Duchamp to Pop Exhibition @ The Norton Simon Museum

Hello everyone, it’s Ashlee! For my writing assignment I visited the ‘Duchamp to Pop ‘exhibition that is currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The exhibit explores French, naturalized American painter Marcel Duchamp’s influence on Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine. About 40 works from the museum's permanent collection are on view as well as loans from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the collection of Jack and Joan Quinn. Like referential art itself, the exhibition nods to previous Duchamp exhibitions at the museum, back when it was called the Pasadena Art Museum in the 1960s.

 

Marcel Duchamp is an artist whose work is associated with Cubism, conceptual art and Dada. He was integral in the development in the plastic arts and paved a new way of thinking about art that expanded beyond the artist’s own intention and context. His goal was to create as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye and transitioning everyday items into valid pieces of art that merited attention and respect.

 

The exhibition also has works of artists he inspired like American artist Andy Warhol who lead the pop art movement in the 1960s. They had several of his ‘Campbell Soup Cans’ on display as well as second addition of his ‘Brillo Boxes’. Both are screen-prints, but the first is used in a flat, two dimensional manner that we are most used to using in class, whereas the latter uses the technique on wood to create an almost sculptural piece.

 

I really liked the wide variety of techniques displayed and how different artist used screen-printing in unexpected ways. What unified the pieces thematically was to play with the social expectations of the time of what was considered “high” art and their willingness to have a tongue in cheek attitude regarding art.