America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

All

15 / 23

Previous Next

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.

Back

5 / 12

Previous Next

Andy Warhol, Green Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962. Silkscreen ink, acrylic, and graphite on canvas, 82 3/4 × 57 1/8 in. (210.2 × 145.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 68.25. © 2018 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In Andy Warhol’s Green Coca-Cola Bottles, the iconic form of a single bottle of Coca-Cola is duplicated in regular rows above the company’s logo. The repetitive imagery and gridded composition evoke the mass production of the emblematic Coca-Cola bottle as well as the mechanical printing processes used to advertise the brand. Warhol most likely made the 112 nearly identical bottles using a combination of hand painting and screenprinting. Since he used more or less paint and varying degrees of force for each impression, the work retains something of a handmade look. Later in the same year that he made this work, Warhol more fully developed his pioneering screenprinting technique, which led to a more mechanized process in his studio, which came to be referred to as The Factory.

Warhol saw Coca-Cola as a prime example of the democratic ideals at the heart of American consumer culture. “A Coke is a Coke,” he explained, “and no amount of money can get you a better Coke . . . . All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 648 works

America Is Hard to See

Large Trademark

15

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), GREEN COCA-COLA BOTTLES, 1962

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

On the Hour

America Is Hard to See

Large Trademark

15

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987), GREEN COCA-COLA BOTTLES, 1962

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection