of their mutuality, and thus ability to assimilate
each other, is a way of furthering this subtlety and efficacy:
the use of the one by the other increases the influence of
both.
However, from the point of view of a revolutionary realism
which would want to understand the full implications of the
social order from which they both emerged, the fine art/
popular culture continuum is frustrating. It supplies ready-
made, one-dimensional media meanings, or labyrinthine,
self-adumbrating high culture meanings, neither of which is
clearly grounded in the social order which they both presup-
pose. The fine art/popular culture continuum does even
more: it instills the idea of predictable, certified meanings,
foreclosing any further investigation of the "truth." Such
meanings have effect-take hold-just because they do not
pretend to be true, only certain: they afford a sense of
security, of the thoroughly known, which is a satisfactory
substitute for the difficult truth. Such meanings, seemingly
absolute, are socially approved, "ideal," because they form a Fig. 1. Roy Lichtenstein, Blam, 1962. Private collect

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Thus, the spectator is thrown into society's arms by Pop being frightened off by the cliches, these happenings will stop
art, where he was before, but now the embrace crushes and when the cliches have been smashed. A rot has set in, and the
cliche has started it.7
strangles; it cannot even be evaded mentally. The standard-
ized, "media-ted" appearances of things are taken as truly
significant because they have become art-significant: a stan- Dramatized-staged-by Pop art, which seems to function
dard, clich6 appearance is for all practical and theoretical like a theodicy, the clich6 acquires a transcendental aura,
purposes a true appearance. Pop realism thus unconsciously confirming the stability of the world it mediates. This world is
keeps the spectator from questioning media cliche images, also implicitly idealized by art; the cliche becomes its halo.
as to either their motivation or construction. The unmediated So idealized by Pop art, it becomes frozen in its cliche image,
denying it the possibility of process; on the contrary, its
reality they mask is overlooked, or not looked at closely
image implies that it ought to remain the same, so that it can
enough; the media do not encourage the close look, but on
be transcendentally significant and "beautiful." Supplied by
the contrary are designed to discourage it by satisfying, to the
point of satiation, any looking the spectator might want toPop art with a pair of art-wings, the media image of the
do. If the spectator has a quasi-realistic urge to establish American world seems its true revelation, its final codifica-
continuity between the media cliche image and unmediated tion, its set form. Art-mediation does not only not essentially
change the media cliche image, but affords no deeper under-
actuality, he is usually only attempting to "justify" the media
standing of the world it mediates. This is why Pop art is
cliche image by showing it to be imitative of reality-or
reactionary: it celebrates, by fetishizing, American society's
rather, showing unmediated actuality to be imitative of it. For
Pop art encourages him to view the media cliche image as a self-image in its media; this self-image cannot be thought
about further, for it has been made glamorous-its appear-
kind of dream realization or self-fulfilling prophecy about the
ance
actual, given world: the way it looks on the media is the way it is given the illusion of being a fine art. The fine art of
was meant to look, for that is the way it truly is. Pop appearances does no more than crystallize the world
Pop art in effect encourages the assumption that the world they mediate as a finished product.
as known through the mass media fatalistically confirms the Pop art thus furthers what Adorno calls "the standardiza-
actual world. The media seem to say: this is the world, make tion of consciousness" by society-its attempt to master our
the best of it, for it cannot be changed, since it has alreadyinner life for its own purposes.8 It may be, as Alloway says
happened. It can only be made newsworthy and glamorous- van Gogh believed, that clich6s (visual or otherwise)-the
instrument of the standardization of consciousness as well as
only celebrated, for better or worse. In Pop art this celebra-
tion of the inevitable is itself celebrated. As Lichtenstein the form and content of such false consciousness-are "the

