Soup Cans & Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World

0:00:05 > 0:00:11In 1963, Andy Warhol, pop art's most controversial figure, armed himself

0:00:11 > 0:00:15with his new Bolex camera and set off on an epic road trip

0:00:15 > 0:00:20from New York to a city 2,500 miles away...

0:00:21 > 0:00:22..LA.

0:00:22 > 0:00:27MUSIC: Walk Like A Man by Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons

0:00:28 > 0:00:32Warhol wrote about his journey later and he said,

0:00:32 > 0:00:36"It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

0:00:36 > 0:00:40"The further west we drove, the more pop everything looked.

0:00:40 > 0:00:44"We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure."

0:00:50 > 0:00:52Inspired by the billboards,

0:00:52 > 0:00:56signs and advertisements now littering the American landscape,

0:00:56 > 0:00:59Warhol and his fellow pop artists

0:00:59 > 0:01:03created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century.

0:01:03 > 0:01:08But in those early years, not everybody found pop irresistible.

0:01:13 > 0:01:15Warhol embodied everything

0:01:15 > 0:01:19that the critics found so repellent about pop art.

0:01:19 > 0:01:22It wasn't just his art, it was his personality

0:01:22 > 0:01:24that appeared so trivial, so shallow,

0:01:24 > 0:01:26naively obsessed with these celebrities

0:01:26 > 0:01:29and infatuated with banal consumer goods.

0:01:32 > 0:01:35With its processed food, platinum pin-ups

0:01:35 > 0:01:37and weeping comic book heroines,

0:01:37 > 0:01:42pop appeared to do little more than copy tawdry commercial sources.

0:01:43 > 0:01:46To critics, it was an outright betrayal

0:01:46 > 0:01:48of the brainy tradition of modern art.

0:01:48 > 0:01:55In short, pop seemed tacky and lightweight - a vacuous fad.

0:01:56 > 0:01:59But, in fact, for all its look-at-me glamour

0:01:59 > 0:02:04and cartoonish surfaces, pop offered modern art to the masses,

0:02:04 > 0:02:08using the lessons of advertising to sell a far more ambiguous,

0:02:08 > 0:02:12often critical portrait of the dawning consumer age.

0:02:14 > 0:02:16To discover how pop art had the last laugh,

0:02:16 > 0:02:20I'm going to track down some of the artists who blazed its trail

0:02:20 > 0:02:22by using the imagery of advertising

0:02:22 > 0:02:26to expose the dark side of the American Dream.

0:02:26 > 0:02:30Our whole economy is built on selling war weapons.

0:02:30 > 0:02:32I think it's wrong.

0:02:32 > 0:02:33Creating an art form

0:02:33 > 0:02:37that would provide a brilliant parody of the consumer age.

0:02:37 > 0:02:39All of our environment seems to be made up

0:02:39 > 0:02:43partially of the desire to sell products.

0:02:43 > 0:02:46This is the landscape that I'm interested in portraying.

0:02:48 > 0:02:51I'll explore pop's colourful legacy around the globe.

0:02:51 > 0:02:55It is on wheels, you can dance with it if you want.

0:02:56 > 0:03:01And discover how today, in our globalised, mass consumerist age,

0:03:01 > 0:03:05pop's subversive wit is inspiring generations afresh.

0:03:10 > 0:03:11- Oh, it's empty?- Yeah.

0:03:11 > 0:03:14How have you actually got the Coke out?

0:03:21 > 0:03:24It's high time that we stopped thinking about pop art

0:03:24 > 0:03:28as the brash, adolescent show-off of modern art

0:03:28 > 0:03:31that had shouted itself hoarse by the end of the '60s.

0:03:31 > 0:03:34In fact, pop just isn't as dumb or as vacuous

0:03:34 > 0:03:39as sometimes it might appear and I think, like the best art of any age,

0:03:39 > 0:03:44it holds up a mirror to the times that reflects back the obsessions

0:03:44 > 0:03:49of the modern world in all their Technicolor, tarnished glory.

0:03:49 > 0:03:52And once pop's raucous spirit had been unleashed,

0:03:52 > 0:03:57for more than 50 years, it couldn't be contained so that even now,

0:03:57 > 0:04:00for artists working in the 21st century,

0:04:00 > 0:04:03it remains as relevant as ever.

0:04:19 > 0:04:21Brash and full of swagger,

0:04:21 > 0:04:25pop art made its assault on New York City at the outset of the '60s.

0:04:27 > 0:04:31Within a period of just 12 months,

0:04:31 > 0:04:36five young artists each mounted their first major solo show -

0:04:37 > 0:04:39Claes Oldenburg,

0:04:39 > 0:04:41Tom Wesselmann,

0:04:41 > 0:04:43Roy Lichtenstein,

0:04:43 > 0:04:44James Rosenquist,

0:04:44 > 0:04:46Andy Warhol.

0:04:48 > 0:04:52These artists would become pop art's superstars.

0:04:53 > 0:04:56What's surprising is that they didn't subscribe

0:04:56 > 0:04:58to any pop art manifesto.

0:05:00 > 0:05:03The artists worked in total isolation,

0:05:03 > 0:05:07completely unaware that others out there shared their vision.

0:05:10 > 0:05:12Henry Geldzahler,

0:05:12 > 0:05:15who was this really important curator at the Metropolitan Museum

0:05:15 > 0:05:16and an early champion of pop art,

0:05:16 > 0:05:21he later told Andy Warhol, "It was like a science fiction movie.

0:05:21 > 0:05:25"You pop artists in different parts of the city, unknown to each other,

0:05:25 > 0:05:27"rising up out of the muck

0:05:27 > 0:05:31"and staggering forth with your paintings in front of you."

0:05:31 > 0:05:33Does that seem odd to you,

0:05:33 > 0:05:37that you all began to look at the world in the same way?

0:05:37 > 0:05:41Erm, I think we just read a lot of comic books.

0:05:41 > 0:05:45But the pop artists had more in common than a love of comic books -

0:05:45 > 0:05:48they were all obsessed with the new media age.

0:05:48 > 0:05:52We stand today on the edge of a new frontier -

0:05:52 > 0:05:55the frontier of the 1960s.

0:05:55 > 0:05:57# I was walking down the street

0:05:57 > 0:06:00# When this boy started following me... #

0:06:00 > 0:06:05This was the era when the Machiavellian executives

0:06:05 > 0:06:10on Madison Avenue persuaded the American population that success,

0:06:10 > 0:06:15love, in fact every aspect of life, was something they could buy.

0:06:18 > 0:06:25- There's the car I told you about. Do you like it?- Yeah! It's sure smooth.

0:06:25 > 0:06:29Andy Warhol became New York's highest-paid illustrator

0:06:29 > 0:06:32and, like him, his fellow pop artists

0:06:32 > 0:06:34had one foot in the commercial world.

0:06:34 > 0:06:36Dabbling in graphic design,

0:06:36 > 0:06:39commercial illustration and sign painting,

0:06:39 > 0:06:42these artists knew the dark arts of selling the American Dream.

0:06:44 > 0:06:46And in the beginning,

0:06:46 > 0:06:49critics took their commercial origins as proof that,

0:06:49 > 0:06:52far from being an art of social protest,

0:06:52 > 0:06:55pop was an art of capitulation.

0:06:58 > 0:07:02And one of the prime offenders was pop pioneer James Rosenquist,

0:07:02 > 0:07:07who'd started out as a sign painter aged 17.

0:07:07 > 0:07:11The huge billboards he created sold anything from whisky to hair curlers

0:07:11 > 0:07:16and the proceeds put this farmboy from the Midwest through art school.

0:07:20 > 0:07:25When Rosenquist arrived in New York aged just 21 in 1955,

0:07:25 > 0:07:30he had less than 300 in his pocket and, over the next few years,

0:07:30 > 0:07:34he carried on scratching out a living painting billboards.

0:07:34 > 0:07:39He later said that these billboard jobs were his painting laboratory.

0:07:39 > 0:07:41He didn't realise it at the time,

0:07:41 > 0:07:44but they taught him not only how to become a painter,

0:07:44 > 0:07:48but also specifically how to become an artist who painted pop.

0:07:52 > 0:07:54Packed with the imagery of plenty,

0:07:54 > 0:07:57Rosenquist's vast, kaleidoscopic paintings

0:07:57 > 0:08:01were initially understood as a blatant celebration of capitalism.

0:08:01 > 0:08:05In fact, their critics couldn't have been further from the truth.

0:08:05 > 0:08:07Lily?

0:08:07 > 0:08:10- Yes?- Have you got the elevator? - Yes.- That's good.

0:08:10 > 0:08:12- HE GROANS - Shall I get the door for you?

0:08:12 > 0:08:14If you want.

0:08:15 > 0:08:18- You've had it revamped?- Totally.

0:08:18 > 0:08:22Re-welded, new cables, new motor.

0:08:22 > 0:08:25- I love this lever.- Good.

0:08:25 > 0:08:28You can't have it, it's got to stay here.

0:08:29 > 0:08:31As a young man in New York,

0:08:31 > 0:08:35Rosenquist yearned to become a serious abstract artist.

0:08:35 > 0:08:38His day job as a sign painter not only paid the bills,

0:08:38 > 0:08:42but also provided him with leftover paint for free.

0:08:44 > 0:08:46So, what was life like in those very early days?

0:08:48 > 0:08:53Cheap. I mean, New York was such a wild place.

0:08:54 > 0:09:01So capitalistic that I would get laid off on Friday

0:09:01 > 0:09:03cos they didn't have any more work.

0:09:03 > 0:09:05The next morning, they'd call me.

0:09:05 > 0:09:08"Jimmy! Come back to work!"

0:09:08 > 0:09:10They had another big job for me to do.

0:09:13 > 0:09:15Cos it was just, like, cut-throat.

0:09:15 > 0:09:17Were people hurt doing this work?

0:09:17 > 0:09:20- Yeah, they got killed.- People you knew?- Oh, yeah.

0:09:20 > 0:09:24Fell off a wall. Splat!

0:09:24 > 0:09:27It was art school for me. Tough.

0:09:27 > 0:09:30Tough, tough art school.

0:09:33 > 0:09:38'By 1959, at the age of only 25,

0:09:38 > 0:09:41'Rosenquist was one of the most successful sign painters in New York City.'

0:09:42 > 0:09:44And how proud did you feel

0:09:44 > 0:09:47once you had completed one of these giant billboards?

0:09:47 > 0:09:50I mean, someone once said you were the biggest artist on Broadway.

0:09:50 > 0:09:52How proud did you feel when you looked at them?

0:09:52 > 0:09:54I didn't feel proud at all.

0:09:54 > 0:09:59Here I am painting these huge, blown-up, empty images

0:09:59 > 0:10:01that have no meaning.

0:10:04 > 0:10:08'Around 1960, Rosenquist quit the commercial world

0:10:08 > 0:10:11'and rented a studio full-time.

0:10:11 > 0:10:14'It was here that he began to co-opt the imagery of advertising

0:10:14 > 0:10:17'for his own very different intentions.'

0:10:19 > 0:10:22So, are these examples of the original works,

0:10:22 > 0:10:24- the planning stage of the paintings? - Yep, yep.

0:10:24 > 0:10:28- This is clipped out from a magazine advertisement.- Yeah.

0:10:28 > 0:10:30I just wanted the stark imagery.

0:10:30 > 0:10:33'The compositions may look random,

0:10:33 > 0:10:36'but they were guided by specific ideas.'

0:10:38 > 0:10:41It looks here like you're taking examples

0:10:41 > 0:10:45of some of the promises that capitalism is bombarding us with -

0:10:45 > 0:10:51you can have your Ford, you can have fine clothes or the lure of women,

0:10:51 > 0:10:55whatever it is, and actually sort of showing that that promise

0:10:55 > 0:10:58is a bit empty, a bit hollow, a bit blank.

0:10:58 > 0:11:01Everything is, according to Zen.

0:11:02 > 0:11:07Everything, everything, not just America, not capitalism.

0:11:09 > 0:11:14This sense of the spiritual runs throughout Rosenquist's work.

