America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015


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In the early 1960s, Pop art challenged the gestures of Abstract Expressionism with an unflinching embrace of America’s exploding commercial and media culture. The sources of this new art were generally neither the artist’s imagination nor direct observation of the world, but rather images themselves—whether product packaging, print advertisements, newspaper photography, or comic books. Early in their careers, many of Pop’s protagonists worked as commercial artists; Andy Warhol was an illustrator and James Rosenquist a Billboard painter, while Ed Ruscha trained in graphic design. These commercial backgrounds yielded flat, boldly graphic, mechanical-looking, and impersonal surfaces that were sometimes marked by photographic and printing processes.

The works on view in this chapter present a range of attitudes toward consumer culture. Some feel upbeat and celebratory, such as Tom Wesselmann’s enormous sandwich or Wayne Thiebaud’s luscious cakes. Other works, however, seem to distort or critique the American dream by hinting at overindulgent materialism or the social turmoil of the 1960s. Marisol’s fractured figures present themselves as mutant mannequins, and in Warhol’s hands, plastic surgery and an endless display of Coca-Cola bottles offer a false promise of beauty and sustenance, a vision of branding and self-improvement run amok. Despite its bright colors and visual wallop, Pop art’s tone was often deadpan and chilly, closer to its banal sources than to traditional fine art. Fittingly, it incited a media sensation and charges of vulgarity, but the aftershocks of its revolutionary take on American culture can still be felt today.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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ALLAN D’ARCANGELO (1930-1998), MADONNA AND CHILD, 1963

Illustration of two stylized figures with halos, an adult in red and a child in blue, against a white background.
Illustration of two stylized figures with halos, an adult in red and a child in blue, against a white background.

Allan D’Arcangelo (1930-1998), Madonna and Child, 1963. Acrylic on canvas, 68 5/8 × 60 3/8 in. (174.3 × 153.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2013.2 Art© Estate of Allan D’Arcangelo, Licensed by VAGA, New York; courtesy the Estate of Allan D’Arcangelo and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York Art © D’Arcangelo Family Partnership/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Although Allan D’Arcangelo would become known primarily for his images of US highways, complete with road signs and billboards, he made a number of significant paintings of celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy, the latter pictured in Madonna and Child with her toddler daughter. D’Arcangelo worked from a contemporary portrait photograph of the First Lady and Caroline Kennedy to make this graphic take on an age-old religious art-historical subject. Mother and daughter are rendered in bold blocks of unmodulated color, their featureless faces ringed in bright yellow halos that elevate them to the status of contemporary icons and saviors of America.

D’Arcangelo highlights the Kennedys’ brand status in his use of the bold style and limited color palette of commercial design and advertising, epitomized in the subjects’ two-tone hair. The image trades on visual legibility: its sitters are recognizable merely by virtue of their signature hair and clothing, and Jackie’s string of pearls. With its graphic style and celebrity subjects, Madonna and Child relates to works by other Pop artists such as Andy Warhol. Like Warhol’s works, this painting points to the more sinister side of celebrity and consumer culture: despite their apparently heavenly status, Jackie and Caroline have been reduced to images to be consumed, devoid of depth, individuality, and voice. The tragic aura of the painting seems particularly poignant given the assassination of President Kennedy just a few months after D’Arcangelo completed this work.

Excerpted from Whitney Museum of American Art: Handbook of the Collection, (2015), p. 107. Published by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; distributed by Yale University Press.


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