Media Research

Watching films relating to the subject can give you insight into the cultural and social issues as the researchers for the films go into depth to provide factual happenings and events. 

Here are trailers for the films 'Blow Up' and 'Factory Girl', 'Blow up' relates to the life of david Bailey in the 1960's and 'Factory girl' is a more recent film based on the artwork and relationships of Andy Warhol.

BLOW UP (1966) 

Blow Up is a film based on the works and relationships of Photographer David Bailey.

"Watching "Blow-Up" once again, I took a few minutes to acclimate myself to the loopy psychedelic colors and the tendency of the hero to use words like "fab". Then I found the spell of the movie settling around me. Antonioni uses the materials of a suspense thriller without the payoff. He places them within a London of heartless fashion photography, groupies, bored rock audiences, languid pot parties, and a hero whose dead soul is roused briefly by a challenge to his craftsmanship.

The movie stars David Hemmings, who became a 1960s icon after this performance as Thomas, a hot young photographer with a Beatles haircut, a Rolls convertible and "birds" hammering on his studio door for a chance to pose and put out for him. The depths of his spiritual hunger are suggested in three brief scenes involving a neighbor (Sarah Miles), who lives with a painter across the way. He looks at her as if she alone could heal his soul (and may have once done so), but she's not available. He spends his days in tightly scheduled photo shoots (the model Verushka plays herself, and there's a group shoot involving grotesque mod fashions), and his nights visiting flophouses to take pictures that might provide a nice contrast in his book of fashion photography.

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's first English-language production was also his only box office hit, widely considered one of the seminal films of the 1960s. Thomas (David Hemmings) is a nihilistic, wealthy fashion photographer in mod "Swinging London." Filled with ennui, bored with his "fab" but oddly-lifeless existence of casual sex and drug use, Thomas comes alive when he wanders through a park, stops to take pictures of a couple embracing, and upon developing the images, believes that he has photographed a murder. Pursued by Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), the woman who is in the photos, Thomas pretends to give her the pictures, but in reality, he passes off a different roll of film to her. Thomas returns to the park and discovers that there is, indeed, a dead body lying in the shrubbery: the gray-haired man who was embracing Jane. Has she murdered him, or does Thomas' photo reveal a man with a gun hiding nearby? Antonioni's thriller is a puzzling, existential, adroitly-assembled masterpiece.
There were of course obvious reasons for the film's great initial success. It became notorious for the orgy scene involving the groupies; it was whispered that one could actually see pubic hair (this was only seven years after similar breathless rumors about Janet Leigh's breasts in "Psycho"). The decadent milieu was enormously attractive at the time. Parts of the film have flip-flopped in meaning. Much was made of the nudity in 1967, but the photographer's cruelty toward his models was not commented on; today, the sex seems tame, and what makes the audience gasp is the hero's contempt for women."

By Roger Ebert and Karl Williams

FACTORY GIRL (2006)

Factory Girl is an in depth look into Andy Warhol's method of work and relationships in the 1960's.

The true story of one woman's brief and ultimately tragic flirtation with fame in the 1960s provides the basis for this biographical drama. In 1943, Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) was born to a wealthy and socially prominent family, and she grew up with beauty and money, but also a history of mental illness; she was hospitalized with an eating disorder in her late teens, and by the time she was 21, two of her seven siblings had died before their time. In 1964, Edie moved to New York City, and quickly made a splash on the Manhattan social scene; she became friendly with the famous pop artist Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), who was fascinated by her gamine loveliness and her quirky personality. 

Warhol wasted no time in casting her in one of his underground movies, and she quickly became a crucial part of his retinue of "superstars." Fashion icon Diana Vreeland (Illeana Douglas) was convinced Edie had the looks and charm to also become a successful model, and soon she was gracing the pages of Life, Vogue, and Glamour. But Edie's instability was hardly helped by her new fast-lane lifestyle, and when she met Billy Quinn (Hayden Christensen), a folk rock singer-songwriter often cited as "the voice of a generation," he persuaded her that Warhol and his associates were simply using her fame and beauty for their own gain, and she found herself torn between two powerful mentors, one of whom had become her lover as well. Factory Girl also co-stars Jimmy Fallon, Mena Suvari, and Tara Summers as regulars at the Warhol "Factory." The character of Musician was inspired in part by Bob Dylan, who was romantically involved with Edie Sedgwick for a brief time.

By Mark Deming, Rovi AVG

Source: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19981108/REVIEWS08/401010304/1023 

Source: http://www.fandango.com/factorygirl_v342292/summary

Source: http://www.fandango.com/blowup_v60942/summary 

Andy Warhol

"Once you “got” Pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again." 

 Andy Warhol from Popism: The Warhol 60's.

