Post Pop: East Meets West - Saatchi Gallery (part 1: East)

Alexander Kosopalov, Hero, Leader, God, 2007

Born Moscow, 1943. Studied at the Stroganov Art School, Moscow. Emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975. Lives and works in New York City.

Post Pop: East Meets West is at the Saatchi Gallery until 23 February 2015.

The Saatchi Gallery’s new show is a large scale encounter between British and American  ‘Post Pop’ and Oriental artists from China, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union, who have adapted something of the flavour and attitude of Western Pop to their own cultural contexts. Clearly, such a large show (more than 100 artists) will produce mixed results. However, it is refreshing and instructive to be confronted with a broadly familiar visual language inflected with different accents and a different sensibility.

I realize that the point of such an exercise is to mix things up – however, I found that I could better get a handle on the content and the cultural contrasts by separating out East and West. So, I have selected my parallel top 10 exhibits – albeit selected from reproductions rather than an encounter in the exhibition itself. This is Part 1: East. (Click here for Part 2: West.)

Read reviews by Waldemar Januszczak and Jonathan Jones.

(NB artists are listed in alphabetical order; brief biographies are taken from the Saatchi Gallery website; click on images to enlarge.)

Eric Bulatov, Perestroika, 1989

Born Sverdlovsk, Russia, 1933. Graduated from the Painting department of the Surikov State Art Institute, Moscow in 1958. Lives and works in Paris.

Liu Dahong, Sacrificial Altar, 2001

Born Qingdao, China, 1962. Studied at Shandong University of Arts, Jinan and at China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Lives and works in Shanghai.

Wang Guangyi,  Great Criticism: Benetton, 大批判, 1992

Born Harbin, China, 1957. Studied at China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. Lives and works in Beijing.

Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid, The Origin of the Nostalgic Social Realism, 1982-3

Vitaly Komar born Moscow, 1943 and Alexander Melamid, born Moscow, 1945. Studied at the Stroganov Art School, Moscow. Emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976. Founders of the Sots Art
movement. Live and work in New York City.

Valery Koshlyakov, Socrates, 2009

Born Salsk, Russia, 1962. Graduated from Grekov Art College, Rostov-on-Don. Lives and works in Moscow.

Tseng Kwong-Chi, San Francisco (Golden Gate Bridge), 1979-86

Born Hong Kong, 1950, died New York City, 1990. Studied at Académie Julian, Paris. Lived and worked in New York City.

Rotisalav Lebedev,  A Drem Comes True, 2008

Born Moscow, 1946. Graduated from the Art and Graphics department of the Moscow State V. I. Lenin Pedagogical Institute. Member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1994. Lives and works in Moscow.

Fang Lijun, Untitled, 2011-12

Born Hebei Province, China, 1963. Studied at at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Lives and works in Hong Kong and Beijing.

Yu Youhan, Seated Mao, 1996

Born Shanghai, China, 1943. Studied at Central Academy of Art & Design, Beijing. Lives and works in Shanghai.

(Click here for Part 2: West)

Post Pop: East Meets West - Saatchi Gallery (part 2: West)

Peter Halley, Prison with Yellow Background, 1984

Post Pop: East Meets West is at the Saatchi Gallery until 23 February 2015.

The Saatchi Gallery’s new show is a large scale encounter between British and American  ‘Post Pop’ and  Oriental artists from China, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union, who have adapted something of the flavour and attitude of Western Pop to their own cultural contexts. Clearly, such a large show (more than 100 artists) will produce mixed results. However, it is refreshing and instructive to be confronted with a broadly familiar visual language inflected with different accents and a different sensibility.

I realize that the point of such an exercise is to mix things up – however, I found that I could better get a handle on the content and the cultural contrasts by separating out East and West. So, I have selected my parallel top 10 exhibits – albeit selected from reproductions rather than an encounter in the exhibition itself. This is Part 2: West. (Click here for Part 1: East.)

Read reviews by Waldemar Januszczak and Jonathan Jones.

(NB artists are listed in alphabetical order; click on images to enlarge.)

Mike Bidlo,  Not Warhol (Brillo Soap Pads Box Pasadena Type, 1969), 1991

Glenn Brown, Reproduction, 2014

Michael Craig-Martin, Untitled (High Heel), 2014 

Gary Hume,  Four Coloured Doors I, 1989-90

Clay Ketter, Suckerpunch Motel Wall, 2001

David Mach,  M & M (Mao from Mao & Marilyn), 2014

Lisa Milroy, Shoes, 1990

Julian Opie,  This is Shahnoza, 46, 2007

Richard Woods,  Nature Making, 2014

(Click here for Part 1: East)

Lewis Baltz, 1945 - 2014

Lewis Baltz, from The New Industrial Parks, 1974

Lewis Baltz died on 23 November 2014.
One of my favourite photographers.
Lewis Baltz' most famous series of photographs, The New Industrial Parks, Near Irvine, California (1973-75) offers a remarkable contrast to the traditional, Romantic concerns of landscape photography: instead of natural beauty and the sublime Baltz shows us the facades and structural details of anonymous, prefabricated industrial units and parking lots. While the series clearly constitutes a critique of urban sprawl - the relentless spread of a 'man-altered landscape' - at the same time Baltz' precise Minimal aesthetic, crisp, formal composition and attention to details and textures make these very beautiful pictures.
Baltz was included - alongside Robert Adams, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore Henry Wessel Jr, Bernd and Hilla Becher - in the seminal exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975 in which the participants collectively proposed an aesthetics of the banal.
In addition to The New Industrial Parks (1973-75), Baltz' work includes (amongst others): The Prototype Works (1967-76), Tract Houses (1971) and Sites of Technology (1989-91), from which the examples below are selected.

Read an obituaries by Gerry Badger and Sean O'Hagan; read the 'last interview' at L'Oeil de la Photographie; watch a short video of Baltz talking abut his work on the Tate website;  read more interviews with, and articles about, Baltz at American Suburb X; read an article about New Topographics by Kelly Dennis: Landscape and the West: Irony and Critique in New Topographic Photography

The Prototype Works (1967-76)

Tract Houses (1971)

The New Industrial Parks (1973-75)  

Sites of Technology (1989-91)

Chris Bracey, 1954 - 2014

Chris Bracey died on 1 November 2014.
I confess that I had not heard of Chris Bracey ('the Neon Man') until I read his obituary. However, as a fan of neon (see blog entry below on the centenary of neon) I found his story interesting. As a young man he worked for his father's company Electro Signs making neon signs for circuses and amusement arcades; Chris' innovation was to take the business to Soho and the sex industry. For 20 years he supplied the neon 'glamour' for sex shops and clubs. In the 1980s an art director of film saw him erecting a sex shop sign and commissioned him to do work for film sets - his work has been used in Batman, Blade Runner, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Eyes Wide Shut and many others. In 1998 he saw the Bruce Nauman exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and was astonished to discover that neon works could be art! Since then, in addition to his own creations he has made work for artists including Martin Creed (the whole world + the work = the whole world). To be sure Bracey's own work is more kitch and 'Vegas' than Nauman or Creed, but his workshop and collection - "God's Own Junkyard" in Walthamstow looks like an amazing place.
Read obituaries in The Guardian  and The Telegraph.
Vlick on images to enlarge.