13.10.2012 – 03.02.2013
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
Pop Art is widely regarded as the most significant artistic movement since 1945.
Reflecting on the cult of celebrity, commodity fetishism and media reproduction that permeated everyday life in the postwar era, Pop Art continues to shape our society’s cultural self-understanding to this day. A central characteristic of Pop Art was thedialogue between design and art, which is now being explored in “Pop Art Design” at the Vitra Design Museum as the first-ever comprehensive exhibition on the topic. Works by such artists as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein or Judy Chicago are paired with design objects by Charles Eames, George Nelson, Achille Castiglioni and Ettore Sottsass. The exhibition is supplemented witha multitude of further exhibits, such as album covers, magazines, films and photos of contemporary interiors.
Fifty years after the official declaration of Pop Art in a conference at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition “Pop Art Design” thus paints a new picture of Pop Art – one that finally recognises the central role played by design.