Andy Warhol biography

Early Life

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room row house apartment at 73 Orr Street in Pittsburgh. His parents, Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants Andrej and Julia Warhola, had three sons. Andy was their youngest.
Devout Byzantine Catholics, the family attended mass regularly and observed the traditions of their Eastern European heritage. Warhol’s father, a laborer, moved his family to a brick home on Dawson Street in 1934. Warhol attended the nearby Holmes School and took free art classes at Carnegie Institute (now The Carnegie Museum of Art). In addition to drawing, Hollywood movies enraptured Andy and he frequented the local cinema. When he was about nine years old, he received his first camera. Andy enjoyed taking pictures, and he developed them himself in his basement.
Andrej Warhola died in 1942, the same year that Andy entered Schenley High School. Recognizing his son’s talent, Andrej had saved money to pay for his college education. Warhol attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) from 1945 to 1949. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design with the goal of becoming a commercial illustrator. During these years he worked in the display department at Horne’s department store.

"I think of myself as an American artist; I like it here, I think it’s so great. It’s fantastic. I’d like to work in Europe but I wouldn’t do the same things, I’d do different things. I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic. I just paint those objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best."

Andy Warhol from 'My True Story'.

 

 

Success is a Job in New York – The 1950s

Soon after graduating, Warhol moved to New York City to pursue a career as a commercial artist. His work debuted in Glamour magazine in September 1949. Warhol became one of the most successful illustrators of the 1950s, winning numerous awards. He had a unique, whimsical style of drawing that belied its frequent sources: traced photographs and imagery. At times Warhol employed the delightfully quirky handwriting of his mother, who was always credited as “Andy Warhol’s Mother,” Julia Warhola left Pittsburgh in 1952 and lived with her son for almost 20 years before her death in Pittsburgh in 1972.
Warhol rewarded himself for his hard work by taking a round-the-world vacation with his friend Charles Lisanby from June 16 to August 12, 1956. They toured Hawaii and many countries in Asia and Europe. It was Warhol’s first trip abroad and a significant event in his life.
Serendipity 3, a trendy restaurant and ice cream parlor located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was a place where Warhol sometimes exhibited his work. He often held parties there--his friends could gorge themselves on the restaurant’s signature “frrrozen hot chocolate” while helping Warhol hand-color his self-published artists’ books.

Factory Years – The 1960s

In the late 1950s, Warhol began to devote more energy to painting. He made his first Pop paintings, which he based on comics and ads, in 1961. The following year marked the beginning of Warhol’s celebrity. He debuted his famous Campbell’s Soup Can series, which caused a sensation in the art world. Shortly thereafter he began a large sequence of movie star portraits, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor. Warhol also started his series of “death and disaster” paintings at that time.

Between 1963 and 1968 Warhol worked with his Superstar performers and various other people to create hundreds of films. These films were scripted and improvised, ranging from conceptual experiments and simple narratives to short portraits and sexploitation features. His works include Empire (1964), The Chelsea Girls (1966), and the Screen Tests (1964-66).
Warhol’s first exhibition of sculptures was held in 1964. It included hundreds of replicas of large supermarket product boxes, including Brillo Boxes and Heinz Boxes. For this occasion, he premiered his new studio, painted silver and known as “The Factory”. It quickly became “the” place to be in New York; parties held there were mentioned in gossip columns throughout the country. Warhol held court at Max’s Kansas City, a nightclub that was a popular hangout among artists and celebrities. By the mid-1960s he was a frequent presence in magazines and the media.

Warhol expanded into the realm of performance art with a traveling multimedia show called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured The Velvet Underground, a rock band. In 1966 Warhol exhibited Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at the Leo Castelli Gallery.

Source: http://www.warhol.org/two_column_list.aspx?id=80&libID=101

Political Events 1960's

Prominent political events

United States

• 1960 - United States presidential eletion, 1960 - The key turning point of the campaign was the series of four Kennedy-Nixon debates; they were the first presidential debates held on television.
• 1961 – Newly elected President John F Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson take office in 1961; Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
• 1963 –  Martin Luther King Jr's " I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C. on August 28.
• 1963 - President Lyndon Johnson becomes president and presses for civil rights legislation.
• 1964 – U.S President Lyndon B. Johnson is elected in his own right, defeating United States Senator Barry Goldwater in November.
• 1964 - Civil Rigths Act of 1964 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This landmark piece of legislation in the United States outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment.
• 1964 - Wilderness Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3.
• 1965 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey take office in January.
• 1965 - National Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States.
• 1968 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon is elected defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey in November.
• 1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon is inaugurated in January 1969; promises "peace with honor" to end the Vietnam War. 

Canada

• The Quiet Revolutin in Quebec altered the province into a more Secular Jean Lesage Liberal government created a welfare state (État-Providence) and fomented the rise of active nationalism among Francophone Québécois society.
• On February 15, 1965, the new maple leaf flag was adopted in Canada, after much acrimonious debate known as the Great flag debate.
• In 1960, the Canadian Bill of Rights becomes law, and Universal suffrage, the right for any Canadian citizen to vote, is finally adopted by John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government. The new election act allows first nations people to vote for the first time.

Europe

• Construction of the Berlin Wall started in 1961.
• British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivers his Wind of change speech in 1960.
• Pope John XXIII calls the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church , continued by Pope Paul VI which met from October 11, 1962, until December 8, 1965.
• In October 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev was expelled from office due to his increasingly erratic and authoritarian behavior. Leonid Brezhnev Alexei Kosygin then became the new leaders of the Soviet Union.
• In Czechoslovakia 1968 was the year of Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring, a source of inspiration to many Western leftists who admired Dubček's "socialism with a human face". The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August ended these hopes and also fatally damaged the chances of the orthodox communist parties drawing many recruits from the student protest movement.

