Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Narrower in scope than its title suggests, this sprawling, visually riveting catalogue of a traveling exhibition traces the ``dialogue'' between ``high'' art (Picasso, Miro, Seurat, etc.) and the streetwise or commercial ``low'' media of graffiti, caricature, comics and advertising. Picasso transformed sly notebook caricatures into the ``high'' paintings of his primitive/archaic phase. Claes Oldenburg turned a lipstick tube into a colossal, totemic monument. From cubist newspaper collages to Jenny Holzer's electric-message installations, popular culture has served such modern artists as Jeff Koons, Joseph Cornell and Cy Twombly as a means of recovery of certain high-art traditions. Although the text may be swollen with hype, artspeak and farfetched comparisons, this tome entertains as it informs. Varnedoe is director of paintings and sculpture at New York's Museum of Modern Art; Gopnik is a New Yorker staff writer. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

This is a "story of the interplay between modern art and popular culture," a prodigious undertaking that the authors wisely make more doable by limiting themselves to only five areas (each given a chapter): words, caricature, comics, advertising, and graffiti. By demonstrating the reciprocal influences of, for example, posters and early Cubism or advertisements and Oldenburg's colossal public sculpture, the authors make a less than successful attempt to overcome the perception that the "low" (popular) arts are somehow less worthy. "High" art remains "the primary material with which any history of art in this century must contend." Nevertheless, the more than 600 illustrations (about 60 from the popular arts) do indeed make clear how much of the content of painters such as Picasso, Lichtenstein, Guston, and Dubuffet is drawn from the artists' mundane visual surroundings. The writing is definitely "high" in style, in keeping with current cultural art-historical canons (there are more than 800 titles in the bibliography). But these essays do what other histories do not--call detailed attention to the impact that popular nonmuseum artifacts have on the history of modern art. A major piece of work. K. Marantz The Ohio State University

Booklist Review

While this exhibition examining the influence of popular culture on high art has received mixed notices--too much familiar material and too unfocused a viewpoint, say the critics--the catalog fares much better in laying out and developing the author's argument. Within the constraints that time and their own tastes impose, Varnedoe and Gopnick engage in a dense if occasionally witty dialogue with their selected artists, illustrating the influence that printed words, graffiti, caricature, comics, and advertising have had on modern artists. Painting and sculpture are the prime media for this translation and interpretation of popular culture, with the barrier between public communication and private art both dissolved and demolished. The sequence of color illustrations enhances both the authors' theory and the visual appeal of their study. Notes, bibliography. ~--John Brosnahan