World Goes Pop at the Tate Modern, reviewed by Katie Weitzman

Recently I visited the ‘World Goes Pop’ exhibition, containing many different works from a variety of artists during the Pop art era, located at Tate Modern.

There were many different rooms at the exhibition, each regarding a theme, mainly political. They highlighted themes of war, feminism and economy, key issues that dominated current affairs during the pop art phase.

For example, this piece was two separate canvases of Khrushchev and Kennedy pointing at each other, symbolising the tension of the Cold war and themes of action and conflict through the expression of the two silhouettes. The themes of war were often expressed during the exhibition, including strongly opinionated pieces regarding the Vietnam war in America during the 60s.

 

 

As well as this, feminism was also a dominating theme of the exhibition, with many pieces expressing their views on women’s role and status during this era.
This particular piece of a women shaped as a TV cabinet highlights the objectification of women and on the screen were specific phrases that referred to the domestic discrimination of women.

However I found that a lot of the pieces at this exhibition were three dimensional which has inspired me to look at including a 3d element into my work.

A key example at work that inspired me to do this is the ‘shell’ piece. This highlighted another key theme in this exhibition, which looked at how art had become a consumer brand. In this room, there were lots of different logos such as BMW, which instead of showing the ‘bmw’ text on the logo, it simply said ‘art’ instead. However the ‘shell’ piece intrigued me as it contained the 3D element of the shell logo which had a mermaid painted on top of it. I was intrigued about how the 3d surface was created and it has inspired me to look at other ways to paint on surfaces such as using plaster.

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/world-goes-pop

review by Katie Weitzman

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