China

• Relations with the United States remained hostile during the 1960s, although representatives from both countries held periodic meetings in Warsaw, Poland (since there was no US embassy in China). President Kennedy had plans to restore Sino-US relations, but his assassination, the war in Vietnam, and the Cultural Revolution put an end to that. Not until Richard Nixon took office in 1969 was there another opportunity.
• Following Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's expulsion in 1964, Sino-Soviet relations devolved into open hostility. The Chinese were deeply disturbed by the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, as the latter now claimed the right to intervene in any country it saw as deviating from the correct path of socialism. Finally, in March 1969, armed clashes took place along the Sino-Soviet border in Manchuria. This drove the Chinese to restore relations with the US, as Mao Zedong decided that the Soviet Union was a much greater threat.

Mexico

• The peak of the student and New Left protests in 1968 coincided with political upheavals in a number of other countries. Although these events often sprung from completely different causes, they were influenced by reports and images of what was happening in the United States and France.

Middle East

• On September 1, 1969, the Libyan monarchy was overthrown, and a radical, anti-Israel, anti-Western government headed by Col. Muammar al-Qadaffi took power.

South America

• In 1964, a successful coup against the democratically elected government of Brazilian president João Goulart, initiates a military dictatorship of over 20 years of oppression.
• The Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara travelled to Africa and then  Bolivia in his campaigning to spread worldwide revolution. He was captured and executed in 1967 by the Bolivian army, and afterwards became an iconic figure for leftists around the world.
• Juan Velasco Alvarado took power in Peru in 1968.

India

• In India a literary and cultural movement started in Calcutta, Patna, and other cities by a group of writers and painters who called themselves "Hungryalists", or members of the Hungry generation. The band of writers wanted to change virtually everything and were arrested with several cases filed against them on various charges. They ultimately won these cases. This span of the movement was from 1961 to 1965.

Source: www.wikipedia.com

TERENCE DONOVAN

Terence Donovan (1936-1996) came to prominence in London in the 1960s as part of a post-war renaissance in art, fashion, graphic design and photography. The energy of his fashion photographs and portraits, and the force of his personality, have assumed in the intervening years an almost folkloric significance. With David Bailey and Brian Duffy, photographers of a similar background and outlook, Donovan was perceived as a new force in British fashion photography. The three comprised a ‘Black Trinity’, according to Norman Parkinson, who found their methodology crude and their pictures at best ‘unpolished’. Donovan was 23 when he opened his studio, Bailey the same age when his first substantial commission came from Vogue. Their early success heralded the era of the ‘specialised hero’, which Vogue and magazines would reinforce – and mythologize – in print. Donovan’s accredited appearance in a star-studded Bailey fashion shoot, for QueenVogue in 1961, was an early signifier that photographers were now the equal to television stars, comedians and theatre actors. Later, on screen, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow up (1966) would strengthen the notion of photographer-as-cultural-icon.

This video was directed by the Photographer Terrence Donovan, the clothing and make up was "inspired by Pop art and its bright contrasting colours."

Though they approached photography in distinct ways, the three – and others such as John Cowan – remain ciphers for a decade of ambition, energy and opportunism. Cecil Beaton, (like Parkinson, of the generation the three would eclipse) spoke, not entirely with approbation, of Donovan ‘creating such a stir!’ With hindsight, he went further: ‘Donovan’s young girls had no innocence and he somehow contrived to make them look as if they were wearing soiled underwear…’ The new democratic nature of photography and its discomforting effect, was boosted by Duffy’s triumphant assertion that ‘before us, fashion photographers were tall, thin and camp. We're different. We're short, fat and heterosexual’.

As early as 1962, Donovan and Bailey were hailed as ‘masters of the quick and vivid image’ but, to many observers and collectors, it has become clear with the passage of time that Donovan’s inventiveness continued into the following decades. He consolidated his success as a magazine photographer with a parallel career as a documentary filmmaker and with a body of self-motivated projects, such as idiosyncratic nude work and portraiture, landscape photography and, unexpectedly, the documentation of Judo. At the time, little of this reached a wide audience. However, he established himself as a maker of television commercials and pop videos, including that for Addicted to Love (1985) by Robert Palmer, considered to be one of the most influential and memorable videos ever made. In his later years, he developed a love of painting and exhibited vast abstract canvases inspired by Japanese calligraphy.

Donovan was born in East London on 14 September 1936, the son of Daniel Donovan, a lorry driver, and his wife Constance. His education was often disrupted, ‘I spent most of the war’, he once said, ‘in the cab of a large lorry travelling round England’, but he developed an interest in photography, which chimed with a golden age for black and white periodicals, notably Picture Post and Lilliput. Influenced by the documentary work of Bill Brandt, whose starkly black and white photo-essays appeared in both magazines, Donovan brought urban realism to his early magazine and advertising work. His backdrop was the blitzed and cratered landscape of his East End youth, observing that here was ‘a tough emptiness, a grittiness heightened by occasional pieces of rubbish rustling around in the wind.’ While his contemporaries Don McCullin and Roger Mayne found this urban landscape conducive to pure reportorial photography, Donovan brought this grittiness to the depiction of clothes.

