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Lot Essay
The New York art world of the 1950s and 60s was dominated by the thought of one man: Clement Greenberg. The critical climate surrounding the production and reception of works of art was very much influenced by his doctrinaire theories and aesthetic judgements. For him the criteria for "High Art" were rigidly determined and precluded the artefacts of mass culture. Moreover the function of art was as a regulatory defence against the deleterious impact of kitsch consumer society. Greenberg famously championed the work of the Abstract Expressionist, seeing their emphasis on the material flatness of the picture plane as a potential method of self-criticism.
In the late 50s several young artists began to challenge Greenbergian formalism. Jasper Johns employed recognisable signs from popular culture - targets, flags, and numbers - as the basis for his compositions. Robert Rauschenberg combined painted collage elements with found objects attached to the canvas. Both still satisfied Greenberg's ideals: flat, self-contained, objective and immediate, whilst flaunting his central tenant. But the early Pop work of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the 1960s went much further, forcing together the two poles of art and commercial design and embracing consumer vulgarity.
Warhol produced two series based on postage stamps - the US Airmail stamp and the S&H Green stamps. He carved the designs into art gum erasers, painted over their surface, and made monoprint impressions on canvas and paper. Using the stamps allowed him to make repeating compositional patterns, as he had with his Campbell Soup Cans, but he also made numerous single impressions.
The paintings Warhol produced in 1962 would come to define his visual lexicon. He chose every day and seemingly trivial symbols that inverted "High Art" standards, but also engaged deeply with the culture. The current work, for example, depicts a form of currency - stamps are of course legal tender. Warhol had a complex relationship to material gain. He celebrated capitalist values on the one hand, but also seemed to have a profound consciousness of money's destructive power. In turning to the mass market icons of the American consumer Warhol performed a radical critique, the impactions of which are still being explored by artists today.
In the late 50s several young artists began to challenge Greenbergian formalism. Jasper Johns employed recognisable signs from popular culture - targets, flags, and numbers - as the basis for his compositions. Robert Rauschenberg combined painted collage elements with found objects attached to the canvas. Both still satisfied Greenberg's ideals: flat, self-contained, objective and immediate, whilst flaunting his central tenant. But the early Pop work of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the 1960s went much further, forcing together the two poles of art and commercial design and embracing consumer vulgarity.
Warhol produced two series based on postage stamps - the US Airmail stamp and the S&H Green stamps. He carved the designs into art gum erasers, painted over their surface, and made monoprint impressions on canvas and paper. Using the stamps allowed him to make repeating compositional patterns, as he had with his Campbell Soup Cans, but he also made numerous single impressions.
The paintings Warhol produced in 1962 would come to define his visual lexicon. He chose every day and seemingly trivial symbols that inverted "High Art" standards, but also engaged deeply with the culture. The current work, for example, depicts a form of currency - stamps are of course legal tender. Warhol had a complex relationship to material gain. He celebrated capitalist values on the one hand, but also seemed to have a profound consciousness of money's destructive power. In turning to the mass market icons of the American consumer Warhol performed a radical critique, the impactions of which are still being explored by artists today.