0:11:14 > 0:11:16A search for truth in a material age.

0:11:18 > 0:11:21And in the 1960s, the Vietnam war embodied

0:11:21 > 0:11:25the horror at the heart of America's consumerist dream.

0:11:25 > 0:11:29It was this that inspired Rosenquist's masterpiece.

0:11:35 > 0:11:41F-111 is made up of 23 sections and is a staggering 86 feet in length.

0:11:42 > 0:11:45Taking its name from a notorious fighter bomber,

0:11:45 > 0:11:48the painting yokes together imagery of war

0:11:48 > 0:11:52with a vision of abundance back home in boom-time America.

0:11:54 > 0:11:58A girl sitting beneath a bomb-shaped hairdryer,

0:11:58 > 0:12:02a beach umbrella and atomic mushroom cloud,

0:12:02 > 0:12:04a diver gasping for air.

0:12:05 > 0:12:08The plane forms the painting's spine.

0:12:09 > 0:12:15Its ingenious composition reveals the collusion between the media,

0:12:15 > 0:12:19advertising and the Vietnam death machine.

0:12:19 > 0:12:22What did inspire you to make F-111, then?

0:12:22 > 0:12:25The idea of paying income taxes to make war weapons.

0:12:26 > 0:12:32Our whole economy is built on selling war weapons.

0:12:34 > 0:12:35I think it's wrong.

0:12:40 > 0:12:43That's one of the really famous images that you created with

0:12:43 > 0:12:45Kennedy and some cake.

0:12:45 > 0:12:48What did he offer you as a candidate?

0:12:49 > 0:12:51A Chevrolet and a piece of cake.

0:13:02 > 0:13:05People talk about pop, they talk about your work in particular

0:13:05 > 0:13:08and often say it's a piece of processed art in some way.

0:13:08 > 0:13:09I hope so.

0:13:09 > 0:13:11I like that.

0:13:13 > 0:13:14I hope so.

0:13:16 > 0:13:19- I'm getting tired.- Sure.

0:13:30 > 0:13:34At points I found talking to Jim Rosenquist quite tough.

0:13:34 > 0:13:38He's got a certain carapace, an exterior which is gruff

0:13:38 > 0:13:42and, for me, felt like a vestige of perhaps a way that he had to

0:13:42 > 0:13:46learn to be when he was a sign painter in the '50s.

0:13:46 > 0:13:51That toughness never left him nor his art because he was

0:13:51 > 0:13:55unambiguous, these were not paintings celebrating

0:13:55 > 0:13:58everything he saw around him in the city and it was indicative

0:13:58 > 0:14:02of the motivating force of pop even from the beginning,

0:14:02 > 0:14:05not just in his work but generally. That it isn't

0:14:05 > 0:14:10this mode that uncritically, slavishly champions everyday life,

0:14:10 > 0:14:13the consumer world, American capitalism.

0:14:13 > 0:14:16It's much more questioning, it's probing

0:14:16 > 0:14:21and, at its best, like Rosenquist in person, it's tough.

0:14:30 > 0:14:32Pop art may have played dumb

0:14:32 > 0:14:35but its shiny surface often masks a darker scepticism

0:14:35 > 0:14:39about the state of America, its politics,

0:14:39 > 0:14:43its wars, its wider culture, all ensnared by consumerism.

0:14:48 > 0:14:50The irony is, the art form that

0:14:50 > 0:14:51ripped off the mass media has

0:14:51 > 0:14:53today been ripped off itself.

0:14:54 > 0:14:56Used to sell everything

0:14:56 > 0:14:59from fizzy drinks to cosmetics.

0:15:00 > 0:15:02A case in point is the comic-book style

0:15:02 > 0:15:04of Roy Lichtenstein,

0:15:04 > 0:15:07still so ubiquitous it can seem bland.

0:15:08 > 0:15:11Yet when he and his fellow pop artists emerged

0:15:11 > 0:15:12in the early '60s,

0:15:12 > 0:15:15they were considered despicable hoodlums

0:15:15 > 0:15:17responsible for the most shocking

0:15:17 > 0:15:19movement in the history of art.

0:15:24 > 0:15:27Only one man could really have made this mural, Roy Lichtenstein.

0:15:27 > 0:15:30He epitomises the whole pop generation.

0:15:30 > 0:15:32In fact, he pioneered it at the beginning of the '60s

0:15:32 > 0:15:36and this has got all of the hallmarks of his mature pop style.

0:15:36 > 0:15:39Those heavy black outlines, the bold primary colours

0:15:39 > 0:15:41of red and yellow and blue

0:15:41 > 0:15:45and also those dots imitating cheap reproductive techniques that

0:15:45 > 0:15:49you find in advertisements in newspapers and magazines.

0:15:49 > 0:15:53And now, everyone's passing by, we all take it for granted,

0:15:53 > 0:15:56we accept it but, at the beginning of the '60s, art like this was

0:15:56 > 0:16:00provocative, it was dangerous and it was infuriating.

0:16:00 > 0:16:03Lichtenstein was part of an important early show of Pop,

0:16:03 > 0:16:05at the Sidney Janis Gallery,

0:16:05 > 0:16:09and when Mark Rothko and some of his generation saw the show,

0:16:09 > 0:16:12they found Lichtenstein's work so difficult

0:16:12 > 0:16:16that they actually resigned from the gallery in protest.

0:16:18 > 0:16:20For Rothko and his peers,

0:16:20 > 0:16:23pop wasn't just crass, vulgar nonsense -

0:16:23 > 0:16:25it was anti-art.

0:16:26 > 0:16:30Rothko, like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,

0:16:30 > 0:16:33was part of an older generation of artists,

0:16:33 > 0:16:37who, since the '40s, had dominated New York's art scene.

0:16:37 > 0:16:40They took painting very seriously indeed.

0:16:42 > 0:16:46The Abstract Expressionists were on a difficult journey inwards

0:16:46 > 0:16:49to unleash volcanic energies on canvas.

0:16:49 > 0:16:52Through painting, they believed they could convey

0:16:52 > 0:16:57grand, essential truths about the human condition -

0:16:57 > 0:17:02tragedy, ecstasy, doom.

0:17:04 > 0:17:05To the general public,

0:17:05 > 0:17:09Abstract Expressionism was pretentious codswallop -

0:17:09 > 0:17:12its claims, downright ludicrous -

0:17:12 > 0:17:18but for those immersed in its lofty ideas, representation was dead.

0:17:25 > 0:17:27So, the work of Lichtenstein

0:17:27 > 0:17:33and the so-called New Vulgarians came like an acid shock -

0:17:33 > 0:17:37a slap in the face to philistines and art buffs alike.

0:17:38 > 0:17:43A rejection of the modern art tradition in favour of idiocy

0:17:43 > 0:17:45and tongue-in-cheek irony.

0:17:48 > 0:17:52But Lichtenstein's intentions had gone way over their heads.

0:17:55 > 0:17:59One of the biggest misconceptions about Roy Lichtenstein

0:17:59 > 0:18:02is that he simply copied his sources and then put them

0:18:02 > 0:18:07in a gallery without any alteration. It just isn't true.

0:18:07 > 0:18:13This, for instance, is his early pop painting Girl With Ball, from 1961,

0:18:13 > 0:18:15and this was his source.

0:18:15 > 0:18:20It's a black and white newspaper advertisement for a holiday resort

0:18:20 > 0:18:23which had appeared in the New York Times earlier the same year,

0:18:23 > 0:18:28and the funny thing is that, in a way, it's the differences

0:18:28 > 0:18:33between these two images which are more striking than the similarities.

0:18:33 > 0:18:36But perhaps the subtlest, craftiest part of the painting

0:18:36 > 0:18:39is the woman's shiny hairdo, because there,

0:18:39 > 0:18:43Lichtenstein is parodying those swirling brushstrokes

0:18:43 > 0:18:47of the abstract expressionists, which, by now, were such a cliche.

0:18:47 > 0:18:51There's nothing spontaneous about the application of paint

0:18:51 > 0:18:55in this image. Everything is meticulously done. It's mechanical.

0:18:55 > 0:19:01It's about Lichtenstein suppressing his own painterly touch.

0:19:01 > 0:19:06So, this is a surprisingly complex and sophisticated painting, which is

0:19:06 > 0:19:11in dialogue with other art as much as it is with the real world.

0:19:13 > 0:19:17Lichtenstein's work represents a radical shift in modern art.

0:19:17 > 0:19:21Exploding the exalted, inward-looking world of

0:19:21 > 0:19:23abstract expressionism,

0:19:23 > 0:19:26pop brilliantly created art from imagery that anyone

0:19:26 > 0:19:30walking down the street could recognise in an instant.

0:19:30 > 0:19:32All of the mechanical things - the dots,

0:19:32 > 0:19:37the black lines around everything, the more or less primary colours -

0:19:37 > 0:19:41all of this was just something ready-made to symbolise

0:19:41 > 0:19:46what we were really getting into, a kind of a ready-made, plastic era.

0:19:46 > 0:19:49And it was pop's smart playfulness that made it

0:19:49 > 0:19:52so appealing to the public.

0:19:52 > 0:19:57Still, in January 1964, Life Magazine published an article

0:19:57 > 0:19:59posing a rather provocative question:

0:19:59 > 0:20:02"Is he the worst artist in the US?"

0:20:05 > 0:20:10This well-known article is often given as evidence of the brutal way

0:20:10 > 0:20:14that pop art, at the time, was dismissed as tedious and banal,

0:20:14 > 0:20:17but what people don't realise is that Lichtenstein actually

0:20:17 > 0:20:20gave his blessing to its infamous headline

0:20:20 > 0:20:23because he relished the provocative irony of it.

0:20:23 > 0:20:26So, what I think is much more interesting about this piece

0:20:26 > 0:20:31is that it reveals, at the start of 1964, Life Magazine,

0:20:31 > 0:20:36this enormously influential, widely read American publication

0:20:36 > 0:20:39wanted a piece of the whole pop art phenomenon.

0:20:39 > 0:20:44This was an all-American publication, celebrating a new,

0:20:44 > 0:20:48irreverent, and crucially, all-American, style of art.

0:20:51 > 0:20:54And if Lichtenstein is the architect of New York pop art,

0:20:54 > 0:20:59his rival Andy Warhol is, of course, its superstar -

0:20:59 > 0:21:00and for good reason.

0:21:00 > 0:21:06The art that Warhol created foretold so many aspects of our world today.

0:21:06 > 0:21:11His genius was to realise that in an age of consumerism,

0:21:11 > 0:21:15anything could be turned into a commodity -

0:21:15 > 0:21:19even a painfully shy and awkward personality, like his.

0:21:23 > 0:21:28- Well, what have you done? Have you just sent up some other works?- Yeah.

0:21:28 > 0:21:30- And what were they?- Erm...

0:21:30 > 0:21:32Electric chair paintings.

0:21:32 > 0:21:34- Electric chair paintings.- Yeah.

0:21:34 > 0:21:37Well, what is the description of that?

0:21:37 > 0:21:39- I don't know. Do you know? - Well, it's...

0:21:39 > 0:21:43Warhol's cold, inane persona was a conscious construction -

0:21:43 > 0:21:46the embodiment of the mechanical art style

0:21:46 > 0:21:49he began to pioneer in 1962,

0:21:49 > 0:21:52with the creation of his Campbell's soup cans.

0:21:55 > 0:21:57Seizing the photo silkscreen process,

0:21:57 > 0:22:01a commercial technique used to churn out prints,

0:22:01 > 0:22:05he turned the touch of the artist into the imprint of a machine.

0:22:06 > 0:22:09He christened his studio The Factory, and fashioned

0:22:09 > 0:22:13a mode perfectly suited for the age of mass production.

0:22:14 > 0:22:17Andy, do you think that pop art has sort of reached the point

0:22:17 > 0:22:20where it's becoming repetitious now?

0:22:20 > 0:22:21Ah, yes.

0:22:28 > 0:22:32Warhol and his art may at first seem cold and blank,

0:22:32 > 0:22:37but actually, their cool surfaces belie private obsessions.