This reached an early apogee in a series of men’s fashion pictures taken on the streets of London for Man About Town, published in 1961 and, for the same magazine a year later, a series of portraits en deshabille of the young actress Julie Christie in her London flat. The degree of informality brought to both was untypical of the time (and prompted Beaton’s disapproval). The sense of unobserved scrutiny in the Christie portfolio– the actress’ gaze rarely addressed the camera – appeared voyeuristic (a situation replicated later with the actress Sarah Miles). This approach was explored regularly in his magazine work and up until the 1990s remained a constant for magazines that sought a Donovan imprimatur.

Source: http://www.chrisbeetles.com/gallery/artist.php?art=1591

Jim Dine

 

Jim Dine was born June 16, 1935, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at night at the Cincinnati Art Academy during his senior year of high school and then attended the University of Cincinnati, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Ohio University, Athens, from which he received his B.F.A. in 1957. Dine moved to New York in 1959 and soon became a pioneer creator of “Happenings”, together with Allan Kaprow, and Robert Whitman. He exhibited at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1958 and 1959, and his first solo show took place at the Reuben Gallery, New York, in 1960.Dine is closely associated with the development of Pop art in the early 1960s. Frequently he affixed everyday objects, such as tools, rope, shoes, neckties, and other articles of clothing, and even a bathroom sink, to his canvases. Characteristically, these objects were Dine’s personal possessions. This autobiographical content was evident in Dine’s early Crash series of 1959–60 and appeared as well in subsequent recurrent themes and images, such as the Palettes, Hearts, and bathrobe Self-Portraits. Dine has also made a number of three-dimensional works and environments, and is well-known for his drawings and prints. He has written and illustrated several books of poetry.

 

In 1965, Dine was a guest lecturer at Yale University, New Haven, and artist-in-residence at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. He was a visiting artist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1967. From 1967 to 1971, he and his family lived in London. Dine has been given solo shows in museums in Europe and the United States. In 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized a major retrospective of his work, and in 1978 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented a retrospective of his etchings. Dine lives in New York and Putney, Vermont.

 

Source: http://www.artnet.com/artists/jim-dine/

David Bailey

David Bailey (born January 2, 1938), is a celebrated and famous photographer.

Born in London, England, he taught himself photography, before serving with the Royal Air Force in Malaysia in 1957. In 1959 he became a photographic assistant at the John French studio before being contracted as a fashion photographer for Vogue magazine. He also did a large amount of freelance work.

Along with Terence Donovan, he captured, and in many ways helped create the Swinging London of the 1960s: a culture of high fashion and celebrity chic. Both photographers socialised with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers.

The Swinging London scene was aptly reflected in his Box of Pin-Ups (1964): a box of poster-prints of 1960s celebrities and socialites including Terence Stamp, The Beatles, and notorious East End gangsters The Kray Twins. The box was an unusal and unique commercial release, and it reflected the changing status of the photographer that one could sell a collection of prints in this way. (The strong objection to the presence of the Krays on the part of Lord Snowdon was the major reason no American edition of the "Box" ever appeared, nor a British second edition issued.)

In 1966, the movie Blowup was made. The film concerned itself with the work (and sexual perks) of a London fashion photographer who was largely based on Bailey.

As well as fashion photography, Bailey has been responsible for record album sleeve art, for performers including The Rolling Stones and Marianne Faithfull. He has also directed several television commercials and documentaries.

Bailey has married four times: in 1960 to Rosemary Bramble, in 1967 to the actress Catherine Deneuve (divorced 1972), in 1975 to the model Marie Helvin and in 1986 to the actress Catherine Dyer to whom he is married as of 2004. He was awarded the CBE in 2001.

Source: www.biographybase.com

Fashion - BIBA

 

Biba is frequently mentioned in the same giddy breath as mini-skirts, Mini cars, the Kings Road, the pill and various other London 'happenings' which shall forever define the 1960's as a decade that swung. It was, however, born of humble origins - garments were initially sold cheaply and to many, by mail order in newspapers. But by the early 1970's, Biba - a labour of love, a label, a lifestyle - had reached hitherto unknown heights of sophistication, innovation and retail experimentation, via its legendary Big Biba emporium on Kensington High Street (once hailed in the Sunday Times as 'the most beautiful store in the world'). Biba makes for a true rags to riches story, though one devoid of a happy ending for its creators... fashion can be a very cruel beast.

In terms of design, ideas and presentation, Biba was the brainchild of Warsaw-born (in 1936) Barbara Hulanicki, working in partnership with her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon. Long before her reign as fashion queen kicked off, Hulanicki had endured an unsettling upbringing. Her father - a Polish Olympic athlete and diplomat - was snatched from their home in Palestine in 1948, and assassinated.

