Letter to the Editors
'Pop' goes the argument
In the article "Why Buy the Pop Machine When You can get the Soda for Free?" [April 2002] the author, Erik Wenzel, raised a number of important points regarding the nature of our culture and how it relates to art. He pointed out that the post-Duchampian world has turned in on itself. As the article itself demonstrated, mass media and the artistic principles which drive it, have become a point of observation in and of themselves. This is the nature of "Pop" in which the public responds to the media and the media responds to the public, or in the words of the author, "a popular culture that responds to itself." I think that the most poignant statement in the article was that "artistic sensibility has permeated our culture." This is an incredibly important, and well cited, point which I feel is essential for the contemporary artist to understand.
From there, however, I think the author made too far a logical jump, leaving the reader behind. Surely not every artist contributes [to] or addresses pop culture. In fact, there are many who do the opposite. And while the "butcher, baker, and candlestick maker" might have to use their artistic sensibilities to cater to the masses, the artist (perhaps ironically) does not ...
The only "horrible realization" that I get from pop [culture] and post-Duchampian art movements is that it confuses the hell out of those it empowers. It wasn't the mass culture that called the urinal and the Brillo box art, it was the artists themselves. ... It was the meditated decision to put a consumer product in a gallery setting that made it art, not the product itself ... What is shocking is that in our media driven age the artist is more viable as a cultural referee, drawing the line between what is and what looks like [art]. ... In conclusion, I would heed the author's advice and "figure out what you want to do and do it yourself" [while] realizing that art sensibility is different than art and that tar marks stay tar marks unless I sign them R. Mutt.
- John Peplinski,
student
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