writes, authorized expression of mankind, a kind of common prop

erty that especially binds us together." But they are al
controlled thoughts, or modes of thought control-stere
The world is outside. Pop art looks at it and accepts this environ-
typed ways of viewing reality, and as such false to its proce
ment, which is neither good nor bad ... and if you ask me how
one can love moronization, how one can love the mechanization They inhibit our penetration of social and personal reality,
of work, how one can love bad art, I answer: I see it, it's here, it's and repress our re-cognition of it. They restrict our search f
the world.6 its meaning to prescribed paths, and deny us any criti
insight into its purposes.
A key statement, valuable for an understanding of th
In Pop art "fine art" functions initially as the meta-medium
workings of Pop art, and showing it to share in the propa-
confirming the "fateful truth"-the unavoidable givenness of
ganda purposes of the media, is Allan Kaprow's assertion th
the world-implicitly communicated by media images. But "publicity can in its own way create an equally magnificen
Pop art mediates these already mediated images-mediates image of a Buick as the Church once created an image o
the given world once more-so that they and the given world God." "Publicity" is the method of methods for Pop a
seem not only the case, for better or worse, but potentially
Picturing a thing for the purpose of publicizing it is to fetis
tragic or comic. The media images and the world they reflect
ize it into a "magnificent image" worthy of worship. It is
are made to seem not simply inevitable, but dramatically create an iconic image: Pop art takes images with wide circ
inevitable, because they are lifted onto the plane of art, with lation-and thus so familiar they seem commonplace-an
its "great expectations." The "art" of Pop art is a deus ex
fetishizes them into icons by placing them in an art context
machina descending to the stage of the given world, already
Art seems thereby to mock itself, but it is actually fulfilling
self-consciously reflected in its media, already communicat-
traditional purpose: the "idealization" of the actual into
ing its reality to itself through the distorting mirrors of its
absolute so that it seems memorable (venerable and valu-
media. The "art" not only takes the fatal vanity of the world
able). The fact that the actuality used by Pop art is standard-
as self-reflected or mediated for granted, but dramatizes it.
ized seems to imply that singling it out and raising it up for
Approved by art, the cliche state of affairs seems a pre- special attention is ironic. But this element of parody, noted
ordained, ultimate situation; and the media cliche images, by Lichtenstein, is superficial. A parody is critical of its sub-
brought into the higher world of art and given "style," seem ject matter; Lichtenstein is not critical of his American con-
magnificent, or fraught with meaning, unexpectedly pro- tent, but admires it. His sense of parody seems a defense
found. They, in fact, seem to keep the real world running. As
against a hidden envy of the well-publicized character of his
Karl Kraus wrote,
American content, which gives it a "hold" over its consumers
that Lichtenstein would like his art to have. He in effect
happenings no longer happen; instead, the cliches operate spon- appropriates this hold by using an American content, with
taneously. Or, if things should nevertheless happen without easy familiarity and its everyday desirability. He thus put