She, her mother and and two sisters Beatrice and Biba then moved to the grey, post war London of 1948. Her aunt Sophie (a diamond-dripping eccentric, who spent three hours each day dolling herself up) whisked the family to her home - a suite at the Ritz Hotel. Then Sophie moved the family to Brighton - she holing up in a gin palace, the Metropole Hotel, and the others in a flat. As her boozy Aunt mixed with the glitterati, Hulanicki dreamt of Hollywood, boys, fashion, and developed a talent for drawing. Following boarding school, then art college, she would eventually become a much in-demand fashion illustrator. Having moved to London, her work was featured in publications like Homes and Gardens, The Times, Daily Express and Vogue, and she got to sketch the frocks at Givenchy and Balenciaga's couture shows in Paris.

In 1961, Hulanicki married Fitz-Simon, and several years later he suggested she design a garment to sell by mail order. Biba's Postal Boutique was duly formed and her long evening skirts with draw-string waists sold moderately well in the Daily Express. Other garments followed, with varying degrees of success, until Felicity Green, Fashion Editor of the Daily Mirror, proposed Hulanicki's design something for a reader's offer. The resulting pink gingham dress sold through the paper for 25 shillings, and immediately netted £14,000-worth of orders. And so began Biba proper, despite the business still being run ramshackle-style from the couple's flat. The fashion-influential likes of Ready Steady Go presenter Cathy McGowan, the 'Queen of the Mods', became a huge Biba fan, typifying the sort of young, liberated woman to whom the label appealed. Next came the very first in a series of Biba shops - a near-derelict former chemist on Abingdon Road, Kensington. Here, Hulanicki artfully went against the plastic-fantastic 'youth' ethos of the decade - retaining all the dilapidated, faded character of the premises, and kitting out the interior with navy blue paint, old bronze lamps and an antique Dutch wardrobe. (Her instinctive knack for mixing the best of the past with the shock of the new would prevail through Biba's progression - some three decades before 'eclectic' became a tired aesthetic cliché.) For the first year of the shop's existence, there was not even a sign over the door - word of mouth making 'hard sell' irrelevant. In terms of the Biba palette, again, in high fashion terms, convention was flouted: Colours were often funeral-like - blackish browns, dark prunes, plus rust and blueberry hues. Hulanicki realised, as she wrote in From A to Biba, that they were the 'dull, sad Auntie colours I had despised in my young days. They looked better in England's grey light, almost vibrant against the grey buildings and pavements'. Of a particularly successful brown chalkstripe Biba smock she also noted: 'The morning my father left for the last time he was wearing a brown chalkstripe suit'. 

Business boomed. The shop shop eventually became too small for the hordes of customers - who often included celebrities such as fashion editor Molly Parkin, popstrels Sonny and Cher, actress Julie Christie and model Twiggy among their ranks. Hulanicki observed: 'All classes mingled under the creaking roof [of the shop]. There was no social distinction. Their common denominator was youth and rebellion against the establishment.' America lapped up this pulpable buzz, and the UK rag trade began to take note, too. In 1965 a new space was found - a former grocery on Kensington High Street. Again, a radical interior was created: Art Nouveau squiggles, painted in gold by fabric designer Tony Little, marked a new Biba store front sign; inside was lined with specially printed deep red wallpaper; the original grocer's mahogany shelves and counters were retained. Again, the shop was a thundering success - customers would queue and jostle before it had even opened each day, and could expect to see the likes of Yoko Ono, Brigitte Bardot, Mia Farrow or Barbara Streisand trying on togs alongside them.

Restless to expand their business, Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon found a much larger vacant building on Kensington High Street in 1969 - formerly a carpet warehouse. Initially, it seemed they had bitten off more than they could chew, (despite at the time making around £10,000 per week) and extra finances were needed urgently. Their bank and Dorothy Perkins provided extra investment, for a large stake in the company, and the project got the go ahead. The building's non-lovely fixtures were stripped back to the original Egyptian-topped columns and marbled floors; stained glass and wood panelling was appropriated from a nearby school being demolished; clothes were draped over old hatstands, lit by fringed lampshades; a heavily cushioned area below the stairs would play host to stoned hippies and the occasional tramp. Biba was no longer just about glad rags for girly gadabouts, either. In addition to the new cosmetics range (which would in its own right become de rigeur around the world) plus shoes and boots, there were now household products (everything from Biba wallpaper to Biba baked beans and Biba soapflakes), and mens/childrenswear was also on offer. The finished result was more glamorous, more decadent, than any other store in the city. On its opening day in 1969 - as the loudest, latest sounds pumped from the stereo - the Daily Mail counted 30,000 customers scurrying across the threshold. The store grew in popularity, not to mention notoriety: some of the female staff forming trade unions to protest at perceived unfair working conditions, and anarchist group the Angry Brigade blowing up a bomb there - to protest at women being enslaved to fashion.

