Pop Departures

A survey of the decades-long legacy of American Pop Art, from the iconic works of the 1960s to contemporary art that innovatively revisits the movement’s key themes

Pop Art’s influence continues to be felt more than a half century since its advent, as this engaging book deftly shows. Early Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol adopted alternately critical, embracing, or ambivalent attitudes toward America’s rapidly proliferating consumer culture and its representations. Key works by these artists are illustrated as the foundation for this look at the ongoing relevance of Pop Art and its interrogation of American culture into the 21st century. Following Pop’s heyday in the early 1960s, new generations of artists have returned to the questions surrounding consumerism and media culture. Works made in the 1980s and 1990s by Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and others reveal new methods and visual strategies that addressed these issues in a much different political and social climate. The innovative work of younger contemporary artists such as Elad Lassry, Josephine Meckseper, and Ryan Trecartin demonstrates that commodity culture, display, and the cult of celebrity maintain a strong resonance and are critically examined by today’s artists. The catalogue also includes short texts by several artists, curators, and art historians, including Josephine Meckseper, James Voorhies, Richard Meyer, and Hal Foster.

Published in association with the Seattle Art Museum