FALL 1976 33

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on the same easy, unthinking terms with his art as one is with prey on the individual weakness for "easy solutions," caused
the everyday American content, which seems paradoxical by his vulnerability. In this sense, both are profoundly propa-
(this is what Lichtenstein in fact means by "parody") because gandistic. As Ellul says
one expects to approach art with uneasy awe, as though one
were in the presence of something with self-evident author- And the individual does not want information, but only value
ity. But of course art does not have any self-evident authority, judgments and preconceived positions. Here one must also take
whereas the American content does; Pop art uses it because into account the individual's laziness, which plays a decisive role
we are already convinced of its "value." In effect, Pop art in the entire propaganda phenomenon, and the impossibility of
wants the same hold-instant and superficial, yet binding- transmitting all information fast enough to keep up with develop-
on its spectators as well-advertised American subject matter ments in the modern world. Besides, the developments are not
wants on its consumers, and in part for the same purpose: to merely beyond man's intellectual scope; they are beyond him in
sell itself. As Adorno notes, volume and intensity. ... Faced with such matters, he feels his
weakness, his inconsistency, his lack of effectiveness. He realizes
that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and
The well-remarked showmanship of the new artists, their exhibi- that realization drives him to despair. Man cannot stay in this
tionism, is in fact the gesture by means of which they bring situation too long. He needs an ideological veil to cover the harsh
themselves as commodities to the market.10
reality, some consolation, a raison d'etre, a sense of values. And
only propaganda offers him a remedy for a basically intolerable
situation.
By using the same publicity methods as advertising, and by
using a publicized American content-by publicizing the al-
ready publicized-Pop art assures itself of a hold onSuccinctly
the put: "to furnish the collective ideological motiva-
American public, for its audience is potentially everyonetions
who driving man to action is propaganda's exact task." I
wittingly or unwittingly attends to advertising and publicity,
seems, in such a situation, that "critical realism" is impos
rather than simply a few aesthetes and purist art cognoscenti.
sible. Yet existentially, on the level of individual existence-
Pop art's exhibitionism consists in its obvious Americanism,potentially the level of dialogue-it is necessary for survival,
and it becomes obviously American in the name of commer- and it first makes itself apparent as personal sceptical opposi-
cial success: in the 1960s it still seemed as if America "sponta-
tion to collective ideology, and its instrument of fetishiza-
neously" sold. Pop art is art as a hard sell; its essential
tion. Against the inscrutability that is created by fetishiza-
technique is idealizing a visual clich6 into a luxury product,
tion-against the unenlightened attitude generated by adver-
which "sells" both because it is already well knowntising and and Pop art-a critical attitude arises in the very pro-
because it has art-status. This combined hold, of the taken-
cess of consumption of ordinary and art products. Agains
for-granted or commonplace (an unconscious hold) and
thethe
fetishized dailiness-in Heidegger's sense of the term-
elite-superior (a conscious hold), is almost overwhelming
ofinthese products, anxious doubt becomes the weapon o
its irresistibility, as many critics have discovered.11 psychic freedom.
This hold serves propaganda purposes, both for society
Publicity, as a propaganda factor, creates false idols, im
and art. Jacques Ellul describes "the aim of modern propa-
ages meant to be worthy of worship because they can make
ganda" as life magically meaningful. So long as these images remain
idolized-effectively ideological-their true believer feels
no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer imbued with their magnificence. However, the moment faith
to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual is disturbed, and the image seems to lose its magnificence,
cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to lead to a because it no longer seems to make life meaningful, its
choice, but to loosen the reflexes. It is no longer to transform an ideological power collapses. Why should it ever be shaken
opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.12 How does the true believer come to doubt its magical effi
cacy, its special truthfulness? Simply by consuming what it
"Propaganda ceases," writes Ellul, "where simple dialogue signifies. For the actual experience of what the image signi-
begins"; Pop art, while it may be a system of communication fies is ordinary, contradicting the image's magnificence.
plugged into a larger system, is not dialogue. (One cannot Awareness of the discrepancy between the two is the begin-
have dialogue with works of Pop art, or rather enter into the ning of doubt of the image. Much as bread and wine are not
dialogue between their form and content, because, as many in fact the body and blood of Christ, so first-hand, actua
articles have noted, their formal transformation of their con- experience of what the image signifies strips it of its implica-
tent is minimal, or at least predictable in terms of the media tions-of its magnificence. The belief that there is still signifi
character of that content.) Now, much as advertising wants to cant correlation between the image and what it represents is
"loosen the reflexes" so that the consumer will respond, purely mythical, the vestige of an ideological hold. Pop art, as
ideally in Pavlovian fashion, to the publicized products, so noted, depends heavily on this hold, but its power collapses
Pop art loosens the reflexes of the spectator so that he will the moment one realizes, by personal re-cognition-by dia
take to the picture (the art product) without resistance- logue with its images-the banality of what these image
before his critical awareness begins to function. In both cases represent. One may still give allegiance to it for the sake of it
the attempt is to get a hold on the consumer before he can "art"-for the fineness of art-but one can no longer giv
re-cognize the product. That is, the attempt is to sell the allegiance to the world it implies. Similarly, in realizing the
product before its character can be carefully questioned. The ordinariness of the products one consumes, their advertised
attempt is to avoid critical conflict by creating an "active and appearance loses its hold, although one may still abstractly
mythical belief" in the product. Both advertising and Pop art admire the prowess of advertising techniques. The ordinari-

