A Quote by Robert Indiana

Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades...It springs newborn out of a boredom with the finality and over-saturation of Abstract-Expressionism, which, by its own esthetic logic, is the END of art, the glorious pinnacle of the long pyramidal creative process. Stifled by this rarefied atmosphere, some young painters turn back to some less exalted things like Coca-Cola, ice-cream sodas, big hamburgers, super-markets and 'EAT' signs. They are eye-hungry; they pop.
All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.
The traditional model for a company like Coca-Cola is to hire one big advertising agency and essentially outsource all of its creativity in that area. But Coca-Cola does not do it that way. It knows how to manage creative people and creative teams and it has been quite adept at building a network that includes the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, which is a talent agency.
If Abstract Expression reached for the sublime, Pop turned ordinary imagery into icons. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol illuminated the transformative power of context and the process of reproduction. Claes Oldenburg's soft ice-cream cones and hamburgers changed sculpture from hard to soft, from stasis to transformation.
Warhol and other Pop artists had brought the art religion of art for art's sake to an end. If art was only business, then rock expressed that transcendental, religious yearning for communal, nonmarket esthetic feeling that official art denied. For a time during the seventies, rock culture became the religion of the avant-garde art world.
Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures - they're lying if they say they haven't. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind - the product wasn't distinct enough from Coca-Cola.
I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.
I've always been interested in pop culture. Some of my colleagues think of pop culture as beneath them, or there's the ivory tower and then there's everybody else, and I never could buy into that wall that's been put up by so many people over the decades and even the centuries.
Coca-Cola is little more than sugar, some flavoring, and lots of (carbonated) water. It is largely indistinguishable from innumerable other brands of cola, yet people around the world seem to think that Coca-Cola is something and they are eager to ask for it by name and even to pay a premium for it.
Who doesn't love an ice-cold Coca Cola? I'm not the biggest fan. So my New Year's Resolution for 2015 was to reach every corner of the world where Coca-Cola is not officially distributed.
There is no such thing as abstract art, or else all art is abstract, which amounts to the same thing. Abstract art no more exists than does curved art yellow art or green art.
What interests me is to paint the kind of antisensitivity that impregnates modern civilization. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward - neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.
There are many more important things in life than fashion. But fashion, to me, is part of pop culture. And I'm an art collector. I'm obsessed with art and pop culture. And I say that there is fame, fashion, art, music and entertainment, including celebrity, that really moves the needle in society.
You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people.
In fact, on a side note, after the success of the first record, I got asked to write for some pop artists, as everybody does, and I did a couple songs for some of these massive stars and the review that I got back was, "This artist likes the song but it's too POP-y for them." I was like, "What do you mean, I thought I was writing for a pop star."
I eat many different ice creams. I'm not an ice cream snob, although I do think Ben & Jerry's is the best. But I'm happy to eat anybody's ice cream, really. As long as it's good.
I can never fathom it when people say things like "I can't understand abstract art!" Or: "Abstract art is junk!" Or: "Abstract art isn't as valid as realism!"
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!