0:22:37 > 0:22:41His paintings are some of the most unforgettable images

0:22:41 > 0:22:44of the 20th century.

0:22:44 > 0:22:46- MAN:- Do you believe in feelings and emotions?

0:22:46 > 0:22:51WARHOL: Well, no, I don't, but I have them. I wish I didn't.

0:22:52 > 0:22:55What, you would like to get rid of them altogether, would you?

0:22:55 > 0:22:57Would be a good idea, yeah.

0:22:58 > 0:23:03When one of Warhol's idols, Marilyn Monroe, died of an overdose

0:23:03 > 0:23:08in 1962, he drew upon a single publicity shot to create

0:23:08 > 0:23:12a definitive statement about two of his obsessions -

0:23:12 > 0:23:15celebrity and death.

0:23:18 > 0:23:22Warhol may have said, "I want to be a machine,"

0:23:22 > 0:23:26but actually, looking at his magnificent Marilyn diptych,

0:23:26 > 0:23:30it seems much less mechanical than it otherwise might appear.

0:23:30 > 0:23:37On the left, he repeats Marilyn's overly made-up face in lurid colour,

0:23:37 > 0:23:40against this garish orange background.

0:23:40 > 0:23:43She looks exaggerated, unnatural, artificial,

0:23:43 > 0:23:46as if she is being viewed on a television screen

0:23:46 > 0:23:50with the colour amped right up to maximum.

0:23:50 > 0:23:55This is Marilyn's face as it's endlessly recycled by the media.

0:23:56 > 0:24:02But then, at the right, with these black and white faces,

0:24:02 > 0:24:05there's much greater wonky variation.

0:24:05 > 0:24:10All of these strange smudges and streaks and squeegee marks,

0:24:10 > 0:24:14left deliberately visible, reminding us of the artist's hand.

0:24:15 > 0:24:19That transition from colour to black and white

0:24:19 > 0:24:23is what makes this work of art so powerful and also moving.

0:24:23 > 0:24:28It's a very simple conceit, but one that's effective and haunting,

0:24:28 > 0:24:31because it feels like a heartfelt expression,

0:24:31 > 0:24:35not just about the fragility of celebrity, but also

0:24:35 > 0:24:40about something much more personal and profound for Warhol himself -

0:24:40 > 0:24:43his own visceral fear of dying.

0:24:45 > 0:24:51MUSIC: Africastle by Battles

0:24:51 > 0:24:54Suicides, car crashes,

0:24:54 > 0:24:58police brutality and executions.

0:24:58 > 0:25:01Warhol's Death And Disaster paintings present a punchy,

0:25:01 > 0:25:04confrontational, polemical vision.

0:25:05 > 0:25:08The sources were images from grisly news reports,

0:25:08 > 0:25:12repeated again and again, and again, on canvas.

0:25:14 > 0:25:17The paintings articulate something of the mass media's

0:25:17 > 0:25:19deadening effect.

0:25:19 > 0:25:25Repetition engenders numbness, or as Warhol put it, "boredom".

0:25:25 > 0:25:28At odds with the gruesome subject matter

0:25:28 > 0:25:32is the brightly coloured background.

0:25:32 > 0:25:34Warhol himself observed,

0:25:34 > 0:25:37"It's surprising how many people want to hang an electric chair

0:25:37 > 0:25:39"on their living room wall,

0:25:39 > 0:25:43"especially if the background colour matches the drapes."

0:25:46 > 0:25:50In other words, pop art has two faces.

0:25:50 > 0:25:54It can be as deep or as shallow as the viewer wants it to be.

0:26:03 > 0:26:07So often, it is easy to think that pop art emerged

0:26:07 > 0:26:12fully-formed from the head, say, of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein,

0:26:12 > 0:26:16but the story of its emergence is much more complicated,

0:26:16 > 0:26:20and as a result, I think, much more exciting.

0:26:26 > 0:26:28For all its commercial appeal,

0:26:28 > 0:26:31pop art also belongs to a more cerebral tradition,

0:26:31 > 0:26:34pioneered by an artist who, in the '50s,

0:26:34 > 0:26:37had been all but forgotten.

0:26:37 > 0:26:43In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to an annual exhibition,

0:26:43 > 0:26:46and in the process, he invented conceptual art.

0:26:46 > 0:26:48His mass-produced,

0:26:48 > 0:26:51ready-made sculptures declared that art could be governed

0:26:51 > 0:26:57not by painterly skill, but exclusively by the idea behind it,

0:26:57 > 0:27:02and in the '50s, young, avant-garde artists were discovering him afresh.

0:27:09 > 0:27:13Throughout the city, in dark corners, in draughty lofts,

0:27:13 > 0:27:16in basements and disused shops,

0:27:16 > 0:27:19they embraced the chaos of modern urban life -

0:27:19 > 0:27:23its junk, its refuse, its noise and its symbols.

0:27:24 > 0:27:30And one artist could be seen skulking among the city's detritus -

0:27:30 > 0:27:32Robert Rauschenberg.

0:27:32 > 0:27:34I've always found it difficult to talk about

0:27:34 > 0:27:37Marcel Duchamp's work specifically.

0:27:37 > 0:27:42His recognition of the lack of art in art,

0:27:42 > 0:27:46and the artfulness of everything...

0:27:46 > 0:27:51I think is probably his most important contribution.

0:27:53 > 0:27:58In 1953, Rauschenberg was so poor that he was surviving on

0:27:58 > 0:28:02a food budget of just 15 cents a day.

0:28:02 > 0:28:04He just couldn't afford traditional materials,

0:28:04 > 0:28:09but he was prodigiously inventive and resourceful.

0:28:09 > 0:28:12And so, he turned his poverty to his advantage,

0:28:12 > 0:28:15and started scouring the streets for junk,

0:28:15 > 0:28:20junk that he could transform into these spellbinding works of art,

0:28:20 > 0:28:24that captured something of all of these overlooked aspects

0:28:24 > 0:28:27and throwaway textures of the city.

0:28:27 > 0:28:32He felt sure that art should not be divorced from reality.

0:28:32 > 0:28:36"I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't," he said.

0:28:36 > 0:28:40"I want a picture to look like something it is."

0:28:46 > 0:28:50Inspired by Duchamp, Rauschenberg incorporated everyday objects

0:28:50 > 0:28:54into strange artworks that he called combines.

0:28:54 > 0:28:57He's celebrated for bringing real life back into the lofty

0:28:57 > 0:29:00orbit of fine art.

0:29:00 > 0:29:03Together with his lover, the artist Jasper Johns,

0:29:03 > 0:29:07Rauschenberg is the most prominent progenitor of pop,

0:29:07 > 0:29:11but another figure, now forgotten, who was making equally

0:29:11 > 0:29:15pioneering work, would prove to be the movement's missing link.

0:29:20 > 0:29:23Around the same time that Rauschenberg started working on his

0:29:23 > 0:29:28combines, another young artist was forging a reputation in the city.

0:29:28 > 0:29:32He was gay, he was curiously sociable, yet at the same time

0:29:32 > 0:29:37detached, and he was obsessed with celebrity and repetition.

0:29:37 > 0:29:42And already, by the 1950s, he was incorporating into his art

0:29:42 > 0:29:46photographs of film stars, as well as corporate logos.

0:29:46 > 0:29:51Now, his name wasn't Andy Warhol but Ray Johnson,

0:29:51 > 0:29:53the greatest artist you've never heard of.

0:29:56 > 0:30:00In the late '50s, Ray Johnson was a leading avant-garde artist,

0:30:00 > 0:30:04who was just as well known as Rauschenberg and Johns.

0:30:07 > 0:30:10Yet, when he died in 1995,

0:30:10 > 0:30:12he was a virtual recluse -

0:30:12 > 0:30:16his house, filled with boxes of unseen work.

0:30:16 > 0:30:20They were discovered by his friend and dealer Frances Beatty...

0:30:23 > 0:30:27..and they're now stored here, at the Richard Feigen Gallery.

0:30:29 > 0:30:33'They contain proof that Johnson truly was

0:30:33 > 0:30:35'one of pop art's pioneers.'

0:30:37 > 0:30:41This is one of the most amazing documents about early pop art

0:30:41 > 0:30:46and Ray Johnson. These are incredible collages.

0:30:46 > 0:30:48Look at the amount of them.

0:30:48 > 0:30:51- Look at this. I mean, here's Marlon Brando.- Right.

0:30:51 > 0:30:53- There's William Shakespeare. - Right.- There's...

0:30:53 > 0:30:54This is a sort of... What's that?

0:30:54 > 0:30:57- Some sort of brand of Mexico something or other.- Right.

0:30:57 > 0:31:00That looks like another, kind of, brand name.

0:31:00 > 0:31:04'For Johnson, art was about the process, not the product.

0:31:04 > 0:31:07'He considered his work a kind of performance art,

0:31:07 > 0:31:11'and destroyed almost all of his pop collages.'

0:31:11 > 0:31:14These are a group of iconic

0:31:14 > 0:31:19early works from '55, '55-'56.

0:31:20 > 0:31:22Here you have James Dean, right?

0:31:22 > 0:31:26Iconic photograph of James Dean, and what does he do with it?

0:31:26 > 0:31:33He puts two Lucky Strikes and they look like mouse ears, right?

0:31:33 > 0:31:37It's a reference to the cigarette as well as to Mickey Mouse,

0:31:37 > 0:31:41so you have all of those things going on at the same time.

0:31:41 > 0:31:44These are really quite extraordinary visual works of art,

0:31:44 > 0:31:48in the sense of how early they are, because dealing with logos,

0:31:48 > 0:31:50brand names, dealing with iconic film stars - these are all

0:31:50 > 0:31:54- the things that pop art would famously do, but much later.- Right.

0:31:57 > 0:32:00And sure enough, a few years later,

0:32:00 > 0:32:03another artist would produce some icons of his own.

0:32:05 > 0:32:08Andy Warhol was a close friend of Ray Johnson.

0:32:08 > 0:32:11When they met in 1956,

0:32:11 > 0:32:15Warhol was one of New York's most successful commercial illustrators,

0:32:15 > 0:32:20but he was still yearning to be taken seriously as a fine artist.

0:32:20 > 0:32:24Their friendship would be mutually beneficial.

0:32:24 > 0:32:28Through Warhol, Johnson won commercial commissions.

0:32:28 > 0:32:33Through Johnson, Warhol met important avant-garde contacts...

0:32:33 > 0:32:37and he became increasingly familiar with Johnson's work.

0:32:39 > 0:32:43Picasso said, "Good artists borrow - great artists steal."

0:32:43 > 0:32:46But to follow through what you're saying, it's that

0:32:46 > 0:32:50Warhol was a genius, therefore he stole Ray Johnson's work.

0:32:50 > 0:32:53I think that if Ray were around,

0:32:53 > 0:32:59he would not want to be judged by what Warhol took from him,

0:32:59 > 0:33:01but by what he did.

0:33:01 > 0:33:05MUSIC: Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child by Odetta

0:33:07 > 0:33:11He may have created some of America's earliest pop art,

0:33:11 > 0:33:15but unlike Warhol, who lusted after fame,

0:33:15 > 0:33:18Johnson resisted the spotlight.

0:33:18 > 0:33:22In 1968, he was mugged at knife-point.

0:33:23 > 0:33:28Traumatised, he fled to Long Island, and became a recluse.

0:33:28 > 0:33:32His most famous artwork was his last.

0:33:33 > 0:33:37On Friday the 13th of January 1995,

0:33:37 > 0:33:40Johnson dived off the Sag Harbour Bridge,

0:33:40 > 0:33:42dressed head to toe in black.

0:33:44 > 0:33:47Passers-by saw him backstroking into the horizon.

0:33:49 > 0:33:54His death really was a death orchestrated like him.

0:33:54 > 0:33:59So, do people really think that it was almost like a final performance?

0:33:59 > 0:34:01Yeah, I think so,

0:34:01 > 0:34:05because Richard Feigen...

0:34:05 > 0:34:09went to his studio afterwards,

0:34:09 > 0:34:11and there was...

