Signs and Objects. Pop Art from the Guggenheim Collection

Originating in England in the late 1950s, the Pop art movement took hold in the United States after receiving support from critics such as British writer and curator Lawrence Alloway, who coined the term “Pop art” in 1958. Alloway also organized the seminal 1963 Guggenheim exhibition Six Painters and the Object, which introduced the movement to the American public. He had initially considered titling the exhibition Signs and Objects, a phrase chosen for this presentation of works from the Guggenheim collections.

Encouraged by the economic vitality and burgeoning consumerist society of post–World War II America, artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol explored the visual language of popular culture—the term from which the art movement derives its name—taking inspiration from advertisements, pulp magazines, newspapers, billboards, movies, comic strips, and shop windows. The cool detachment and harsh, impersonal look of Pop art signaled a direct assault on the hallowed traditions of so-called high art and its emphasis on the personal gesture, or free-flowing brushwork, which had been championed by Abstract Expressionists of the previous generation, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. The works in this exhibition, presented with—and sometimes transformed by—humor, wit, and irony, may be read as both an unabashed celebration and a scathing critique of popular culture.