Yet Hulanicki felt that Biba could become an even bigger phenomena still. She obsessed over the 400,000 square foot, Art Deco Derry and Tom's department store on Kensington High Street. It had long since faded from glory, but was still complete with its romantic rooftop garden (today, this is still in existence and utilised for dining, private parties and promotional events, such as album launches). Following many complex financial twists, turns and near misses, and with the involvement of the Fraser group and Dorothy Perkins, they secured the building for £3.9 million. Literally hundreds of builders duly prepared the space - working to a budget of £1 million - and toiling around the clock for months on end. The former Biba store can, in hindsight, be seen as a dress rehearsal for this ultra-bold venture: Big Biba - the first new department store in the Capital since the second world war. Though it was not so much a mere department store as a kind of spectacular fantasy-land shopping/eating/drinking/hanging out/rooftop garden-perching experience. One entire floor was named the Casbah - filled with Moroccan and Turkish-influenced splendour; there was a Biba food hall; anyone could sit in the windows - traditional displays were banished (which would be deemed commercial suicide in this day and age); penguins and pink flamingos lived on the roof; the Rainbow Room restaurant and concert hall - with its pink marbled floors - served 1,500 meals a day on exquisite black china. Performers whom appeared there ranged from the New York Dolls to The Wombles, from Liberace to The Bay City Rollers, with artist Andrew Logan hosting oppulent fancy dress parties, still talked about to this day.

Alas, the dream could not last. Biba's business partners sold out their large stakes in the company to the British Land organisation, who totally failed to appreciate the intuitive and lucrative methods employed by the twosome. Gradually they were eased out - ultimately over-ruled and derided by the men in suits. Tacky mannequins, cheap signs and harsh fluorescent lighting replaced the lush, dark 1930's ambience of the store, and heralded the end of its glory days. It had become scruffy and sad. Their spirit broken, Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon quit on 1975, and moved to Brazil. The store closed down shortly afterwards. Following the death of her husband, Hulanicki - now based in the Art Deco heaven of Miami - has since carved out a new career, renovating the prestigious South Beach hotels like The Marlin.

So, as hippy-esque chic once again ventures to fashion's front-line, and the new London boutiques are springing up - such as Concrete and b - which fuse 'old-fashioned' elements (antique fixtures, pieces of vintage clothing), alongside upfront garb from the most influential young designers, it is easy to spot the legacy of Biba living on. But what is it, specifically, about the label that captures people's hearts? Nostalgia plays a part, obviously. Hulanicki believes: 'It became a meeting place. Years later I had letters from people who met at Biba, spent their courtship in Biba on Saturdays, married, had babies and wrapped them in Biba purple nappies.' But for those not old enough to remember the Biba experience first hand, it also holds an enduring fascination for its ambition, its accessibility, the impossible grandeur of the Big Biba store and so on. Berlin-born Pari is a London-based collector, who now owns the largest collection of original Biba clothing and merchandise. She explains: "When I first started collecting Biba, I began to advertise and people would call me up - not just wanting to sell, but just wanting to talk about it, to tell me stories about the store. It was a whole lifestyle to people then. And you have to remember that, price-wise, Biba meant that you could buy a whole outfit and accessories for the same prices as on Mary Quant garment. Before Biba, fashion was all very haute couture - it changed all that." Pari is determined to sell her entire collection en masse to a museum rather than see it split up, and has recently launched her own website which documents the myriad items she owns, along with an archive of press coverage.


Source: http://www.bibacollection.co.uk/history.htm

Pop Art

POP ART

What is Pop Art ?

The term Pop-Art was invented by British curator Lawrence Alloway in 1955, to describe a new form of "popular" art - a movement characterized by the imagery of consumerism and popular culture. Pop-Art emerged in both New York and London during the mid-1950's and became the dominant avant-garde style until the late 1960's. Characterised by bold, simple, everyday imagery, and vibrant block colours, it was interesting to look at and had a modern "hip" feel. The bright colour schemes also enabled this form of avant garde art to emaphasise certain elements in contemporary culture, and helped to narrow the divide between the commercial arts and the fine arts. It was the first post-modernist movement (where medium is as important as the message) as well as the first school of art to reflect the power of film and television, from which many of its most famous images acquired their celebrity. Common sources of Pop iconography were advertisements, consumer product packaging, photos of film stars, pop stars and other celebrities, and comic strips.

 Leading American Pop Artists:

In American art, famous exponents of pop included Robert Rauschenburg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine and Roy Lichenstein.

Leading British Pop Artists:

Leading British Pop Artists included: Sir Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Allen Hones.

comparing the American pop art to the Britsh pop art will demonstrate different cultures and polital happenings in the 1960's. 

Origins and influeneces:

Pop Art, like nearly all significant art styles, was in part a reaction against the status quo. In 1950's America, the main style was Abstract Expressionism, an arcane non-figurative style of painting that - while admired by critics, serious art-lovers and experienced museum visitors - was not "connecting" with either the general public or with many artists. Very much a painterly style, the more abstract and expressive it became, the bigger the oppurtunity for a new style which employed more fugurative, more down to earth imagery: viz, something that the wider artist fraternity could get its teeth into and that viewers could relate to. Thus Pop art, which duly became the established art style, and which in turn was superceded by other schools after 1970.