0:34:11 > 0:34:16The only thing visible was a photograph of Ray going...

0:34:24 > 0:34:28Johnson was a victim of the city that inspired his work,

0:34:28 > 0:34:31and his experience points to one of pop art's darkest

0:34:31 > 0:34:34and most prescient themes -

0:34:34 > 0:34:37how urban life, for all its neon pleasures,

0:34:37 > 0:34:41robs us not just of community but also of our very soul.

0:34:41 > 0:34:45The daily grind of the city turns us all into grist.

0:34:45 > 0:34:48MUSIC: Delia Gone by Acker Bilk

0:34:48 > 0:34:51But another of pop's founding fathers decided

0:34:51 > 0:34:53he wasn't going to take that lying down.

0:34:55 > 0:34:58Claes Oldenburg actively engaged with the city,

0:34:58 > 0:35:01and used pop art to change it.

0:35:01 > 0:35:03So, just push up and we're going.

0:35:03 > 0:35:04See?

0:35:05 > 0:35:07Nothing to it.

0:35:07 > 0:35:12'Oldenburg was born in Sweden, but he grew up in Chicago.

0:35:12 > 0:35:15'At 86, he's the oldest surviving member of

0:35:15 > 0:35:19'the canonical New York pop artists.'

0:35:19 > 0:35:20OK, this is like...

0:35:20 > 0:35:23- Oh, no, that's a little early. - That's too soon, much too soon.

0:35:23 > 0:35:25There it is.

0:35:25 > 0:35:28'He arrived in the city in 1956,'

0:35:28 > 0:35:31and quickly became an influential figure

0:35:31 > 0:35:34in the downtown avant-garde performance art movement

0:35:34 > 0:35:37known as the happenings.

0:35:37 > 0:35:40His theatrical installation The Street was inspired

0:35:40 > 0:35:45by the nightmarish experience of living in a modern metropolis.

0:35:45 > 0:35:49He played a person going mad under the conditions.

0:35:49 > 0:35:51But in the early '60s,

0:35:51 > 0:35:55the tone of Oldenburg's work changed dramatically.

0:35:55 > 0:35:59Modern life wasn't just scary - it was absurd.

0:35:59 > 0:36:04- What's that? A steak, is it? - Ah, I think it's a slice of ham...

0:36:04 > 0:36:06and that's mashed potatoes.

0:36:06 > 0:36:09So, was there meant to be quite a comical aspect to this,

0:36:09 > 0:36:12- when people...?- Well, don't you think that hamburgers are comical?

0:36:12 > 0:36:14I mean, I didn't do that.

0:36:15 > 0:36:18The guy who invented hamburgers probably did that.

0:36:18 > 0:36:21To put the two of them together, that's pretty comical too.

0:36:23 > 0:36:27Oldenburg began creating enormous, floppy versions of

0:36:27 > 0:36:28everyday objects.

0:36:30 > 0:36:34His cartoonish, soft sculptures are stripped of their function,

0:36:34 > 0:36:35and surprisingly human.

0:36:37 > 0:36:39Do you remember what you found at the time

0:36:39 > 0:36:43- so exciting about these big, striking forms?- I don't know.

0:36:43 > 0:36:47I was just, maybe, I'm a child, you know? I want to create beauty.

0:36:47 > 0:36:49I want to create form, you know?

0:36:49 > 0:36:52- Under circumstances that are very difficult, and...- So is that...

0:36:52 > 0:36:54Pop art was then a challenge for the artist?

0:36:54 > 0:36:56I think it's a challenge, yeah.

0:36:56 > 0:37:00I always wanted to change things and make it into my own.

0:37:00 > 0:37:04In 1963, exhausted by the chaos of New York,

0:37:04 > 0:37:08Oldenburg headed west to Los Angeles.

0:37:08 > 0:37:11His trip would prove transformative.

0:37:11 > 0:37:15He began experimenting by taking his sculptures outdoors.

0:37:17 > 0:37:20And here's the ice cream cone. It's on top of a Volkswagen.

0:37:20 > 0:37:24I met Dennis Hopper out there and we would take this ice cream cone

0:37:24 > 0:37:27and we'd place it in different spots in Los Angeles -

0:37:27 > 0:37:31for example, on the runway of the airport or things like that.

0:37:33 > 0:37:36Returning from LA, Oldenburg began to

0:37:36 > 0:37:40observe the city from different perspectives.

0:37:40 > 0:37:42He started playing with the idea of scale,

0:37:42 > 0:37:46taking small objects and making them colossal.

0:37:46 > 0:37:49The city became a sort of studio -

0:37:49 > 0:37:53a playroom, if you like - that he could fill with toys.

0:37:54 > 0:37:57A teddy bear in Central Park,

0:37:57 > 0:38:00a melting ice lolly in Park Avenue.

0:38:01 > 0:38:07Initially, these ideas were just fantasy - completely unfeasible -

0:38:07 > 0:38:11but in 1969, he was approached by a committee of students

0:38:11 > 0:38:14from Yale University who wanted to commemorate

0:38:14 > 0:38:18the institution's first intake of female undergraduates.

0:38:22 > 0:38:27Alluding to feminism as well as the Vietnam War, Oldenburg designed

0:38:27 > 0:38:32a moving lecture podium - a towering lipstick aboard a military tank.

0:38:34 > 0:38:38If someone wanted to give a lecture or a speech,

0:38:38 > 0:38:40they would step up here, and there's...

0:38:40 > 0:38:45There would be a device here that you put pull and push,

0:38:45 > 0:38:49and pull and push, and you would gradually pump up this central part.

0:38:49 > 0:38:53So, the second stage of this would be up like this,

0:38:53 > 0:38:56and then when you got to the final stage, the thing would become erect.

0:38:56 > 0:38:57You'd have an erect lipstick?

0:38:57 > 0:38:59Yes, you would have an erect lipstick,

0:38:59 > 0:39:03and you were giving your speech and you have to pay attention,

0:39:03 > 0:39:07because if you don't push this thing back and forth,

0:39:07 > 0:39:09it's going to start going down again.

0:39:09 > 0:39:14It's just quite lewd, this rampant, flailing, tongue-like, erect,

0:39:14 > 0:39:17- phallic lipstick.- Oh, my God, yes. LAUGHTER

0:39:17 > 0:39:19Is this...?

0:39:19 > 0:39:20Are all lipsticks like that?

0:39:20 > 0:39:23Well, not ones that I've really seen before, but...

0:39:23 > 0:39:27This isn't a very particularly male-friendly piece, is it?

0:39:27 > 0:39:28No, it isn't.

0:39:28 > 0:39:33The guy has to work really hard to get that lipstick up.

0:39:33 > 0:39:36And even then, it's going to quickly start wilting.

0:39:36 > 0:39:38Yeah, and it starts wilting, yeah.

0:39:40 > 0:39:46After the lipstick came a series of 43 large-scale projects,

0:39:46 > 0:39:50created by Oldenburg in partnership with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen.

0:39:50 > 0:39:52Full of mischief,

0:39:52 > 0:39:55these sculptures distort the scale of the surrounding landscape,

0:39:55 > 0:39:58and remind us of one of pop's greatest

0:39:58 > 0:40:01but often overlooked legacies - humour.

0:40:01 > 0:40:05A far cry from some earlier, po-faced modern art,

0:40:05 > 0:40:10these utopian projects are witty, joyous, fun.

0:40:10 > 0:40:15Springing up in cities all over the world, from Paris to Philadelphia,

0:40:15 > 0:40:17Tokyo to Barcelona,

0:40:17 > 0:40:19and of course, the city that proved

0:40:19 > 0:40:22so inspirational in the first place -

0:40:22 > 0:40:23Los Angeles.

0:40:27 > 0:40:30Arriving from the dark, cramped confines

0:40:30 > 0:40:32of New York's high-rise streets,

0:40:32 > 0:40:35artists in the '60s found Los Angeles

0:40:35 > 0:40:39to be a place of freedom and possibility.

0:40:39 > 0:40:42With its open roads and fresh sea breeze,

0:40:42 > 0:40:46it is a city of spaciousness and adventure,

0:40:46 > 0:40:50and it proved a Mecca for the '60s pop generation.

0:40:50 > 0:40:53MUSIC: Puff, The Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary

0:40:57 > 0:41:01Famously, it inspired David Hockney's pop art fantasies

0:41:01 > 0:41:03of the LA paradise.

0:41:16 > 0:41:20It is, frankly, hard to imagine a city more in sync

0:41:20 > 0:41:23with the spirit of pop art than Los Angeles

0:41:23 > 0:41:26and, in the '60s, it was already expanding

0:41:26 > 0:41:30into this sprawling, jumbled, hedonistic megalopolis

0:41:30 > 0:41:32that it is today.

0:41:32 > 0:41:36100 suburbs in search of a city, as someone once wittily put it,

0:41:36 > 0:41:39basking beneath these palm trees and eternal sunshine

0:41:39 > 0:41:43and dreaming, all of them, of the big time.

0:41:45 > 0:41:47If the artists of New York

0:41:47 > 0:41:50were obsessed with billboards and consumer life,

0:41:50 > 0:41:55out West they painted hot chicks and fast cars.

0:41:56 > 0:41:59And the West Coast pop scene was dismissed as too regional,

0:41:59 > 0:42:04too parochial, too concerned with local subcultures and fads.

0:42:05 > 0:42:09In the case of these trite, tasteless nudes by Mel Ramos,

0:42:09 > 0:42:10maybe the critics had a point,

0:42:10 > 0:42:16but one man inspired by LA's car culture would become, after Warhol,

0:42:16 > 0:42:22the most influential American artist of the past half-century.

0:42:22 > 0:42:25A vision of horizons and vanishing points,

0:42:25 > 0:42:27America as seen by Ed Ruscha

0:42:27 > 0:42:30is viewed through the windscreen of a car,

0:42:30 > 0:42:33imbued with the romance of Route 66

0:42:33 > 0:42:36and the rolling freedom of the open road.

0:42:37 > 0:42:42And Ruscha dramatised one of pop's most important themes -

0:42:42 > 0:42:45America's mythic sense of itself.

0:42:47 > 0:42:51In the early '60s, Ruscha was the matinee idol of pop.

0:42:54 > 0:42:58But, back in 1956, he was still a small-town boy

0:42:58 > 0:43:00from America's Bible Belt,

0:43:00 > 0:43:03nurturing hopes of becoming a commercial artist.

0:43:03 > 0:43:09His native Oklahoma was stifling and claustrophobic.

0:43:09 > 0:43:11I knew I wanted to travel,

0:43:11 > 0:43:13leave Oklahoma...

0:43:14 > 0:43:18..and go to an art school out here.

0:43:18 > 0:43:19Why, particularly?

0:43:19 > 0:43:21LA sounded better to me.

0:43:21 > 0:43:24It just had more flavour to it,

0:43:24 > 0:43:25more swank or something to it

0:43:25 > 0:43:29that I may have been missing at the time.

0:43:29 > 0:43:36So, aged 18, Ruscha set off on Route 66 for art school.

0:43:36 > 0:43:39It was one of many subsequent road trips.

0:43:39 > 0:43:43I used to hitchhike back and forth between California and Oklahoma,

0:43:43 > 0:43:47where I grew up, and, as I was going along,

0:43:47 > 0:43:50I would photograph gas stations.

0:43:50 > 0:43:53I like the idea of sort of an on-the-road trip

0:43:53 > 0:43:58documenting the whole thing from the view of gas stations.

0:44:00 > 0:44:02So this is one of the very first...

0:44:02 > 0:44:05- Well, the first, Ed Ruscha artist book.- Yeah.

0:44:05 > 0:44:09- And this is called, as the cover says, 26 Gasoline Stations.- Right.

0:44:09 > 0:44:12How much were you thinking about Duchamp?

0:44:12 > 0:44:14Was he important as an influence at this point,

0:44:14 > 0:44:16because you could see each individual gas station

0:44:16 > 0:44:19as a sort of version of one of his readymades?

0:44:19 > 0:44:23I could, and, in a sense, you might say, "Well, they are readymades."

