Pop Departures Thu Oct 9 2014 – Sun Jan 11 2015 Seattle Art Museum Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries In the 1960s, art for the first time embraced the brash world of commercial culture, advertising, and mass media—images of shiny newness, youth, and seduction. Pop art electrified artists, audiences, and critics alike. It changed our understanding of art, and the ripple effects of its seismic shift are still felt today. Pop Departures presents the bold visions of American Pop artists, including the works of icons such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, and Claes Oldenburg. The exhibition takes us beyond the pioneers of Pop and to the work of subsequent generations of artists for whom Pop art has been an inspiration or a vehicle for critique. See works from the 1980s and ’90s by artists such as Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, and Richard Prince. Continue with work made in the era of digital markets and social media by Margarita Cabrera, Josephine Meckseper, and Ryan Trecartin—contemporary artists who use Pop as a point of departure. Pop art changed the way we consume media and redefined art as part of our market economy. Pop Departures will blow open your notions of Pop and take you on a journey through the last 50 years of American popular culture. Tweet
“ Once you ‘got’ Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again. ” Andy Warhol
“ In part inspired by the actions of the Seattle World Trade Organization protests in 1999, the focus on industrial retail aesthetics such as shop windows, shelves, and platforms in my work attempts to capture not only the actual protests but also the moment right before a demonstrator picks up a stone and vandalizes a store window. ” Josephine Meckseper