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ness of experience, with its true discoveries about the adver- good advertising can sell anything-but only to those who
tised reality, undermines the magnificence of the publicized accept things at face value, and thus who can hardly compre-
look, showing it to be an ideological facade on a common- hend what it means to search out the truth about things. The
place reality. In nuce, the image debunks itself in the very magnificent images created by advertising, art, and the
process of its consumption, for the logic of the process Church are designed to create in the consumer, spectator,
demands that what it represents also be consumed, immedi- and believer, false consciousness of the reality signified by
ately giving rise to awareness of the difference between the the image-a consciousness which is reconciled to it before
magnificent image and the experienced reality. Public and it knows what it is. Advertising turns things into signs of
private separate, the one becoming abstract and ideological, themselves, and then adumbrates these signs so that they
the other becoming painfully concrete and sceptically per- seem attractive, suggesting the ideal. Pop art adumbrates
sonal. An ironical relationship exists between the image and these signs further, into absoluteness, giving them the tran-
the reality, art and experience, ideology and actuality, but scendence and sanctity of art, making them objects of lasting
this has nothing to do with the parody the Pop artist imagines rather than momentary belief-giving them an "eternal pres-
he feels when he draws his magic circle of art around the ent." The Church connects these absolutized signs-signs
already artful media cliche image. with the halo of art around them-to an absolute object,
Pop art, like advertising, is ultimately indifferent to the confirming their divinity. The Church is an institution con-
reality it enshrines in a magnificent image. A full awareness of firming the "validity"-giving "ontological necessity"-to
this reality, with all its implications and relations, would artfully conceived reality. Advertising validates, or "institu-
interfere with the process of publicizing it, which involves tionalizes," commodities, Pop art validates advertising, and
only minimum disclosure of reality and maximum celebration the Church validates Pop art. As Kaprow suggests, the proper
of its appearance. Pop art thus deals in illusions, and the Pop name of the Church is capitalism; Pop art confirms its look, it
artist is essentially a publicity agent for already familiar illu- confirms Pop art's commodity value. The tautologous rela-
sions-illusions which seem about to dissipate, but by their tion established between advertising, Pop art, and capitalism
art codification gain renewed vigor. Transformed from transi- is at the core of Pop art's hitherto unqualified success.
tory appearances into quasi-permanent icons, Pop art shows Adorno writes:
them in full ideological war-paint, on the psychic make. In
a sense, the Pop artist is simply a superior craftsman-a Well then, so the work of art is derived from the fetish-are the
grander commercial artist-refining an accepted content into artists to blame if they relate to their products a little fetishisti-
cally?'3
superior significance, but with no understanding of its actual
significance.
Advertising presupposes ignorance and inexperience; it is Adorno has in mind Marx's theory of the fetish character of
most successful with the uncritical believer. As has been said, commodities; the work of art is, from an economic point of

Fig. 2. Tom Wesselmann, Bathtub Nude Number 3, 1963. Cologne, Wollraf-Richartz Museum, Collec-
tion of Peter Ludwig.

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Fig. 3. James Rosenquist, Lanai, 1964. Private collection, New York.

view, another commodity, and as such subject to fetishism. i I

As Marx writes,
AmovII

In the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world ... the

productions of the human brain appear as independent beings
endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one
another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities
with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which
attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are
produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable
from the production of commodities.14