0:44:23 > 0:44:26I am glorifying each one of these things,

0:44:26 > 0:44:30calling attention to something that most people might say

0:44:30 > 0:44:32doesn't need calling attention to.

0:44:34 > 0:44:37In a sense, Ruscha's books are conceptual artworks

0:44:37 > 0:44:42and the paintings they inspired lead us into a surreal new realm.

0:44:44 > 0:44:49Ordinary gas stations are dramatically lit with spotlights.

0:44:52 > 0:44:55The Hollywood sign appears like a hero on the horizon.

0:44:57 > 0:45:01Ruscha is visualising the dream factory of modern America,

0:45:01 > 0:45:05how America manufactures not only its consumer products

0:45:05 > 0:45:07but also its very sense of self.

0:45:12 > 0:45:14Yet Ruscha's attitude to his homeland

0:45:14 > 0:45:17is neither straightforwardly celebratory,

0:45:17 > 0:45:19nor downright critical,

0:45:19 > 0:45:22and that's the crux which animates all of his work.

0:45:22 > 0:45:25At times, his paintings seem satirical,

0:45:25 > 0:45:29setting ablaze the values of wealthy, corporate America

0:45:29 > 0:45:32in all its depressing standardisation.

0:45:34 > 0:45:38I did another painting of a restaurant here in town

0:45:38 > 0:45:40called Norm's.

0:45:40 > 0:45:45A critic comes along and says, "Oh, I see. Norms and standards, huh?

0:45:45 > 0:45:46"Is that what he's after?"

0:45:46 > 0:45:48Yeah, and it surprised me.

0:45:48 > 0:45:51It can't have surprised you! Did it?

0:45:51 > 0:45:55It surprised me, yeah, because that wasn't in my line of thinking.

0:45:55 > 0:45:57You're kidding!

0:45:57 > 0:45:59So, when you hear that, do you sort of think

0:45:59 > 0:46:02it's nonsense to impose that sort of idea onto the artwork?

0:46:02 > 0:46:04No, no, no, not nonsense at all.

0:46:04 > 0:46:06It's coming from somebody else.

0:46:06 > 0:46:08That's what Duchamp said.

0:46:08 > 0:46:11To begin with, I think it was that, you know,

0:46:11 > 0:46:13making the art is one thing,

0:46:13 > 0:46:17and then interpreting it, it takes a viewer to add to it.

0:46:17 > 0:46:21I mean, that's called... What? Backdoor influence.

0:46:21 > 0:46:24Right.

0:46:24 > 0:46:28Also, I felt like it takes almost somebody from a foreign country

0:46:28 > 0:46:31to come to America to really see America.

0:46:31 > 0:46:34How does that position you, then, in terms of coming from Oklahoma?

0:46:34 > 0:46:36It makes me an outsider, doesn't it?

0:46:36 > 0:46:39Or an insider or something.

0:46:39 > 0:46:43But I felt like, you know,

0:46:43 > 0:46:46the glory of America is somehow

0:46:46 > 0:46:50hinted at in some of these works.

0:46:50 > 0:46:56You know, I don't intentionally want to insert my patriotism into anything

0:46:56 > 0:46:59but sometimes it just happens.

0:46:59 > 0:47:02I'm really surprised to hear you talk about patriotism.

0:47:02 > 0:47:04I don't think I've ever used that word.

0:47:04 > 0:47:08- No! This is an exclusive.- Yeah.

0:47:08 > 0:47:09Ed Ruscha - patriot!

0:47:12 > 0:47:17So these are works on paper that I do with pastel and acrylic.

0:47:17 > 0:47:20I could be accused of being

0:47:20 > 0:47:22a linguistic kleptomaniac.

0:47:23 > 0:47:27Ruscha's stark, severe images are like epitaphs on a gravestone,

0:47:27 > 0:47:32a final statement recording the soul of the American century.

0:47:32 > 0:47:36Like the best pop art, Ruscha's work reflects the pride of a nation

0:47:36 > 0:47:39on the march towards prosperity.

0:47:45 > 0:47:49Often, it crackles with the wisecracking, tough guy attitude

0:47:49 > 0:47:52which was such an essential part of America's self-image.

0:47:56 > 0:47:59So it might seem surprising that the original explorers

0:47:59 > 0:48:02on the frontier of popular culture

0:48:02 > 0:48:04weren't American at all.

0:48:06 > 0:48:08Ladies and gentlemen,

0:48:08 > 0:48:11presenting her royal majesty.

0:48:15 > 0:48:18# There she goes

0:48:18 > 0:48:20# Her royal majesty

0:48:20 > 0:48:24# She's the queen that broke my heart... #

0:48:26 > 0:48:30I think that America would have been much more comfortable

0:48:30 > 0:48:32if there hadn't been British pop art

0:48:32 > 0:48:36and so it kind of just ignored it.

0:48:36 > 0:48:39# Her royal majesty. #

0:48:39 > 0:48:44In fact, pop art was invented, not in America at the start of the '60s,

0:48:44 > 0:48:47but ten years earlier in Britain.

0:48:47 > 0:48:51That drizzle-drenched kingdom of politeness and understatement

0:48:51 > 0:48:53which, in the wake of the Second World War,

0:48:53 > 0:48:58remained a bleak realm of austerity and rationing.

0:48:58 > 0:49:00MUSIC: Here In My Heart by Al Martino

0:49:04 > 0:49:08And, here, a group of young artists and intellectuals

0:49:08 > 0:49:11dreamt about a land of plenty

0:49:11 > 0:49:15that they knew existed on the other side of the Atlantic.

0:49:15 > 0:49:19In 1952, they started an unofficial think tank,

0:49:19 > 0:49:23calling themselves the Independent Group,

0:49:23 > 0:49:25hungering after American culture

0:49:25 > 0:49:30and feasting their eyes on ads for luscious food and miracle appliances

0:49:30 > 0:49:33which were incorporated into these colleges

0:49:33 > 0:49:37that Eduardo Paolozzi made in his scrapbooks.

0:49:37 > 0:49:40The Independent Group believed that they could use imagery like this

0:49:40 > 0:49:42to transform British culture

0:49:42 > 0:49:47and build a new kind of society where everyone was equal.

0:49:47 > 0:49:49Oxford Street passers-by halt to admire,

0:49:49 > 0:49:52or maybe that's carrying it too far, anyway, they halt.

0:49:52 > 0:49:54Some are stunned, others merely surprised,

0:49:54 > 0:49:57by this modern-art conception of a nude in concrete.

0:49:57 > 0:49:59For young British artists in the '50s,

0:49:59 > 0:50:03the world of modern art was po-faced and stuck up,

0:50:03 > 0:50:07protected by self-appointed guardians of high culture

0:50:07 > 0:50:12who weren't interested in the masses but only the privileged few.

0:50:12 > 0:50:15Why shouldn't a pop singer be as valid as a symphony

0:50:15 > 0:50:19or a comic strip equal to a novel?

0:50:19 > 0:50:21These were some of the burning questions

0:50:21 > 0:50:23on the agenda of the Independent Group.

0:50:23 > 0:50:26Nigel Henderson - photographer.

0:50:26 > 0:50:28Alison Smithson - architect.

0:50:28 > 0:50:32Eduardo Paolozzi - artist.

0:50:32 > 0:50:34And Peter Smithson - architect.

0:50:34 > 0:50:38The sparkiest voices of their generation,

0:50:38 > 0:50:41and one of their number was art historian Mary Banham.

0:50:41 > 0:50:45At 94, she's almost the last surviving member.

0:50:47 > 0:50:49I mean, you know, you and these peers

0:50:49 > 0:50:51are credited as the inventors pop art.

0:50:51 > 0:50:53Yes.

0:50:53 > 0:50:57- Is that how you see yourself, then? - Pioneers.- Yeah.- Absolutely.

0:50:57 > 0:50:59Every inch of it.

0:50:59 > 0:51:04- We all had very different ideas, some of which led to fist fights.- No.

0:51:04 > 0:51:08- You might say.- So it was unruly? It could be?- Oh, not half.

0:51:08 > 0:51:12We were all young and determined to put forward our ideas.

0:51:12 > 0:51:16And, until the group disbanded in 1955,

0:51:16 > 0:51:19ideas alone formed the basis of their activity.

0:51:19 > 0:51:22The Independent Group didn't actually make much art.

0:51:22 > 0:51:26Instead, they were interested in exchanging theories

0:51:26 > 0:51:28about the nature of popular culture.

0:51:28 > 0:51:31But, the following year, several members took part

0:51:31 > 0:51:34in a landmark collaborative exhibition.

0:51:34 > 0:51:37Incorporating film posters, sci-fi and fast food,

0:51:37 > 0:51:41their vision of popular culture was presented to the public

0:51:41 > 0:51:42for the first time.

0:51:46 > 0:51:49Anyone who thinks abstract artists are too abstract

0:51:49 > 0:51:51should drop in at the Whitechapel Art Gallery,

0:51:51 > 0:51:54where there's an exhibition devoted to collaboration

0:51:54 > 0:51:57between architects, painters and sculptors.

0:51:57 > 0:52:00The various artists drew upon all sorts of imagery

0:52:00 > 0:52:03to explore the world of the future.

0:52:03 > 0:52:06But one installation was distinctly pop,

0:52:06 > 0:52:07that of Group 2,

0:52:07 > 0:52:11which included the far-sighted British pop artist Richard Hamilton.

0:52:15 > 0:52:17All right, we're looking.

0:52:19 > 0:52:21All right, we're thinking.

0:52:21 > 0:52:25And think is exactly what Hamilton wanted everyone to do.

0:52:31 > 0:52:36But, for years, his brainy take on pop art was neglected.

0:52:36 > 0:52:41For most of his life, Richard Hamilton was relatively undervalued,

0:52:41 > 0:52:44but I think he really deserves to be as well-known

0:52:44 > 0:52:47as some of the greats of 20th-century British art

0:52:47 > 0:52:50like Francis Bacon or Henry Moore.

0:52:53 > 0:52:57Inside the Tate's vaults is proof of Hamilton's importance.

0:52:59 > 0:53:02Designed as a poster for This Is Tomorrow, the collage

0:53:02 > 0:53:07Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?

0:53:07 > 0:53:11has become one of pop art's most celebrated early works.

0:53:11 > 0:53:14This later reproduction shows us exactly why.

0:53:16 > 0:53:19The setting is a swish, modern living room

0:53:19 > 0:53:21which Hamilton turns into

0:53:21 > 0:53:24a tongue-in-cheek consumerist paradise,

0:53:24 > 0:53:28lampooning the seductive visual strategies of American advertising,

0:53:28 > 0:53:31which provided its various sources.

0:53:32 > 0:53:35The really astonishing thing about this small picture

0:53:35 > 0:53:41is that, even though the original collage was created in 1956,

0:53:41 > 0:53:44long before pop art even had a name,

0:53:44 > 0:53:47it provides a kind of prescient index

0:53:47 > 0:53:50of the movement's chief subjects and motifs,

0:53:50 > 0:53:54all of the things that other artists like Roy Lichtenstein

0:53:54 > 0:53:56would later pick up.

0:53:56 > 0:54:00And dominating everything is this prominent bodybuilder

0:54:00 > 0:54:02wearing white trunks.

0:54:02 > 0:54:05In his right hand, in place of a dumbbell,

0:54:05 > 0:54:08he's holding a very suggestive, phallic,

0:54:08 > 0:54:13red, cellophane-wrapped lollipop bearing the brand name Tootsie Pop

0:54:13 > 0:54:15and, because of that detail,

0:54:15 > 0:54:20this work is often considered the first genuinely pop work of pop art,

0:54:20 > 0:54:23perhaps even the movement's manifesto.

0:54:23 > 0:54:27So this small, perhaps, at first, underwhelming image,

0:54:27 > 0:54:32has to be, actually, one of the most inventive and prophetic pictures

0:54:32 > 0:54:35in the history of 20th-century British art.

0:54:36 > 0:54:39Like his hero Marcel Duchamp,

0:54:39 > 0:54:43Hamilton made work that was both playful and brainy.