 

In some ways, the emergence of Pop Art (and it's ascendary over abstract expressionism) was similar to the rise of Dada and it's broader based successor surrealism (and their ascendary over cubism). Both the superceded schools (abstract expressionism and cubism) involved highly intellectual styles with limited appeal to mainstream art lovers. True, Dada was essentially anti-art, but the years during which it flourished 1916-1922 were marked by great polarization and political strife, and as soon as things calmed down most Dadaists became surrealists. In any event, as explained under Aims and Philosophy, Pop-art shares many of the characteristics of Dada-surrealism and indebted to it for several techniques derived from Kurt Schwitters' collages, the "readymades" of Marcel Duchamp, the iconic imagery of Rene Margitte and the brash creations of Salvadori Dali e.g Mae West lips sofa, Lobster telephone.

 

 

And if surrealism was essentially internalist, and escapist in nature, while pop-art was defined by external consumerist forces, both were consumed by the need to make a strong visual impact on the general public.

Another artist who may have had an impact on pop-art is Edward Hopper the realist painter of urban America. Although his painterly style is very different from most pop works, his simple images of ultra-American everyday scenes (e.g "night hawkes" 1942 and "gas" 1940) were well known to the pop generation, and may have informed their paintings.

History:

British pop-art emerged from within the independent group - an informal circle of artists including painter Richard Hamilton, curator and art critic Lawrence Alloway, and sculptor Eduardo Palozzi, that met in the institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

From the first meeting, in 1952, when Palozzi presented a number of callages assembled from magazine clippings and other "found objects", including his (now) celebrated collage entitled "I was a rich man's plaything" (created 5 years previously in 1947) their discussions centred largley around the artistic value and relevance of popular mass culture.

Four years later, in 1956, another member of the group, Richard Hamilton, produced his own collage, "Just what is it that makes today's homes so appealing?" - which, along with Palozzi's 1947 collage, is regarded as one of the earliest examples of British Pop-Art. In 1961, a number of pop-art style works by Derek Boshier, David Hockney, Allen Jones, RB Kitaj and Peter Phillips, featured in the young contemporaries exhibition. In 1962, further publicity was given to british pop when the BBC screened "Pop goes the Easel", a film by Ken Russell which explored the new movement in Britain.

 

Research shows that Pop art has been influenced by a vast amount of of different artists and movements throughout the decades.

USA

Meanwhile in America, during the mid - 1950's, the art world was being rocked by a number of artists attatched to small movements (eg. Neo-Dada, Funk Art, Letterism, Beat Art, Polymaterialism, common-object to name but a few), many of whom were incorporating articles of mass culture in their works. They wanted their art to be much more inclusive than traditional styles ( like Abstract Expressionism), so they used non-art materials and focuse on ordinary, easily recognizable subjects that expressed the popular culture of the day.

Among this upsurge of innovation, work by Robert Rauschenburg, Ray Johnson and Jasper Johns was beginning to make an impact on the important New York art scene. Between them, they opened up a wholerange of new subject matter: Johns with his paintings of flags, targets and numbers, as well as his sculptures of objects like beer cans; Rauschenburg with his collage and assemblage art and "combine paintings" (in which a painted canvas in combined with various objects or photographic images such as: "Monogram" comprising a stuffed goat with a tyre around its middle) of stuffed animals, Coca Cola bottles, and other items; Johnson with his his celebrity collages of James Dean, Shirley Temple and Elvis. Other influential pioneers and advocates of pop-art were the composer John Cage ( an influential teacher at the Black Mountain College in Noth Carolina) and the performance artist Allan Kaprow.

 

The rising tide of new thinking was further enhanced by renewed interest in earlier avant-garde movements like Dada and Surrealism, whose enduring vitality was reinforced by the influence, if not the actual presence, of several ex Dadaists and Surrealists , like Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and local converts, such as Joseph Cornell. That said, it is important to state that while American avant-garde artists of this period (especially Rauschenburg) were indebted to earlier Europeans (like Duchamp, Schwitters et al) for establishing certain traditions (like collage), their unique focus was on producing art which reflected the reality of contemporary America.

By the early 1960's, a cohort of pop-style artists began to gain fame through solo exhibitions in places like New York and Los Angeles, several of whom used commercial printmaking techniques (eg. screen-printing) to create their art, rather than traditional painterly methods. These new talents included Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Roy Lichenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann and Andy Warhol. Several works, later to become icons, were shown for the first time. They included Lichenstein's comic strip oils, Warhol's silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's soup cans and Oldenburg's monumental vinyl burgers and ice-creams.

 

Strangely, until late 1962 or early 1963, these artists were still labelled by critics as New Realists or some other such term. Thus teh two important art shows held in the autumn of 1962 - one curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum, the other at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York - were entitled "The new painting of common objects" (Pasadena) and "New Realism" (New York). Only hereafter was the term pop-art used as a technical name for the movement, partly due to the presence in New York of Lawrence Alloway - nowa curator at the Guggenheim Museum - who advocated the adoption of the term.

From 1963 onwards, pop-art spread throughout America and helped by British pop-artists, established itself on the Continent. The movements rise was aided by parallel growth in other areas. In economics, via the growth of the world economy in general and the American economy in particular; in science, via the spread of television; in contemporary music, (which itself became known as "pop") through the miniaturization of radio, increased record production, the appearance of cult groups like The Beatles and the phenomenon of Phchedelia; and lastly through an expanding art market.

