The twentieth century has witnessed many transformations in the ways we produce and respond to works of art. It has seen the rise of altogether new media, approaches, and a wealth of new interpretative frameworks. The emergence of manufactured goods, modernism, and a ubiquitous mass culture contribute to the upheaval, in the 1960’s and 70’s, of established art practices and approaches. Pop Art emerges as an important response to, extension of, or parody of what Clement Greenberg called “Ersatz culture” and “kitsch”, which, to paraphrase Greenberg, represent the omnipresent abominations of commercial and replicated art (Greenberg 9). This essay will observe and discuss the interaction of Canadian pop culture, art, and identity in Joyce Wieland’s “O Canada (Animation)”, and will underline how works of Pop Art serve to elevate kitsch into “a new state of aesthetic dignity” (Eco 228).
Made in 1970, the year of Wieland’s return to Canada, “O Canada (Animation)” is a large embroidery piece on fabric depicting a series of luscious, bright red lips mouthing the words to the Canadian anthem, ultimately a visual rendition of its lip-synching. (It also exists as lithographic prints, where the mouths are similar to lipstick). The mouths are analogous to those of pin up girls and advertisements; the piece hangs loosely like a banner or flag. Wieland has just spent several years living in New York City and is now delving into works dealing with Canadian nationalism and traditionally feminine handcrafts. “O Canada” would not become the official Canadian anthem until 1980, but already in 1966, Lester B. Pearson is placing motions so that the song may become the country’s anthem. Similarly, the maple leaf flag is first flown in 1965 – nationali...
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... New York: Schocken Books, 2007. pp 217-51
-Eco, Umberto, “Lowbrow Highbrow, Highbrow Lowbrow” in Pop Art: The Critical Dialogue, ed. Carol Anne Mashun (Ann Arbor & London: UMI Research Press, 1989)
-Fleming, Marie, excerpt from “Joyce Wieland: A Perspective,” Joyce Wieland (Tornto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1987), pp. 44-70
-Greenberg, Clement, “Avant-Garde & Kitsch” (first published 1939) Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1939) pp.3-21
-Hebdige, Dick, “In Poor Taste: Notes on Pop,” chapter in Modern Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Pop (New York: ICA & London: MIT Press, 1988) pp. 77-85
-McTavish, Lianne “Body Narratives in Canada, 1968-99: Sarah Maloney, Catherine Heard, and Kathleen Sellars” in Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 Fall 2000 - Winter 2001. pp. 5-20
-Wieland, Joyce, “O Canada (Animation)” Embroidery on cloth. 1970.
Pop culture in the 1950s and 1960s began to spread and infest the nation from front to back through radio shows, books and magazines, television programs, and even motion pictures. Whether it is culture in terms of political affairs, clothing or the latest musical sensations, the United States has always played the dominant role when it came to who knows what is best, first. Some cases of Americanizati...
Pop Art was a Modern art movement that emerged durring the mid-twentieth century in both England and America. It first began to gain recognition in the early 1950’s, after about twenty years of Abstract, as artists altered their attention and looked to change. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Pop Art became much more popular to the general public and successful for the movement’s artists due to the world growing tired of the repeditive forms of Abstract. Found in the Menil Collection, Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster are two examples of Pop Art. The comparison of these two pieces shows although they differ in medium and subject matter both Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster share common underlying themes possesed by all Pop Art.
... performance pieces from becoming materialized via their documentation, one still finds many discreetly taken photographs and videos of his pieces circulating the web. Likewise, the reception of Yoko Ono’s 2003 reprisal of Cut Piece (1964) as captured by CBSnews.com’s article, “Crowd Cuts Yoko Ono’s Clothing Off” is typical of the sensationalized reception which characterizes the market consumption of avant-garde practices . So Burger was right in saying the culture industry consumes the most radical of gestures, for no one is completely outside the market, the circuit of exchange. On the other hand, no one is completely inside of it—there remain parts of humanity to which the market can stake no claim, Following this, we can perhaps write this addendum to the avant-garde demand: to integrate art within life-praxis, and make visible what is absent from both .
Rock ‘n’ roll and 20th Century Culture According to Philip Ennis, rock ‘n’ roll emerged from the convergence of social transformations which resulted from World War II (Ryan 927). Despite its pop culture origins, rock music is arguably one of the strongest cultural factors to develop in this century. Artists such as Lennon, McCartney and Dylan defined the emotions of a generation and, in the last decade, it as even been acknowledged by members of the establishment which it hoped to change as a major influence in the country. In order to understand how rock went from a sign of rebellion to a cultural icon, it is necessary to understand where it came from.