0:54:43 > 0:54:47He presents elements of popular culture like pieces of a puzzle

0:54:47 > 0:54:49for the viewer to solve.

0:54:49 > 0:54:53And that's exactly why Hamilton has been overlooked.

0:54:53 > 0:54:58He and the Independent Group were simply too clever by half.

0:54:58 > 0:55:00The early British pop artists never produced anything

0:55:00 > 0:55:04as immediately satisfying as the bold visual statements

0:55:04 > 0:55:07of Warhol or Lichtenstein.

0:55:07 > 0:55:10Ultimately, they were intellectuals

0:55:10 > 0:55:15viewing consumer culture from a position of critical detachment.

0:55:15 > 0:55:18But the next generation of British artists,

0:55:18 > 0:55:21they had a very different attitude towards popular culture,

0:55:21 > 0:55:24one that was much more straightforward and unconflicted,

0:55:24 > 0:55:26celebratory.

0:55:26 > 0:55:29In short, they were fans.

0:55:29 > 0:55:32MUSIC: Goodbye Cruel World by James Darren

0:55:32 > 0:55:33# Goodbye cruel world

0:55:35 > 0:55:37# Goodbye cruel world

0:55:37 > 0:55:40# Oh, goodbye cruel world

0:55:40 > 0:55:42# I'm off to join the circus... #

0:55:42 > 0:55:47The art of Peter Blake is a riot of working-class entertainment.

0:55:48 > 0:55:53The pleasures of rock music, the fairground, the circus.

0:55:53 > 0:55:56# Turned my whole world upside down... #

0:55:58 > 0:56:02Visiting Blake's studio is like stepping into a bygone age.

0:56:02 > 0:56:07A nostalgic soul, he's immersed in yesteryear's popular culture.

0:56:07 > 0:56:11It's all folk art, so it's fairground...

0:56:11 > 0:56:15- Like this sort of thing. Carousel horses.- Carousels. Yeah.

0:56:15 > 0:56:19- And tattoo.- I was just looking at these slabs of wooden meat

0:56:19 > 0:56:21and wondering what they were.

0:56:21 > 0:56:25- They're props. They're pantomime props.- They're brilliant, yeah.

0:56:25 > 0:56:27# Well, the joke's on me

0:56:27 > 0:56:29# I'm off to join the circus

0:56:29 > 0:56:34# Oh, Mr Barnum, save a place for me

0:56:34 > 0:56:36# Shoot me out of a cannon

0:56:36 > 0:56:38# I don't care... #

0:56:38 > 0:56:42Blake channelled the populist, egalitarian spirit

0:56:42 > 0:56:43of English folk art

0:56:43 > 0:56:46and repurposed it for the modern age.

0:56:47 > 0:56:50In doing so, he paved the way for other young artists

0:56:50 > 0:56:56to break down the division between high and low culture

0:56:56 > 0:57:02by foregrounding his own personal hobbies, interests and experiences.

0:57:04 > 0:57:07In his painting Self-portrait With Badges,

0:57:07 > 0:57:10Blake presents himself as an American teenager

0:57:10 > 0:57:14wearing home-made jeans fashioned from overalls.

0:57:14 > 0:57:18In 1961, this seemed wilfully eccentric.

0:57:18 > 0:57:23The idea of an adult covered with a lot of badges didn't exist.

0:57:23 > 0:57:24It seemed quite childlike, really.

0:57:24 > 0:57:27- It was a childlike thing to have lots of badges.- Absolutely.

0:57:27 > 0:57:30I was becoming a child again. Yeah. Yeah.

0:57:30 > 0:57:35Through popular culture, Blake found a way of making sense of his past,

0:57:35 > 0:57:39the loss of his childish innocence in the Second World War

0:57:39 > 0:57:43when, at the age of just seven, he was evacuated to the countryside

0:57:43 > 0:57:47to the austere household of a woman called Mrs Lofts.

0:57:47 > 0:57:51Every Sunday, we went to the morning service,

0:57:51 > 0:57:53Sunday school and the evening service

0:57:53 > 0:57:55and then, in the evening,

0:57:55 > 0:58:01I suppose after the service, she'd send my sister and I out for a walk

0:58:01 > 0:58:03just to get rid of us,

0:58:03 > 0:58:07and, one day, I thought, "This is awful, I'm committing suicide."

0:58:07 > 0:58:10And I tried to strangle myself

0:58:10 > 0:58:14and, as a seven-year-old kid, you can't,

0:58:14 > 0:58:18- so, yeah, it was pretty rough. - That's dreadful.

0:58:18 > 0:58:22- You were quite damaged by this? - Yeah. I realised I was.

0:58:22 > 0:58:24In his wistful autobiographical works

0:58:24 > 0:58:26from the early part of his career,

0:58:26 > 0:58:30Blake uses popular culture to evoke his stolen childhood.

0:58:30 > 0:58:32MUSIC: Mr Sandman by The Chordettes

0:58:32 > 0:58:34- # I'm so alone - Bum-bum-bum-bum

0:58:34 > 0:58:40- # Don't have nobody to call my own - Bum-bum-bum-bum... #

0:58:40 > 0:58:43The figures, full of yearning, are based on members of his own family.

0:58:43 > 0:58:46# And tell him that his lonesome nights are over... #

0:58:46 > 0:58:50These paintings simply reveal Blake's own childhood hobbies

0:58:50 > 0:58:53and, most important of all, his passion for music.

0:58:53 > 0:58:58- So is this your sort of principle working space, then?- Yeah.

0:58:58 > 0:59:02But this is still part of your collections of various things?

0:59:02 > 0:59:06Well, when LPs went out of favour, I kept mine.

0:59:06 > 0:59:09- Can we have a leaf through and have a look?- Yeah, I mean...

0:59:09 > 0:59:10Charlie Parker.

0:59:10 > 0:59:15These just happen to be what's on the top, so Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck.

0:59:17 > 0:59:21To Blake, pop music is more than just a theme of his work.

0:59:21 > 0:59:26Back in the '50s, it helped him define his entire artistic approach.

0:59:28 > 0:59:32Lawrence Alloway, who was an English critic,

0:59:32 > 0:59:34was having a dinner party one night

0:59:34 > 0:59:37and we were talking about what I was trying to do and I said,

0:59:37 > 0:59:43"I'm trying to make an art that works on the same level as music,

0:59:43 > 0:59:47"so that, if somebody listens to an Elvis Presley record,

0:59:47 > 0:59:51"they could look at a picture by me of Elvis on the same level,"

0:59:51 > 0:59:55and he said, "What? A kind of pop art?"

0:59:55 > 0:59:57What? So you were there at the birth of...

0:59:57 > 0:59:59Not only were there, you inspired the birth of the term.

0:59:59 > 1:00:02Well, I claim I do.

1:00:02 > 1:00:05During a career spanning more than 50 years,

1:00:05 > 1:00:10Blake defined how we see many of our greatest musical heroes.

1:00:10 > 1:00:14His most famous pop creation, made with the artist Jann Haworth,

1:00:14 > 1:00:18transformed The Beatles from boy band to legend.

1:00:19 > 1:00:22But it's a painting he began in 1960

1:00:22 > 1:00:25that first encapsulates his pop ethos.

1:00:25 > 1:00:27MUSIC: Got a Girl by The Four Preps

1:00:27 > 1:00:29# Oh, well, I've got a girl What a girl

1:00:29 > 1:00:31# I don't know what to do... #

1:00:31 > 1:00:34Got A Girl is based on a song by The Four Preps

1:00:34 > 1:00:37and it contains an actual record.

1:00:37 > 1:00:42The imagery of the painting acts out the lyrics of the song.

1:00:42 > 1:00:44# Yeah, there was Fabian

1:00:44 > 1:00:45# Avalon

1:00:45 > 1:00:48# Ricky Nelson too, yeah, yeah, yeah

1:00:48 > 1:00:51# Bobby Rydell and I know darn well

1:00:51 > 1:00:54# Presley's in there too... #

1:00:54 > 1:00:57We could even think of the entire composition

1:00:57 > 1:01:01as a rudimentary precursor to the music video.

1:01:03 > 1:01:06Blake's classic pop pictures broadcast a liberating message

1:01:06 > 1:01:09to younger British painters -

1:01:09 > 1:01:11no subject on earth was off-limits.

1:01:13 > 1:01:18And, as he approached 30, Blake, the so-called godfather of British pop,

1:01:18 > 1:01:22found himself at the forefront of a dynamic new scene.

1:01:22 > 1:01:25# I guess I might have known... #

1:01:25 > 1:01:27Six years after he'd enrolled there,

1:01:27 > 1:01:28the Royal College of Art

1:01:28 > 1:01:33welcomed a blazingly talented intake of students.

1:01:33 > 1:01:35# Presley's in there too... #

1:01:35 > 1:01:37'59 was that extraordinary year,

1:01:37 > 1:01:39that was Hockney, Allen Jones,

1:01:39 > 1:01:42Boshier, Pete Phillips,

1:01:42 > 1:01:44Pauline Boty.

1:01:44 > 1:01:47Ken Russell's documentary film Pop Goes the Easel

1:01:47 > 1:01:51was broadcast on the BBC in 1962,

1:01:51 > 1:01:55launching the exciting new pop art movement to the nation.

1:01:57 > 1:01:59Street-smart and hip,

1:01:59 > 1:02:02these young artists grew up with rock music and fashion

1:02:02 > 1:02:07and they depicted celebrity, the space race and consumer products

1:02:07 > 1:02:10with the same ease as their American counterparts,

1:02:10 > 1:02:14but the British approach was more painterly, less aggressive

1:02:14 > 1:02:17and sometimes more complicated.

1:02:17 > 1:02:20Still, one thing they did share with the Americans

1:02:20 > 1:02:23was a knack for provocation.

1:02:23 > 1:02:26The initial reaction they elicited was one of horror.

1:02:26 > 1:02:30The artist Allen Jones proved particularly shocking.

1:02:30 > 1:02:35His tutors at the Royal College expelled him as an example.

1:02:35 > 1:02:38Russell Spears said, "Oh, you're going to be a decorator.

1:02:38 > 1:02:42That's quite a low blow, really, isn't it, for any aspiring painter?

1:02:42 > 1:02:45- You don't really want to be a decorator.- Yeah, I was amused.

1:02:45 > 1:02:47I was staggered that he should say that, actually,

1:02:47 > 1:02:50but, on the other hand, here we are

1:02:50 > 1:02:5250-something years later

1:02:52 > 1:02:54and I've remembered it.

1:02:55 > 1:02:59In 1961, the year he should have graduated from the Royal College,

1:02:59 > 1:03:03Jones helped his friend, the artist Peter Phillips,

1:03:03 > 1:03:07to organise the prestigious student exhibition Young Contemporaries.

1:03:12 > 1:03:17When the committee went home, Peter and I had to lock up and so on

1:03:17 > 1:03:19and we wandered around looking at the show,

1:03:19 > 1:03:22and we looked at each other and just said,

1:03:22 > 1:03:25"This just looks like a sketch club,"

1:03:25 > 1:03:28and so we just took down everything off the walls

1:03:28 > 1:03:33and put all the work that we liked on one wall, basically,

1:03:33 > 1:03:36and so the Hockneys and the Boshiers and my work and so on

1:03:36 > 1:03:40were somehow hung as a cohesive group

1:03:40 > 1:03:45and it's seen as the first manifestation of pop art,

1:03:45 > 1:03:47as it subsequently was called.

1:03:51 > 1:03:54Whatever the origins of pop art, one thing's for sure -

1:03:54 > 1:03:56by the end of the '60s,

1:03:56 > 1:04:00the movement would extend far beyond the realm of the art gallery

1:04:00 > 1:04:02and into society at large.

1:04:03 > 1:04:05Allen Jones even received a phone call

1:04:05 > 1:04:07from the director Stanley Kubrick,

1:04:07 > 1:04:11who wanted to borrow his sculptures for his latest film

1:04:11 > 1:04:14for free.