Pop works of art share-to a fault, as I have shown-this

general characteristic of all commodities, as well as of all
religiously conceived productions. But the fetishistic charac-
ter of Pop works of art goes even deeper-into the narcissis-
tic depths implied by Adorno's wry observation. From an
anthropological point of view, the fetish is an object believed
to have sacred power, as such enjoying a privileged social
position, and treated with special respect. Pop art cashes in
on the dignity given to ordinary phenomena by their media-
tion; the controlled attention and look they get on the media
Fig. 4. Claes Oldenburg, Dormeyer Mixer, notebook
seemingly stylizes them. Pop art raises this dignity to the nth drawing, 1965.
power by giving it the dignity of an art context. Simultane-
ously, it enhances the dignity of the art medium by appropri-
ating for it the privileged, respected (simply by reason of the
attention they are given)- in a word, fetishized - phenomena
if disguised or latent-erotic character is explicit
of the mass media. In general, the anthropological concep-
mann's streamlining of the female body itself in
tion of fetishism confirms the economic and religious con-
fetish object, replacing it as a "central focus of
ceptions.
tion" with diffuse attention to its form. That is,
The sexological point of view adds the conception of a
deconcretizes the female body, making it into
fetish as an object by means of which
form rather than a realized substance (Fig. 2). It i
the lover's attention is diverted from the central focus of sexual into a glamorous object, despite the exaggera
attraction to ... the periphery of that focus, or is even outside cially
it physical specificity Wesselmann often g
altogether, though recalling it by association of contiguity or of(especially nipples) and pudendum. These seem
similarity.15 reason of their exaggeration, yet this same e
makes them comical and unapproachable, if n
Sexual fetishization, in other words, gives an erotic charge to Wesselmann destroys them as sites of feeling, a
a non-erotic object. Sexual fetishization by contiguity is an them as freakish, grotesque phenomena, in no
almost standard device in Rosenquist's associations, and by dicting his general grotesque objectification o
similarity in Oldenburg's visual punning.'6 Pop art's typical- body, on a calendar art model. In general, W

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detailing of the female sexual object is pseudo-sensational. It jects: Oldenburg's food images seem to me a more daring
seems to exist more to contradict, with an ironical touch of example of sexual fetishization than any use of the automo-
quasi-raw sexual reality, the advertised slick image of the bile, as does the softness and giganticism of many of his
female nude which is Wesselmann's point of departure, than objects. He, in effect, demonstrates that anything consum-
to enhance the nude's allure with some "excited" imagery. able becomes susceptible to sexual fetishization, for it be-
But more to the point is the sexual fetishization, also comes a gross object of appetite which calls for a "consum-
originating in publicity for form rather than substance, of ing" relation with itself (Fig. 4).
such non-sexual objects as the automobile (Fig. 3). Until In general, Pop art reflects the fact that in capitalist society
recently one of the prizes in the American game, it was publicity attempts to create a consuming relation with com-
worthy of erotic desire, for embracing it was in effect em- modities, and tends to view every reality as a commodity.
bracing the American dream. Oldenburg was obsessed with Thus, one is supposed not only to be consumed by publi-
the airflow Chrysler because its stream-line gave it an erotic cized reality, but to experience it strictly objectively, with the
look, implicitly evoking the female form. The automobile is exaggerated objectivity created by fetishism. This objectivity
openly glamorized in Rosenquist's Silver Skies (1962), but this is reflected in the presumably "cool" look of Pop art. Such a
is only to advertise it as it has always been advertised.17 One look is the proper accompaniment to the apathy, the state of
last point about the sexual fetishization of non-sexual ob- feelinglessness, that underlies Pop art, having to do with its

Fig. 5. Andy Warhol, Lavender Disaster, 1964. Private collection, Greenwich, Connecticut.

