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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 11
Lesson 2: American and European Pop art- Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?
- Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America
- Warhol, Marilyn Diptych
- Why is this art? Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans
- The Case For Andy Warhol
- Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe
- Fashion and alienation in 1960s New York, Marisol's The Party
- Claes Oldenburg, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks
- Oldenburg, Floor Cake
- James Rosenquist, "F-111," 1964-65
- Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral Set V
- Harry Fonseca, Two Coyotes with Flags
- Pop and after
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Mass Consumerism, Warhol, and 1960s America
Andy Warhol's 1962 painting, "Coca Cola 3," celebrates everyday American life. Warhol uses a flat, print-like style to mimic advertising, making art accessible and democratic. His work shifts the focus from traditional craftsmanship to the power of ideas, symbolizing the rise of consumer culture.
. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why did Andy Warhol based Coke on Americans?(5 votes)
- Andy Warhol was perhaps the most American of American artists.(5 votes)
- Does it have to be amazingly done for it to be a good work according to this video?(2 votes)
- Why did the artist include the entire bottle yet partially truncated the word "Cola" at the right?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music) - [Steven] We're in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Looking at a large painting from 1962, called Coca Cola 3. - [Alejo] This is Andy Warhol's moment, this is him thinking, "I want to do a painting of
something that stands in" "for who we are as Americans", and there's no bigger icon than Coca Cola. - [Steven] And it is big,
it's about 6 feet tall, it's the size of a full length portrait of George Washington. But although this is painted
with a brush by hand, it's not painted the way that an 18th century
portrait would be painted. It's painted in an incredibly flat way as if to mimic the process of printing. - [Alejo] It's all about the removal of the artist hand. It's not about making
this beautiful painting in the traditional sense. - [Steven] Art had always
been about the exceptional, Art had always been about
the unique and here, Warhol has flipped that on it's head and is painting the most ordinary. - [Alejo] This is what excited him. This idea that the everyday is exceptional and so he turns to the most iconic thing and paints in a way that
removes the artist hand and makes it seem very ordinary. But in doing that he's also making it tremendously accessible. - [Steven] And democratic, this is an art that is in everybody's experience. There's nothing rare here. We've all held a Coke bottle, we've all heard the sound
when you pop the top of a Coke bottle. You can hear the bubbles. This is doing what advertising does but it's relocated it into
the intellectual realm of art and art history. - [Alejo] It's so accessible to everyone and that is why it's powerful. That is why he gravitated towards it. - [Steven] No matter
how much money you have, you can't buy a better Coke. You're Coke is the same
Coke as Liz Taylor's, your Coke is the same as
the bum on the corner. So he's taking a subject that
is of our everyday experience and he's putting it on canvas. He's putting it within a frame. He's asking us to look at it differently even though the bottle itself, its shape, its lines, its forms are things that we're completely familiar with. - [Alejo] This is a pivotal moment. He's just ended his career
as a commercial artist doing illustrations for fashion and for other advertisements and he decides he wants to
operate in the fine art world. For him that's this huge transition and the way that he's going to do it is by exploring these
really iconic symbols and iconic brands. In 1961, 1962, he does a
series of Coke bottles. This is number three, but the first two were very abstract, very gestural. You see the artist hand. This is the moment when Andy
Warhol becomes the Warhol that we know. - [Steven] And that's because
he got rid of the handmade. He got rid of the painterly
process oriented canvas. He's showing us here a
painting that seems as if it has been printed by a machine. So we're not looking at a
representation of a Coke bottle. We're looking at a representation of an ad for a Coke bottle that has within it it's own representation of a Coke bottle. - [Alejo] This is also
one of the first works that he's done in that vane. So it's not perfect. If you actually look at it, you can see moments where
he's made a little mistake and so he goes back in and he
covers it up with some paint. But then down at the very bottom, you can see there are
little drips of paint. That's something that later on, as he moves onto a mechanical
process using screen printing the signs of the artist
hand, that goes away. But then that also makes
it more democratic. - [Steven] Warhol was not the first artist to use Coke bottles in his art. Robert Rauschenberg had
done it a few years earlier and in fact, by 1962, by the
time this painting was made Warhol had actually
purchases a Rauschenberg. This is an artist who's
really knowledgeable about new directions in American art. - [Alejo] The late 50s, the early 60s, there's this culture of access. There's so much stuff around. And so naturally artist are going to look at what's around them. - [Steven] And so Warhol
is creating an art that is celebrating consumer culture, that is representing the visual stimulus that people are receiving constantly in their daily lives. Every time you open a magazine, see an advertisement in a bus or a subway, or on a billboard, Coca Cola is there. - [Alejo] It's so ever present and this idea of branding
and creating a symbol and the power of a symbol
becomes essential to his work and so much to the point
that he himself becomes the Andy Warhol brand. We immediately understand
that shock of crazy hair. - [Steven] Creating a cult of fame, creating a performance
art out of fame itself. But art had for so long been about beauty. It had been about creating
with fine craftsmanship. The complexity of the human body and here it feels absurdly flat as if it's not only the canvas surface that's two dimensional
but the subject itself is two dimensional. - [Alejo] There's some folks who feel it needs to be amazingly done, the technical skill
needs to be outstanding for it to be a good work of
art or a powerful work of art and part of the conversation that we can have about a work like this is that what he's doing is smart. What he's doing has all of this potency of powerful ideas. So it's less about how perfectly
he can put it onto canvas, it's more about all
the other conversations that are had as a result of that. (piano music)