1:04:14 > 1:04:16He did point out to me how famous he was,

1:04:16 > 1:04:18that I would get a lot of coverage,

1:04:18 > 1:04:22and I said, "Yes, but I'm not a set designer."

1:04:22 > 1:04:27I said, "If you can get me a show in the Louvre, I'll do it."

1:04:29 > 1:04:32Jones never did get that show at the Louvre,

1:04:32 > 1:04:35but he did give Kubrick his blessing to copy his work

1:04:35 > 1:04:37for A Clockwork Orange,

1:04:37 > 1:04:41so Kubrick animated one of the most controversial films

1:04:41 > 1:04:43of the 20th century

1:04:43 > 1:04:47by plundering the look of Jones's kinky sculptures.

1:04:53 > 1:04:57The movement that had raided popular culture was now its fodder.

1:04:59 > 1:05:01Pop art had become a look.

1:05:03 > 1:05:07Straddling the worlds of fashion, design and music,

1:05:07 > 1:05:10and capable of crossing continents.

1:05:14 > 1:05:19It isn't just this single story, this Anglo-American narrative.

1:05:19 > 1:05:22There were different things happening in Germany,

1:05:22 > 1:05:25in France, across Europe, elsewhere in the world,

1:05:25 > 1:05:29and, even if they can't be narrowly defined as pop,

1:05:29 > 1:05:31the kind of pop that Warhol, Lichtenstein

1:05:31 > 1:05:33and his contemporaries created,

1:05:33 > 1:05:36they're part of a wider spirit

1:05:36 > 1:05:39that I think it's perfectly legitimate to think of

1:05:39 > 1:05:41as a part of pop art.

1:05:44 > 1:05:48The old stories about pop art are too one-sided.

1:05:48 > 1:05:50Lichtenstein may have parodied

1:05:50 > 1:05:53the media's infatuation with blonde bombshells

1:05:53 > 1:05:57but other pop artists seem to reflect sexist stereotypes

1:05:57 > 1:05:59without much thought.

1:05:59 > 1:06:03But there were female pop artists

1:06:03 > 1:06:07who attacked the chauvinism of popular culture

1:06:07 > 1:06:10and were then sidelined for years.

1:06:10 > 1:06:14One of them has lived here at the Chelsea Hotel since the '60s

1:06:14 > 1:06:20and it's only recently that Nicola L has been embraced as a pop artist.

1:06:20 > 1:06:21KNOCK ON DOOR

1:06:23 > 1:06:28- Oh! Hello.- Nicola, hello.- Alastair. - Yes. Good to meet you.

1:06:28 > 1:06:31- If it's all right... The zip's down here.- Yes.

1:06:31 > 1:06:33Oh, you know already. That's great.

1:06:33 > 1:06:36What's happening here?

1:06:36 > 1:06:39It's a kind of construction-destruction.

1:06:39 > 1:06:41- Ah, you know...- It's like a warzone.

1:06:42 > 1:06:45Is this sculpture or furniture?

1:06:45 > 1:06:48Is it pop or surrealism?

1:06:48 > 1:06:54In a playful fashion, Nicola L objectifies women, literally.

1:06:54 > 1:06:57The women on offer here are very different

1:06:57 > 1:07:00from the pin-ups of classic pop

1:07:00 > 1:07:03but they still fizz with all its ironic wit.

1:07:03 > 1:07:05This is the ironing table

1:07:05 > 1:07:07and it is a woman.

1:07:07 > 1:07:10A woman. Like quite a lot of your furniture, it's a woman.

1:07:10 > 1:07:12Is this a woman's giant green foot?

1:07:12 > 1:07:14- Can I sit on it?- Yes, please.

1:07:14 > 1:07:17- I'd love to see you on it. - So, this is...

1:07:17 > 1:07:19Right. I mean, this is...

1:07:19 > 1:07:22- It's a work of art as well as a piece of furniture.- Yes.

1:07:22 > 1:07:24- Well, it is very comfortable.- Yes.

1:07:24 > 1:07:27I've got to ask you about this. Do you actually use this for real?

1:07:27 > 1:07:31Oh, yes. This is for my cheques.

1:07:31 > 1:07:33- You keep things in the drawers?- Yes. - Look at the mouth!

1:07:33 > 1:07:36This is my credit card. This is whatever.

1:07:36 > 1:07:40You know, it is on wheels. You can dance with it if you want.

1:07:40 > 1:07:42- Yeah?- That's amazing.

1:07:43 > 1:07:49Nicola L made this furniture when she arrived in New York in 1967.

1:07:49 > 1:07:53It was a radical departure from her early work in Paris.

1:07:53 > 1:07:56There, she had studied as a painter

1:07:56 > 1:07:59and struggled for visibility in the macho art scene.

1:08:00 > 1:08:05My name was Nicola without S, at the school of Beaux-Arts in Paris,

1:08:05 > 1:08:10so I put an S on my name, Nicolas, so it seemed a guy, you know?

1:08:10 > 1:08:12- And it worked?- It works.

1:08:12 > 1:08:17So the guy, he came and looked and said, "You are a girl," you know,

1:08:17 > 1:08:19completely furious.

1:08:19 > 1:08:22I could see he was really disappointed.

1:08:22 > 1:08:25Like most art students at the start of the '60s,

1:08:25 > 1:08:29Nicola first made abstract paintings.

1:08:29 > 1:08:33I had the feeling that nobody was really looking at my work

1:08:33 > 1:08:36and, one day, I made four...

1:08:36 > 1:08:39One, two, three, four, five robes.

1:08:41 > 1:08:44- Oh, I see. For the head and the limbs.- And I went inside.

1:08:44 > 1:08:47- Right. Great.- Yeah.

1:08:47 > 1:08:50So you actually put your whole legs and feet...

1:08:50 > 1:08:52I try to do it.

1:08:52 > 1:08:54We have to be...

1:08:59 > 1:09:04- So, suddenly, I was asking them to be inside the painting.- Yeah, right!

1:09:04 > 1:09:05You know?

1:09:05 > 1:09:07And, well...

1:09:07 > 1:09:10MUSIC: Mellow Yellow by Donovan

1:09:10 > 1:09:13Nicola's eccentric paintings became a series of work,

1:09:13 > 1:09:15called The Penetrables.

1:09:18 > 1:09:22The most striking example is Same Skin For Everyone,

1:09:22 > 1:09:24a red coat for 11 people

1:09:24 > 1:09:28which Nicola has carried around the world in a suitcase.

1:09:29 > 1:09:33In every new city, she invites passers-by to join her

1:09:33 > 1:09:35in putting on the coat.

1:09:36 > 1:09:38Helping each other inside,

1:09:38 > 1:09:41the strangers become joined by a common skin

1:09:41 > 1:09:43and walk together.

1:09:45 > 1:09:47It's often seen as a plea for tolerance

1:09:47 > 1:09:51and a protest against racism.

1:09:51 > 1:09:54- They're saying that you're a pop artist.- Yeah, yeah.

1:09:54 > 1:09:56Whereas, in most of the histories of pop,

1:09:56 > 1:09:59you're not explicitly there.

1:09:59 > 1:10:02Suddenly, you know... First, you have to have a long life

1:10:02 > 1:10:03if you are a woman, you know?

1:10:03 > 1:10:07It's easier to be a man in... for my generation, you know.

1:10:09 > 1:10:12Nicola wasn't alone.

1:10:12 > 1:10:16Pop art included several important female artists who,

1:10:16 > 1:10:18like her, were subsequently ignored.

1:10:20 > 1:10:24Artists like Rosalyn Drexler, Pauline Boty,

1:10:24 > 1:10:27Marisol, and Evelyn Axell.

1:10:27 > 1:10:30Their work had a more explicit,

1:10:30 > 1:10:35passionately-political quality than the ironic, cool carapace

1:10:35 > 1:10:39of classic pop, and the artists were in good company.

1:10:39 > 1:10:43In the '60s and '70s, new strands of pop art emerged, harnessing

1:10:43 > 1:10:48pop's knack for stylishly recycling the strategies of advertising.

1:10:48 > 1:10:52Younger artists began to use pop's powers of persuasion

1:10:52 > 1:10:56to sell a very different kind of product - radical change.

1:10:56 > 1:10:59SIREN BLARES

1:11:00 > 1:11:05In 1968, a sexual, social and political revolution

1:11:05 > 1:11:07convulsed France.

1:11:07 > 1:11:08SHOUTING

1:11:10 > 1:11:15What started out as an isolated student protest

1:11:15 > 1:11:17quickly turned into all-out war...

1:11:20 > 1:11:23..with 10 million people on strike,

1:11:23 > 1:11:27raging against working conditions, unemployment

1:11:27 > 1:11:30and France's stifling conservative society.

1:11:33 > 1:11:35Within days of the protests,

1:11:35 > 1:11:39mysterious posters started emerging all over Paris...

1:11:40 > 1:11:44..their inciendary slogans wittily incited revolution.

1:11:47 > 1:11:51Every morning, new designs appeared in their hundreds.

1:11:54 > 1:11:57The posters were the work of Atelier Populaire,

1:11:57 > 1:12:01or the people's studio, a collective of anonymous artists,

1:12:01 > 1:12:04and together they worked with the protesters to create

1:12:04 > 1:12:09thousands of posters in their very own propaganda production line

1:12:09 > 1:12:12and everything about the posters - the method of the production,

1:12:12 > 1:12:18their spirit, the visual language - it all borrowed heavily from pop.

1:12:20 > 1:12:23French pop art wasn't especially new.

1:12:24 > 1:12:27By the end of the '50s, artists were already making work

1:12:27 > 1:12:31that drew heavily upon popular culture.

1:12:36 > 1:12:41But it wasn't until 1968 that pop art finally connected

1:12:41 > 1:12:43with workers on the street.

1:12:46 > 1:12:51In May '68, French artists returning to Paris to support the students

1:12:51 > 1:12:53came here to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,

1:12:53 > 1:12:56where the Atelier Populaire had occupied

1:12:56 > 1:12:59the lithographic department.

1:13:06 > 1:13:08When was the last time that you were here?

1:13:12 > 1:13:14- 45 years ago.- Really?

1:13:16 > 1:13:21'In 1968, Gerard Fromanger was a member of Atelier Populaire,

1:13:21 > 1:13:24'and an anonymous spokesman for the group.'

1:13:24 > 1:13:28Even the power tried to get us.

1:13:49 > 1:13:53In the beginning, Fromanger and his friends planned

1:13:53 > 1:13:56to design prints to raise money for the students.

1:13:57 > 1:14:02- This is the first one we did here... on this machine.- Really?

1:14:02 > 1:14:06This one, usines... factory, university, union.

1:14:06 > 1:14:09Because all the day long before...

1:14:11 > 1:14:15..the cry in the street, "Usines, universite, union!

1:14:15 > 1:14:18"Usines, universite, union!" So we did!

1:14:18 > 1:14:19LA MARSEILLAISE PLAYS

1:14:23 > 1:14:25As soon as the posters were produced,

1:14:25 > 1:14:27they were pasted on the walls...

1:14:29 > 1:14:32..transformed from prints into weapons

1:14:32 > 1:14:34in the service of the struggle.

1:14:34 > 1:14:35The only problem was

1:14:35 > 1:14:39lithographic printing was labour-intensive and slow.

1:14:42 > 1:14:49- Everything with hand, so 30 in one night.- That's hard.- Oh, very hard.

1:14:49 > 1:14:53But one of the artists had just returned from New York where

1:14:53 > 1:14:59he'd become well acquainted with Warhol and his silkscreen process.

1:14:59 > 1:15:02This commercial technique would allow the Atelier to produce

1:15:02 > 1:15:05hundreds of posters every night

1:15:05 > 1:15:08and react immediately to unfolding events.

1:15:12 > 1:15:16- This was a de Gaulle quote. He said this thing.- It was a response.

1:15:16 > 1:15:18- Quickly.- Quickly. Yes.

1:15:25 > 1:15:29- How fast are we talking? - After 10 hours...

1:15:30 > 1:15:33..it was ready and on the walls.

