Pop Life: Warhol, Haring, Koons, Hirst, … at Hamburg Kunsthalle on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Feb 12 2010
until May 09 2010
The exhibition Pop Life takes Andy Warhol’s famously provocative claim that “good business is the best art” as the starting point for a completely new interpretation of the legacy of Pop art and the influence of its chief protagonists. Pop Life shows the various ways in which artists since the 1980s have engaged with the mass media, often involving the deliberate creation and cultivation of an artistic persona as a ‘brand’. The exhibition features works by Andy Warhol alongside key pieces by Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, Martin Kippenberger, Tracey Emin, Takashi Murakami and others. Some 320 exhibits will be on display, including paintings, drawings, photographs, magazines, sculptures, videos, merchandising products, spatial installations and a shop. Pop Life argues that Andy Warhol’s most radical lesson is reflected in the work of artists of subsequent generations who not only reproduce everyday culture in their artworks but also strategically infiltrate this realm, appropriating the mechanisms of the market, the mass media and the omnipresence of advertising in order to reach an audience far beyond the confines of the art gallery. The conflation of culture and commerce is commonly regarded as a betrayal of the values of modern art; Pop Life, on the other hand, shows that for many artists who came after Warhol, the fusion of the two realms is the only possible means of interacting with the modern world. One of the central themes of the exhibition is the performative aspect revealed by the self-presentation and role perception of artists within the spheres of the mass media and the art business. The artists themselves are actively involved in key areas – among other things as forgers, celebrities, publishers, art dealers, gallerists, business owners, curators, TV presenters, even auctioneers. They smuggle themselves in disguise into the operating systems of product and information circulation, exposing these mechanisms without having to take a personal stance. Herein lies the ambiguous content – affirmative and critical at once – of Pop Life. Several rooms in the Hamburg edition of Pop Life are dedicated to Martin Kippenberger. One special presentation that will only be shown here features early works from the collection of Gisela Stelly Augstein, a Hamburg-based filmmaker whom the artist much admired. With this display of black-and-white photo-paintings from Kippenberger’s series Un Tedesco in Firenze, along with the ‘Ideentafeln’ (ideapanels), and numerous letters and postcards to Stelly Augstein, the exhibition allows visitors to experience at close quarters the early stages of his development into a skilful self-promoter and social analyst. Following in the tradition of Dada and Fluxus, Kippenberger’s provocative, mocking attacks were aimed at dismantling the traditional concept of art. A further section of the exhibition is devoted to the so-called ‘Young British Artists’, with particular emphasis being placed on their early activities. These include the shop opened by Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas in London’s Bethnal Green district, where the two artists created and sold their work. Renowned pieces by Gavin Turk are featured here alongside selected works from Beautiful Inside My Head Forever,Damien Hirst’s spectacular auction that took place in September 2008 at Sotheby’s in London. A specially commissioned new installation by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who has set up his own multinational company to distribute his art, will be shown in one of the final rooms of the exhibition. OPENING HOURS: Tue -Sun: 10.00 - 18.00, Thur: 10.00 - 21.00 Image Credits: Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), Self-Portrait in (in Fright Wig), 1986, Polaroid, 10,8 x 8,5 cm, © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, © Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk, Photo: Christoph Irrgang Jeff Koons (*1955), Advertisement Art in America, November 1988, Lithographie, 91 x 71 cm, © Jeff Koons Keith Haring (1958-1990), Pop Shop, © Keith Haring artwork, © Estate of Keith Haring, Photo: Charles Dolfi-Michels Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997), Bitte nicht nach Hause schicken, 1983, Öl auf Leinwand, 120 x 100 cm, Privatsammlung, Berlin, © Nachlass Martin Kippenberger,Galerie Gisela Capitain, Köln, Photo: Lothar Schnepf Tracey Emin und Sarah Lucas, (*1963/*1962), The Shop, 6 c-type Drucke, jeweils 76,1 x 91,5cm, White Cube, © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2009 Photo: Carl Freedman  |
