The Use of an Everyday Object as an Art Piece Is an Example of a

Transforming Everyday Objects

INTRODUCTION

As the economic prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s brought virtually an increase in consumerism and the development of the media and advertising, artists began to look for inspiration in the earth around them.

This lesson looks at two sources of inspiration for artists: everyday objects and popular culture. Artists begin to use everyday objects as inspiration, transforming them into works of fine art through the employ of dissimilar mediums, such as pigment, sculpture, and printmaking. Robert Rauschenberg's Bed combines the expressive brushstrokes and the layering of paint that characterized Abstruse Expressionism with found objects.

Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Jasper Johns also drew inspiration from the everyday, particularly from objects and images from pop culture. Popular culture comprises the ideas, interactions, needs, desires, and cultural elements of a particular club.

These Popular artists presented objects from consumer culture, like soup cans, fans, and turkeys, in a straightforward way, using bold expanses of unadulterated color and removing traces of the artist'southward hand.

LESSON OBJECTIVES

• Students will consider how and why artists utilise everyday objects as subject matter.
• Students will consider the choices artists make when creating works of fine art, exploring subject field matter and sources of inspiration, medium, and mode.
• Students will make connections between consumer culture and art.
• Students will learn about the technique of screenprinting.

INTRODUCTORY Discussion

• Enquire students to define popular culture. How is pop civilisation influenced by advertising? How are people influenced past the media and advertisement? How and why practice advertisers promote products? Ask students what affect the media has on their lives. Tell them we will render to ideas of the media's influence later in this lesson as nosotros examine a group of artists who used elements of pop civilization as their inspiration.
• Andy Warhol once said, "Everyone is an creative person." [Andy Warhol, quoted in Pop Art (London: Taschen, 2003), p. 8.] Ask students if they agree with this argument. Why or why non? Who gets to determine what is art and what is not fine art? Ask students to brand a listing of criteria for art. Write some of their answers on the lath. Render to this idea as this lesson progresses. Practice their ideas change? Why or why not?

IMAGE-BASED DISCUSSION

Robert Rauschenberg: Bed, combine painting: oil and pencil on pillow, quilt and sail on wood supports, 191×800×203 mm, 1955 (New York, Museum of Modern Fine art); © 2007 Robert Rauschenberg, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Ask students to look at this piece of work of art. Ask them how the artist may have made the work. What materials did he use? How did he use them? Ask them to provide evidence for their ideas.
• Tell students the title. Ask them how Rauschenberg has transformed this everyday object. Ask them how this is similar or different than their bed at home. Why would an artist put a bed on the wall?

This is an example of a combine, a term used to draw Rauschenberg'southward technique of attaching found objects such as tires or old furniture to a traditional picture plane. In this work of art, we come across a pillow, canvass, and quilt, scribbled with pencil and splashed with pigment in a mode like to that of Jackson Pollock. These materials may take been the artist's own coating and pillow, which he used when he lacked money to buy a canvas.

Although these are materials related to a bed, the artist has hung the piece of work on a wall like art. Rauschenberg said, "Painting relates to both art and life....(I try to act in that gap between the ii)." [Robert Rauschenberg, quoted in MoMA Highlights, p. 207.]

• Ask students what they call up Rauschenberg means by this statement. How does this quote chronicle to Bed?
• Enquire students how this could be considered a self-portrait. What can we learn almost the artist by looking at this? How is this different from traditional self-portraits?

Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans, synthetic polymer paint, 30-two canvases, each canvas 508×406 mm, 1962 (New York, Museum of Mod Art); © 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/ARS, NY/TM Licensed by Campbell's Soup Co. All rights reserved, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Ask students to look closely at this work of art. What do they notice?
• Ask them why they think Warhol might take chosen soup cans every bit a subject.