1:15:33 > 1:15:36Although the Atelier Populaire was active

1:15:36 > 1:15:38for just the few weeks of the riots,

1:15:38 > 1:15:44its impact reveals the far-reaching power of pop art as a mode,

1:15:44 > 1:15:47its ability to revolutionise people on the streets

1:15:47 > 1:15:50as much as visitors to the art gallery.

1:15:50 > 1:15:55No other modern art movement has been so widely accessible.

1:15:58 > 1:16:02And in other parts of the world, from South America to Iran,

1:16:02 > 1:16:06artists used the language of pop art for politically subversive ends.

1:16:06 > 1:16:10Neglected for years, the work of international pop artists

1:16:10 > 1:16:12has recently been gaining acclaim

1:16:12 > 1:16:16and will now be celebrated in Tate Modern's upcoming

1:16:16 > 1:16:20exhibition of global pop art - The World Goes Pop.

1:16:22 > 1:16:26Yet this extraordinary explosion happened at the very moment

1:16:26 > 1:16:29when many were proclaiming pop art's demise.

1:16:36 > 1:16:39In New York City, on 3rd June 1968,

1:16:39 > 1:16:44Warhol's factory received an uninvited guest -

1:16:44 > 1:16:46Valerie Solanas,

1:16:46 > 1:16:49actress and founding member of SCUM,

1:16:49 > 1:16:52the Society for Cutting Up Men.

1:16:52 > 1:16:58She had a grudge against Warhol and was out for revenge.

1:16:59 > 1:17:02Warhol didn't stand a chance.

1:17:02 > 1:17:05Solanis pulled out a gun and fired.

1:17:10 > 1:17:13Miraculously, after six hours on the operating table,

1:17:13 > 1:17:16he did pull through, but the survival

1:17:16 > 1:17:20of the movement that he'd helped to create was in the balance.

1:17:21 > 1:17:26That year, the New York Times announced that pop art was dead,

1:17:26 > 1:17:30but even though Warhol's shooting is often used to mark

1:17:30 > 1:17:36the end of classic pop, in fact, like Warhol, pop art would live on.

1:17:37 > 1:17:41After the shooting, Warhol remained as prolific as ever.

1:17:41 > 1:17:44In total, he produced 10,000 paintings,

1:17:44 > 1:17:47one for every day of his life.

1:17:47 > 1:17:53- I'm a commercial person.- Why?- Well, I've got a lot of mouths to feed.

1:17:54 > 1:17:56Got to bring home the bacon.

1:17:56 > 1:18:00By the '70s, he was making 2 million a year,

1:18:00 > 1:18:03purely from the sale of commissioned portraits.

1:18:03 > 1:18:06I paint anybody - anybody that asks me.

1:18:07 > 1:18:11How do you choose to paint somebody, just because they ask?

1:18:11 > 1:18:13Er, yeah, that's the only way.

1:18:15 > 1:18:19For 40,000, anyone could have a Warhol of their own,

1:18:19 > 1:18:21based on a quick Polaroid snap.

1:18:23 > 1:18:28In 1975, Warhol declared himself a business artist,

1:18:28 > 1:18:30dedicated to the art of making money.

1:18:32 > 1:18:37Pop might have lived on, but to its many critics it had sold out.

1:18:42 > 1:18:46And the long shadow of Warhol's influence continued

1:18:46 > 1:18:47most obviously in the work

1:18:47 > 1:18:51of the world's most expensive living artist, Jeff Koons,

1:18:51 > 1:18:55whose kitsch sculptures furthered pop's use of bad taste

1:18:55 > 1:18:57to shock the art world.

1:18:59 > 1:19:01But artists did continue using

1:19:01 > 1:19:03the sharp, satirical edge of pop art...

1:19:06 > 1:19:10..and in the last place you'd expect - behind the Iron Curtain,

1:19:10 > 1:19:13where from the beginning of the '70s

1:19:13 > 1:19:15pop became a means of political subversion.

1:19:19 > 1:19:24Inspired by Western pop art, artists began to explore the parallels

1:19:24 > 1:19:28between the imagery of advertising and the imagery of propaganda.

1:19:32 > 1:19:34Just as advertising was trying to sell a product,

1:19:34 > 1:19:38propaganda was trying to sell a political system.

1:19:40 > 1:19:43The phenomenon arose in the Soviet Union,

1:19:43 > 1:19:48in a movement known as Sots Art, but it had much greater impact

1:19:48 > 1:19:52in China where pop still underpins contemporary art.

1:19:55 > 1:20:00A movement known as Political Pop emerged in 1989

1:20:00 > 1:20:06as China embraced economic reform and opened its doors to the West.

1:20:08 > 1:20:13It coincided with the tragic events of Tiananmen Square.

1:20:13 > 1:20:17That suddenly changed the entire mood of the nation.

1:20:17 > 1:20:20Basically, the cultural world was very quiet.

1:20:20 > 1:20:24Everything went underground and Political Pop,

1:20:24 > 1:20:27as a new form of art, emerged during this era.

1:20:27 > 1:20:32It was very much an art form that captured the shift

1:20:32 > 1:20:35from one end of the Cold War to the other side.

1:20:40 > 1:20:45Young, politically disaffected artists lampooned the awkward

1:20:45 > 1:20:48relationship between the ideals of communism

1:20:48 > 1:20:50and the introduction of consumer goods.

1:20:52 > 1:20:56Risking censorship and arrest, artists like Wang Guangyi

1:20:56 > 1:21:00and Yu Youhan relied on pastiche, irony

1:21:00 > 1:21:04and playfulness to communicate the state of a nation

1:21:04 > 1:21:08on the brink of enormous political and economic change.

1:21:09 > 1:21:12Parodying Western brands and slogans,

1:21:12 > 1:21:17these artists imagined the kind of future that capitalism could bring,

1:21:17 > 1:21:22and that future has come to pass in a nation that has become

1:21:22 > 1:21:25the world's largest and fastest-growing economy.

1:21:28 > 1:21:30It may sound a little strange,

1:21:30 > 1:21:34but coming to China today reveals quite a lot, I think,

1:21:34 > 1:21:39about the mind-set that produced pop art in mid-century America.

1:21:39 > 1:21:41Just as America in the '40s and '50s

1:21:41 > 1:21:46was rampantly expanding as a nation, so China over the past two decades

1:21:46 > 1:21:50has transformed itself with astonishing speed.

1:21:50 > 1:21:52Look at that skyline.

1:21:52 > 1:21:56This is a glittering and self-confident

1:21:56 > 1:21:58freshly-manufactured world,

1:21:58 > 1:22:02and Chinese artists who wanted to come to terms

1:22:02 > 1:22:06with this profound shift in their society, they became

1:22:06 > 1:22:10obsessed with a particular product of the West - pop art.

1:22:10 > 1:22:13Several decades after its creation,

1:22:13 > 1:22:17pop had become the go-to style for a nation on the up.

1:22:21 > 1:22:26If you think of China in the last 25 years, the whole material world

1:22:26 > 1:22:29of China, the whole visual world, is totally transformed.

1:22:29 > 1:22:32Everything is new and just made,

1:22:32 > 1:22:36so dealing with this newly manufactured world

1:22:36 > 1:22:39is certainly something that everybody has to deal with,

1:22:39 > 1:22:44so, in this sense, I think pop sensibility is

1:22:44 > 1:22:48embedded in the Chinese consciousness and one has to come to deal with it.

1:22:53 > 1:23:00For the generation of artists who grew up during China's miracle boom,

1:23:00 > 1:23:0421st-century mass media culture is a turbo-charged mix

1:23:04 > 1:23:08of commercial imagery and consumer desire...

1:23:10 > 1:23:16..video games and the furious buzz of a 24-hour online society.

1:23:17 > 1:23:22And it's the internet that inspires superstar Chinese artist Xu Zhen...

1:23:25 > 1:23:28..one of the leading and most controversial artists

1:23:28 > 1:23:29of his generation...

1:23:30 > 1:23:33..China's answer to Andy Warhol

1:23:33 > 1:23:36and a man who's reinventing pop for the 21st century.

1:23:41 > 1:23:47Xu Zhen even took Warhol's idea that good business is the best art

1:23:47 > 1:23:49to its logical extreme.

1:23:49 > 1:23:55In 2009, he founded a firm dedicated to the production of creativity

1:23:55 > 1:23:58and he became its CEO.

1:23:58 > 1:24:02Xu Zhen was no longer a singular artist,

1:24:02 > 1:24:04he was now a corporate brand.

1:24:07 > 1:24:10Xu Zhen's studio has none of the decadence

1:24:10 > 1:24:14but all of the industry of Warhol's original factory.

1:24:23 > 1:24:26Xu Zhen employs 50 staff to design

1:24:26 > 1:24:31and produce 10 different series of works, or product lines.

1:24:31 > 1:24:34All he has to do is communicate an idea.

1:24:36 > 1:24:39He even has a line of T-shirts and bags.

1:24:41 > 1:24:45He's often compared to Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons -

1:24:45 > 1:24:49artists who've turned making money into an art form.

1:24:53 > 1:24:56Are you a fan of capitalism, is that what your work is about,

1:24:56 > 1:24:59or are you more critical of it as a system?

1:25:23 > 1:25:27In 2007, ShanghART Supermarket became one of the most talked about

1:25:27 > 1:25:30works of Chinese contemporary art.

1:25:30 > 1:25:35Xu Zhen replicated an entire supermarket, complete with cashiers.

1:25:37 > 1:25:39But this was no ordinary store.

1:25:42 > 1:25:44- Oh, it's empty.- Yeah.- It's empty.

1:25:44 > 1:25:46- Are they all empty?- Yeah.

1:25:47 > 1:25:48It's still sealed.

1:25:50 > 1:25:53What have you done with all of the contents of these boxes?

1:25:54 > 1:25:58'Of course, this isn't the first time supermarket products

1:25:58 > 1:25:59'have inspired art.'

1:25:59 > 1:26:01Product of Germany, this one.

1:26:01 > 1:26:03'In 1964, Warhol exhibited

1:26:03 > 1:26:06sculptures of shop-bought packaging

1:26:06 > 1:26:09'in an exhibition called The American Supermarket.'

1:26:09 > 1:26:12Were you thinking much about Andy Warhol

1:26:12 > 1:26:14when you made this supermarket?

1:26:31 > 1:26:35At the ShanghART Supermarket, hundreds of visitors bought

1:26:35 > 1:26:38empty packaging for the price of ordinary products.

1:26:39 > 1:26:44And so Xu Zhen's installation mimics the supermarket model more closely

1:26:44 > 1:26:46than even Andy Warhol.

1:26:48 > 1:26:50On the surface, it seems playful

1:26:50 > 1:26:53but, underneath, it packs a political punch.

1:27:03 > 1:27:07Do you feel that this is... It's a work of pop art, this?

1:27:28 > 1:27:31Now, more than half a century after it was invented,

1:27:31 > 1:27:36we're living in the kind of future imagined by pop-art's pioneers.

1:27:37 > 1:27:39Their obsession with celebrity

1:27:39 > 1:27:45and the mass media has defined the way that we now see the world.

1:27:45 > 1:27:48And as capitalism has spread around the planet,

1:27:48 > 1:27:52so has pop art, documenting the seductive appeal

1:27:52 > 1:27:55and empty promises of mass consumerism

1:27:55 > 1:28:00and proving itself one of the most powerful expressions of life

1:28:00 > 1:28:03in our chaotic 24/7 internet age.

1:28:07 > 1:28:08Fundamentally, though, pop survives

1:28:08 > 1:28:12because its spirit is so inclusive and democratic.

1:28:12 > 1:28:16It's witty and playful, it's irreverent,

1:28:16 > 1:28:21and, as a result, it ensures that those sacred, high-minded principles

1:28:21 > 1:28:25of modern art can be enjoyed by the many and not just the few.

1:28:26 > 1:28:30The great lesson of pop is that there are no longer

1:28:30 > 1:28:33any barriers between high and low culture.

1:28:33 > 1:28:37As Andy Warhol put it - "Once you get pop,

1:28:37 > 1:28:40"you'll never see reality in the same way again."