As the Only East Coast Venue, International Pop Blasts Into Philly

Photos, story by Lou Perri

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents International Pop, a groundbreaking survey of this important movement that explores Pop Art as a global phenomenon that was shaped by artists working in many different countries throughout the world.

The exhibition features paintings, sculpture, assemblage, installation, printmaking, and film by 80 artists, drawn from public and private collections around the world, and offers an intriguing new look at a subject that is familiar. Viewing Pop Art through a much wider lens that amplifies a history commonly associated with major American figures like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, it is sure to delight audiences and broaden their understanding of one of the most significant chapters in the history of contemporary art.

Organized by the Walker Art Center, this is the first traveling exhibition in the United States to present a comprehensive account of the development of Pop Art during the 1960s and 1970s. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will be its final venue and the only East Coast presentation. International Pop runs through May 15th, 2016.

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, told Explore Philly: “Pop was one of the most iconic art movements of the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition is an ambitious effort to explore its emergence and impact far beyond the borders of the United States and Britain. We are delighted that in Philadelphia we will add to the exhibition some important works from private collections and our own holdings of contemporary art.”

Highlights of International Pop will include works of major British and American artists presented in juxtaposition with works by artists from other countries that were centers for the development of Pop Art.

Hers is a Lush Situation, a work painted in 1958 by one of the seminal figures of this movement, the British artist Richard Hamilton, offers a witty commentary on the advertising adage that sex sells. It treats the forms and shapes of a Buick as an evocation of the human body, punctuated by a cut-out of Sophia Loren’s lips. Other artists would look at this issue in a different light. In O Beijo (The Kiss) of 1967, for example, the Brazilian Waldemar Cordeiro turns the lips of Bridget Bardot into a mechanized image of a kinetic sculpture, fusing pop culture and emerging computer technology. By contrast, in Ice Cream, the Belgian artist Evelyne Axell paints a woman licking an ice cream cone from a radically feminized perspective, at once quoting and challenging notions of sexual desire.