Andy Warhol said of Campbell's Soup Cans, "I used to drinkable it. I used to have the same tiffin every twenty-four hour period, for xx years, I estimate, the same thing over and again. Someone said my life has dominated me; I liked that idea." [Andy Warhol, quoted in Wendy Weitman, Pop Impressions Europe/USA: Prints and Multiples from The Museum of Modern Art (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1999), p. 56.]

Warhol was a way illustrator, painter, printmaker, sculptor, mag publisher, filmmaker, lensman, and archivist of his times. His early paintings used motifs taken from advertising and comics. Other subjects included Elvis Presley, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, flowers, cows, self-portraits, nose jobs, and stamps.

When Warhol first exhibited these xxx-two canvases in 1962, each one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a shelf similar groceries in a shop. The number of canvases corresponds to the varieties of soup sold at that time by the Campbell Soup Company, with each painting featuring a different flavor of soup. Warhol did non indicate how the canvases should be installed. In this paradigm, they are arranged in rows that reflect the chronological order in which the soups were introduced. The first flavour introduced past the company was "Tomato," from 1897.

• Ask students why they call up Warhol included so many canvases. What effect does the repetition take on their viewing feel?
• Ask students to discuss their list of criteria for fine art. What elements do they think need to be nowadays in order to make something a work of art? Do they consider paintings of soup cans to be fine art? Why or why not?

Claes Oldenburg: Giant Soft Fan, vinyl filled with foam safety, wood, metal and plastic tubing, fan c. 3.05×one.50×1.57 k, cord and plug l. 7.forty m, 1966–vii (New York, Museum of Mod Art); © 2007 Claes Oldenburg, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Inquire students to expect at this sculpture. Refrain from telling them the championship right away. What do they think it is? Why?
• Tell them that this object is almost xi anxiety tall. Does knowing this alter their ideas about the work? Why might the artist accept chosen to make this so big?
• Ask students to draw the fabric used in this work. How is this sculpture different from more than traditional sculptures they may have seen? Let them know it is fabricated of vinyl, wood, metal, and plastic.
• Tell them the title, Giant Soft Fan. Ask them why they think that Oldenburg might have called to make a fan. How is this fan different from traditional fans? How is information technology similar? Like Rauschenberg'south Bed, this fan is deprived of its purpose. Are at that place whatever other similarities between Giant Soft Fan and Bed? What are the differences?

In the 1960s, Oldenburg began expanding the subject and fabric of traditional sculpture. He recreated everyday objects as huge, soft, handmade sculptures. In 1968, critic Richard Kostelanetz said, "Like the human being body, which it resembles in its lumps, bumps, folds and crevices, soft sculpture is literally subject to the force of gravity. Gravity, which Oldenburg calls his favorite form creator, determines the concluding form a piece of work will presume." [Steven Henry Maddox, Pop Art: A Critical History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Printing, 1997), p. 229.]

This sculpture is part of a larger serial of sculptures of appliances and domestic objects that Oldenburg worked on in 1963. He has also created sculptures of cheeseburgers, a giant water ice cream cone, and a big slice of cake, all of which are placed direct on the gallery floor.

In 1967 Oldenburg wrote, "The Fan's first placement was on Staten Island, bravado up the bay. Afterward, I sited it as a replacement for the Statue of Liberty...[guaranteeing] workers on Lower Manhattan a steady breeze." [Claes Oldenburg, quoted in MoMA Highlights, p. 249.]

• Ask students where they would choose to put this fan. Why?
• Like Oldenburg's other soft sculptures, Giant Soft Fan was carefully planned before it was hand sewn by his wife, Pat Oldenburg. Enquire students to consider how this kind of product differs from the factory production of traditional fans.

Warhol and Oldenburg both used mundane objects as subjects for their artwork. The artist Roy Lichtenstein also selected an everyday object—a turkey—for subject of one of his works, only he represented it in a different way.

Roy Lichtenstein: Turkey Shopping Handbag, screenprint on shopping bag with handles, composition 191×228 mm, bag (irreg.) 490×430 mm, 1964 (New York, Museum of Modern Fine art); © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Ask students to look at this piece of work of fine art. What is the subject? What materials are used? Inform them that this work is chosen Turkey Shopping Pocketbook.
• This is a impress. Inquire students if they can define a print. Take they always created a impress?