Epstein, Dan. 20th Century Pop Culture: The Early Years to 1949. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. Print.
Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64.
Canadians have come along way in their culture and identity. Canadians have participated in multiple wars and battles that have shaped our country and the people that live in this country. But it’s not just the violence what shaped our country but the people and traditions that originated outside of Canada and was brought here. European, British and French cultures and tradition have all influenced Canada’s culture and identity. (Blattberg, C. 13, January 02). Immigrants from all over the world have in the passed contributed to the way we view Canada and because of that we live in a safe, mosaic, multicultural country. (Blattberg, C. 13, January 02).There have also been the First Nations people who started Canada’s good reputation and because of them we have accomplished everything that we have done today. (Blattberg, C. 13, January 02).
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
Much has been written about the ways in which Canada's state as a nation is, as Peter Harcourt writes, "described" and hence, "imagined" (Harcourt, "The Canadian Nation -- An Unfinished Text", 6) through the cultural products that it produces. Harcourt's terms are justifiably elusive. The familiar concept of "Canadian culture", and hence Canadian cinema, within critical terminology is essentially based on the principle that the ideology of a national identity, supposedly limited by such tangible parameters as lines on a map, emerges from a common geographical and mythological experience among its people. The concept that cultural products produced in Canada will be somehow innately "Canadian" in form and content first presupposes the existence of such things as inherently Canadian qualities that can be observed. Second, it presupposes a certain commonality to all Canadian artists and posits them as vessels through which these said "inherently Canadian qualities" can naturally flow. Third, it also assumes the loosely Lacanian principle that Canadian consumers of culture are predisposed to identify and enjoy the semiotic and mythological systems of their nation, and further connotes that Canadians have fair access to their own cultural products. Since these assumptions are indeed flawed but not altogether false, this paper will deal with the general relationship between the concept of Canada, its cultural texts, and its mythological and critical discourse as an unresolved problematic that should be left "open" in order to maximize the "meaning potential" of films as cultural texts within the context of "national identity," an ideological construct that remains constantly in flux.
Pop art is an experimental art which surfaced in Great Britain in the early 1950’s. One of the major art movements of the twentieth century, it came into its own in the United States in the late 1950’s. This art form incorporated photographs in ways that had not been utilized before. It utilized mass-culture imagery and iconography, in contrast to the traditional tendencies of fine art. Pop art is considered to be one of the last modern art movements and served as a precursor to postmodern art. The art form is characterized by themes and techniques derived from mass culture, including advertising and comic books. Perhaps one of the most famous Pop artists, is Andy Warhol.
From the start of the 1920's, Canadians have faced a considerable amount of threat towards the Canadian culture from it's American neighbours. For Canada, living so close causes a concern on Canadian identity from American implementation, however, being in a close relationship with the States, it has also promoted Canadian culture. An examination of the nation's success with CBC from America's involvement in the airwaves, Canadian nationalism is promoted through Hockey Night in Canada and the establishment of the National Film Board during the growth of American entertainment industries, will clearly prove that American influence has not diminished Canadian identity but in fact has strengthened it.
“ Canada 's national obsession seems to be its own identity.” For many years Canada has feared the increasing influence of its North American neighbors on its culture - the United States . It has become a matter of growing concern for the people of power and influence in Canada to maintain their separate cultural identity and to promote their own cultural norms. Gaetan Tremblay presents his views on this topic and does this from the perspective of a person living and working in Quebec.
These cultural strictures come in a number of forms. First, the artist attacks intellectual conformity, choosing art over all other means of self-expression even though it is not widespread in his or her society. Though it is not explicitly stated - and is perhaps even subconscious - the artist chooses art over either academe or high society. The artist questions society's customs, making this choice explicit in their daily actions. The artist rejects ostentatious displays of wealth and the cultural emphasis on money, replacing it with a frugal simplicity more conducive to authentic experience. Finally, the artist calls into question the cultural construct most important to any understanding of human interaction - the binary conception of gender.
"1920's Art." The 1920's - Roaring Twenties - The Nineteen Twenties in History. 2005. Web. 28 Feb. 2011. .
In popular entertainment, if not in literature, yesterday's avant garde is often tomorrow's mainstream, so the term can function as a label simply identifying the next trend. As the American poet John Ashbery pointed out in an influential 1968 essay on the nature of the avant garde, where once an innovative artist had to wait a whole career to see their work absorbed into m...