The most obvious question to ask when discussing the differences between Contemporary art and popular culture is a simple one: is there a difference? With the cult of the Celebrity Artist growing healthily for over a century and the idea of life imitating art imitating life never more relevant, is there really any justification in the separation of high-brow modern conceptualists and your average every-day graffiti artist? Indeed, with both the ?Art? and ?Pop? worlds discovering and wholly embracing the same sub-cultures, philosophies and ideals like never before, the very notion of isolating these two strands of ?culture? seems hypocritical, if not ridiculous.
?Art? and ?Pop culture? (as in the dominant culture of a society) were entwined from the beginning; art in its most basic form after all is a means of communication between one person and another. The first cave paintings were popular culture because they WERE the culture ? they were pictographic representations of the lives of the people who drew them. The same concept still applies (whether the artist intends it or not) to contemporary work today, albeit in a more complex way.
The modern incarnation of this relationship grew from the demise of the exclusivity of the Art Academies. The accessibility of ?high art? to a much wider audience became easier, thus giving works and Artists that were previously the domain of the rich and/or powerful a lot more exposure.
The birth of ?Showbiz? in 1920?s USA was another step forward in bringing contemporary art to the masses ? never before you could be so infamous simply for being famous. The concept of ?mass? ? mass-marketing, mass-media, mass-production ? coupled with the fast-paced, revolutionary nature of the Roaring Twenties as a whole made the explosion of ?Celebrity Artists? onto the art scene perfectly natural.
However, the true marriage of art and pop culture in a modern sense was consummated in 1954, with the concept of ?Pop Art?.
Conceived by Scottish artist John McHale, pop art was later defined by artist Richard Hamilton as ?popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business?¹. Pop Art was about drawing themes, ideas, and techniques from mass imagery perceived as popular culture: from magazines, comic books, advertising, posters etc down to the designs on soap boxes and, perhaps most famously, a can of tomato soup. It was sold to the public as a celebration of the culture of society as a whole, and a reaction against the increased domination of abstract expressionism, and has been widely embraced as such.
The movement reached its peak with the emergence of Andy Warhol ? not only the most famous Pop Artist but arguably one of the most famous (and influential) artists of the 20th Century. Warhol was the first true ?Superstar? artist, whose 1960?s New York exploits were as well documented and followed as those of any bona fide movie star today. He was also able to take Duchamp?s idea of the ready made a step further: not only could he take a ready made object and present it as ?art?, he could smother over the fact that it was a ready made in the first place, and not even by deliberate deception. When people think of his iconic images of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, few consciously think of them as lifted directly from mass produced imagery that could be found everywhere.
However, the apparent ideals of Pop Art were contradictory. Although it did indeed use pop culture as its inspiration, the movement lifted the imagery it found and modified it, by scale, setting or other means, morphing it from ?art? to Art. Instead of blurring the boundaries between Art and pop culture, it underlined the differences. The work was still shown in galleries, and although widely popular, it was more with the ?in crowd? of the art world rather than with the very population from which it had lifted its ideas.
This does not mean however that Pop Art was not a necessary and successful step forward in bringing Art and pop Culture back in sync. It eased the development of the relationship between art and another area of popular culture: advertising.
The boom in advertising had taken off in the USA in the 1920s, and it continues even today exploring ever more sophisticated methods of persuading the consumer to buy whatever product it is selling. By the 1970s Ad-Campaigns were increasingly and self-consciously perceived as works of art- whether reworking (or subverting) famous or classic works or creating new original pieces. The art and the product were merged, and increasingly radical work was used to generate interest ? sex may sell, but so does controversy.
The photographers and designers creating these campaigns have also used this symbiotic relationship to their advantage ? by merging the formerly separate worlds of the Fashion Photographer and the Fine Artist, notable examples being Erwin Olaf and Ellen Von Unwerth. In both cases it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between what can be considered their commercial work and their ?artistic practice? ? with pieces such as Von Unwerth?s ?Revenge?² being both striking fine photography and a veritable catalogue of Haute Couture fashion. This then leads to the inevitable question: was there ever a difference?