During the later 1960's, Andy Warhol emerged as the Damien Hirst of his day, gaining fame and noteriety in equal amounts for his iconic celebrity screenprints; his conceptualist film work, his increasingly sleek art production methods and his self promotion, at least until he was shot and seriously wounded on june 3 1968. Roy Lichenstein, too, became a household name through his comic-strip blow-up's and several prestigious retrospectives on both sides of the atlantic. Meantime, Rauschenburg won the Grand prize at the 1964 Venice Biennale, and maintained his avant-garde reputation by helping to form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) in 1966 to boost collaboration between artists and engineers, while Johns maintained his high standing by winning first prize at the 1967 Sao Paulo Biennale.

Perhaps Inevitably, having weathered the conformity of the 1950's, and the panic of the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, American Pop-art reached it's peak during the second half of the 1960's, only to find itself infected and undermined by the angst of the Vietnam War Era, and the corresponding rise of anti-Americanism.

Britain:

Despite being less brash, less kitschy, more romantic and more nostalgic than its counterpart accross the Atlantic, British pop-art during the early and mid 1960's was strongly influenced by a US pop culture which it regarded as being more up-to-date and more exciting  than the home grown variety. It was during this period that Britain began importing a substantial amount of American life, such as burger bars and other fast food outlets. As a result, artists began to draw on American imagery for inspiration, although often with a very British slant. On the other hand the British advertising and printing industry was far less developed, which restrained British artists from using techniques already well established in New York(eg. silkscreen printing) and forced them to rely on older techniques.

Europe:

In Europe, The primacy of American popular culture was diluted by both language and politics. In Paris, still anxious about its junior status to New York as the World's top art centre, American pop culture was tolerated rather thank celebrated. Moreover, the French avant-garde - perhaps due to its  entrenched Communist Party - had a more political flavour and thus took a more Dadaist line encouraging audience participation in their preferred performance, Happenings and Conceptual art under the umbrella term of Noveau Realism. The leading French "Pop artists" or Nouveau Realistes were: Yves Klein, Francois Dufrene, Matial Raysse, Jaques de la Villegle, Jaques Monrory, Alain Jacquet and Jean Tinguely. Italy, being less political (despite an even larger Communist Party!) remained more open to the artistic and design possibilities inherent in pop-art. For instance, it was an Italian design group compromising Jonathan De Pas, Paolo Lomazzi and Donato d'Urbino that created "Joe Sofa" a sofa resembling a gigantic baseball mitt.

The Aims, Philosophy and Methods of Pop Art:

No International art movement that lasts for more than 15 years and encompasses all known art types, genres and types of media, as well as entirely new forums, can be summed up in a few sentances. Even so, no understanding of pop-art is possible without taking into account the following concepts which help to characterize its core.

Instant meaning:

The basic idea behind pop-art was to create a form of art with instant meaning. This was in sharp contrast to the super-intellectualism of Abstract Expressionism with its esoteric canvases so bloved my arts professionals. To achieve their goal of instant meaning, pop artists experimented with new commercial processes, like acylic painting, collage on canvas using materials not normally associated with painting, and silkscreen printing. In addition, the imagery and colour schemes for most pop art painting and sculpture was taken from high profile and easily recognizable consumerist or media sources such as: consumer goods, advertising graphics, magazines, television, film,cartoons and comic books. People and objects were presented in bright, often highly contrasting colours, while compositions were typically very simple and visually appealing to the general public.

Art can be made from anything:

Up until the 20th century, traditional fine art painting was normally done in oils: sculpture in bronze, stone or wood. furthermore, subjects were typically those deemed worthy of aesthetic treatment: the human nude, the human face, the classic landscape, genre-scene or still life. Even cubism, despite its revolutionary nature, tended to observe many of these artistic conventions. Then came the First World War and the anti-art movement known as Dada. This movement initiated the idea that art can be created from all sorts of stuff, including the most banal everyday scraps of material. pop-artists maintained and developed this idea. They presented the modern world of popular culture with whatever materials they thought appropriate, no matter how low-brow or trivial.

The idea is more important than the work itself:

Also, up until Dada, the essential feature of traditional fine art was the work itself - the painting, sculpture, etching, carving or whatever. Without a "work of art", there was nothing. All attention was therefore focused on the quality of the finished product, and the skills required to produce it. Dada rebelled against this by celebrating the "idea behind the artwork" rather than the work itself. Many pop-artists continued this tradition of conceptual art. They placed more importance on the impact of the work, and less importance on the making of it. Like the use of low-brow materials, this emphasis on a work's concept and impact was interpreted as an attempt to debunk the gravitas of the art world. This was partly true: some pop artists did share the anti-art and anti-aesthetic credo of earlier Dadaists. However, mainstream pop was more positive and more concerned to create new forms of expression, using new methods and new pictorial imagery, than to denigrate tradition. Indeed, many pop-artists saw themselves as contributing to, rather than junking, fine art.

Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm