b-uncut

Living in a ma-ma-material world

// October 30th, 2009 // b-scene // Kara

The Tate Modern’s exhibitions never disappoint and their latest Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibition has le “va va voom”!

It’s a fun and colourful trip through pop art’s greatest hits from Andy Warhol to Richard Prince to Jeff Koons to Damien Hirst. For a moment we felt like pulling some of our best break-dance moves on the dance floor. Pop Life takes us through a journey of decadence where media-obsessed celebs flashed their dollars to the world whilst indulging in a sinful life of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.

As superficially fun and sensational as this exhibition may seem, the fact remains that the Tate deals with one of the most controversial issues of contemporary art — what happens to art when it embraces the mass market, capitalism and money? — taking Warhol’s maxim as its point of departure, “Good business is the best art”.

The show starts well with a highlight of Warhol’s cynical late works including a number of works from his initially controversial series known as the Retrospectives or Reversals. Including a number of celebrity portraits he made of anyone for a set price; the screenprints of gems that glitter cheesily with diamond dust; and his classic guest appearance with his Polaroid camera in an episode of The Love Boat.

It then takes us to giggly moments — like Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami’s pop video of Kirsten Dunst singing the old Eighties hit Turning Japanese, surrounded by cute Japanese girls. Followed by more “dramatic” moments of do-not-miss art from artists such as Piotr Uklanski’s grid of stills of Hollywood actors playing Nazis.

Finally, just as we think we might have got Pop Art’s drift about art, mass and cash, a series of rooms dedicated to porn and drugs caught our “attention”. Two questions crossed our minds: how provocative can porn be in this context and what are those bouncers here for?!