FALL 1976 37

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ultimately bland acceptance of the American reality and ad- 4 Warhol's view that we are entitled to fifteen minutes of media fame exploits
this expectation.
vertising modes of experience and ideals. This is reflected
5 Lawrence Alloway, "Network: The Art World Described as A System,"
perhaps most explicitly in Warhol's "classicizing" of cliches Artforum, Sept. 1972, p. 28.
through seriality, creating a blank wall of monotony prevent- 6 Quoted by Aldo Pellegrini, New Tendencies in Art, New York, 1966, p. 227.
ing any penetration to the reality signified. Warhol, simply by See also John Coplans (ed.), Roy Lichtenstein, New York, 1972, pp. 52-53.
manipulating signs-repeating them ad nauseam and arbi- 7 Quoted by Ernst Fischer, Art Against Ideology, New York, 1970, p. 118.
8 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Frankfurt/Main, 1964, p. 298.
trarily-makes us immune to their particular meaning and 9 Nicolas Calas, "Pop Icons," Pop Art, New York, 1966, p. 170.
indifferent to their larger import, to the context of events and '1 Adorno, p. 287.
ideas from which they emerge (Fig. 5). Warhol enforces- 1 As Lucy Lippard, "New York Pop," Pop Art, pp. 82-83 notes, the common
polices-our moronization, rather than leading us out of it, complaint against Pop art was that it was too vulgarly self-evident, and as
such perversely attractive. One knew the subject matter before one fully
and thus shows a peculiarly technological kind of fascism. As
experienced the work, and the subject matter predisposed one to take the
Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald said, fascism is a work in a set way.
combination of technological methods and socially reaction- 12 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, New York, 1965, p. 25. All subsequent quota-
ary attitudes.18 Warhol's mass production of cliches for an art tions by Ellul are from this source.
purpose perfectly exemplifies both. Lichtenstein's art-"or- 13 Adorno, p. 284.
14 Karl Marx, Capital, Chicago, 1933, vol. I, p. 83.
ganized perception" in no way redeems the neutrality of Pop
15 Havelock Ellis, Erotic Symbolism, Philadelphia, 1920, p. 1.
art in general, for as Lenin said, there is no such thing as 16 There is no absolute consistency to Rosenquist's associations, but his
neutrality, which is the ideology of reactionaries sure of their poster for his retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada (1968) seems
power and unconscious of its effect. Pop art shared in the particularly telling. The poster superimposes a rose on spaghetti, combining
the romance and the reality of American life-both cliches to the point of
power of the moronic, mechanical world Lichtenstein no-
idyllicism. But the combination is also of vaginal and phallic symbols-in a
ticed was "here," worshipped the bitch goddess of success sense, of the simultaneity of the poetic and prosaic in sex. Classic examples
William James said was the American deity-worshipped her of Oldenburg's visual punning are his ray-guns, which resemble penis and
at a time she seemed secure. Pop art was thus part of that testicles, and his conversion of a Dormeyer Mixer into pendulous breasts,
"organization of optimism"19 so essential to consumer capi- and then into penis and testicles. It can be argued that Oldenburg has moved
from sexual to bisexual imagery, in which a work is no longer hard or soft,
talist society, and had nothing to do with the derision of that but softly hard and hardily soft.
society socialists imagined they saw in it.20 U 17 Other key works are Rosenquist's Lanai (1964) and U-Haul-It (1967). An
unglamorous, openly sexual automobile appears in Kienholz's Back Seat
1 Lawrence Alloway, American Pop Art, New York, 1974, p. 7. All further
Dodge-38 (1964). In general, much early Pop imagery involves explicit as well
quotations from Alloway are from this source, unless otherwise noted. as implicit eroticism.
2 Jean Cassou, "Art and Confrontation," Art and Confrontation, Greenwich,
18 Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald, "10 Propositions on the War,"
Conn., 1970, p. 18.
Partisan Review, 8, 1941, p. 271.
3 Linda Nochlin, Realism, Baltimore, 1971, p. 33. Alloway's definition 19 ofFischer, p. 160.
realism, designed to distinguish it from Pop art-which is "about signs 20 and
E.g., Michel Ragon, "The Artist and Society," Art and Confrontation, p. 31.
sign-systems"-conceives it as "concerned with the artist's perception of
objects in space and their translation into iconic, or faithful, signs." Like
Nochlin's definition, this one also ignores the revolutionary and criticalDonald B. Kuspit is Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at
motivation of realism-its preoccupation with ideological issues-and takes Chapel Hill. He is in the process of completing a book on contemporary
it as essentially descriptive in purpose. American art criticism.

38 ART JOURNAL, XXXVI/1

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