A impress is a work of fine art made upwardly of ink on newspaper that exists in multiple examples. Lichtenstein, who created this screenprint, is also well known for paintings that are based on comic strips and advertisements.

Many Pop artists, such as Lichtenstein and Warhol, used screenprinting techniques because they produced bold areas of unmodulated color, flat surfaces, and a commercial look. The ideas of transference and repetition that are inherent to this medium fit in perfectly with the Pop artists' ideas.

Warhol had a identify called The Factory where other people created the prints he designed. Lichtenstein designed this image of a turkey, which other people executed. It was taken from a 1961 Lichtenstein painting and was most likely inspired by a newspaper advertisement. [Ibid.]

• Ask students if they would consider these prints to exist works to exist art. Does this fit into their criteria for art? Ask them if they believe that artists have to brand a work with their ain easily. Why or why not?

The 1950s and 1960s saw a rising in the popularity of the big, self-service supermarket. With this came a new emphasis on packaging. Advertisements became bolder, using fewer words and larger, more colorful designs. An exhibition in 1964 titled American Supermarket highlighted the differences and similarities between the actual consumer objects and Pop artists' depictions of them. The exhibition was designed to resemble a supermarket, complete with aisles, shelves, and a checkout counter. On display were art objects next to plastic and actual food items. Lichtenstein made a series of his Turkey Shopping Bag for the occasion. Warhol as well printed numberless with a Campbell'south Soup can on it. These bags were sold for twelve dollars each. [Weitman, Pop Impressions Europe/United states, p. 72.]

• Ask students to discuss what items were for sale at this exhibition. What practise they know about the ways in which fine art is usually sold? How is this different? Are there any similarities between art and items in a grocery store? What connections were these artists making between fine art and commerce?
• Ask students if such an exhibition happened today, what type of store would they cull to focus on? Would it be a pocket-size specialty store, an online marketplace, or a mega-store like Wal-Mart? What products would they feature? Why? If they were to select an prototype for a bag, what would they select? Why?
• Ask students how the Popular artists helped to "democratize" art. Did they make it more attainable? What did subject field matter accept to do with information technology? What did medium have to do with it?

ACTIVITIES/PROJECTS

1. Prints and Multiples

Direct students to research prints and multiples created by Popular artists in the 1960s. By using these mediums, Pop artists transformed the thought that art was simply for a select few.

2. Transform an Object

Ask students to select an everyday object that represents the current fourth dimension period. Inquire them to transform this object into their own artwork out of nontraditional textile(s). Before starting, they should make a sketch showing their program. As artists, they accept many choices to make. What is their subject? What material(s) volition they utilize? How big volition their piece of work exist? How will they incorporate an original idea into their work? What is the championship?

3. Nontraditional Self-portrait

Have students create their own nontraditional self-portraits using found objects. Ask them to create a sketch before they start and to write a paragraph outlining what choices they will make every bit artists. The choices may concern fabric, technique, style, and specific subject matter.

Become to Lesson 4: Fine art and Politics →

Grove Art Online: Suggested Reading

Below is a listing of selected articles which provide more information on the specific topics discussed in this lesson.

• Robert Rauschenberg: Training and Early on Piece of work, to 1953
• Robert Rauschenberg: Combine paintings and transfer drawings, 1954-61
• Andy Warhol
• Claes Oldenburg
• Roy Lichtenstein
• Screenprinting: Materials and Techniques
• Screenprinting: History

Unit 7: 1950–1969

• Lesson One: Revolutions in Painting
• Lesson Two: Color and Surroundings
• Lesson 3: Transforming Everyday Objects
• Lesson 4: Fine art and Politics
• Lesson Five: Artist's Choice: People
• 1950–1969: For Farther Consideration

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Source: https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/Unit-7-Lesson-3