Post 4 : Pop Art myths and the "Myths and Heroes" notion

Retroactive I (1963) by Robert Rauschenberg

It is known that a hero is a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal. Can this definition be apply for a contemporary figure? There is a sort of taboo around this notion of hero and his use that can be controversial. A fictional hero, can be a universal hero (like Superman), a character who match exactly with the definition given and who is recognize by everyone as a hero. But for a real person it's much harder because when you are a politician for example you can take measures that seems heroic to your supporters but awful to your opponents. There will is always be a man in the world to tell you that you are wrong even if you are right and fictional character do not have this problem. Nevertheless Pop art disregarding of this problem decided to represent a lot of popular figure of their times (which mean 1950' and 60').  Using those new popular culture heroes Pop art denounce once again the mass-medias who mystified those heroes by their discontinuous flows of images.

The collage Retroactive I was made by Robert Rauschenberg in 1963, two weeks before the assassination of the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy the 22th of November in Dallas. Rauschenberg was one of the Pop art precursor, even though he was never really affiliate to the movement, he influenced  it a lot for sure. Rauschenberg's fascination with popular imagery and his philosophy of "anything goes aesthetic" was certainly is biggest contribution to Pop art, which would mimic the look of popular culture as opposed to Rauschenberg's more subjective renderings. His work is sometimes called Neo-dada in reference to the 1920's movement that like him was completely free of any artistic rules. Rauschenberg used images of current events gathered from magazines and newspapers for his 1963 collage Retroactive I. A large press photograph of John F. Kennedy speaking at a televised news conference was the source for this screen print on canvas. He juxtaposed the image of Kennedy with another photo silkscreen of a parachuting astronaut. The overlapping, and seemingly disparate composition, creates a colorful visual commentary on a media-satured culture struggling to come to grips with the television era.

Pop Art has been, like surrealism in his time, a new step in art history, he revealed new form of artistic technics like collage. But most important their constant critics on mass-media reminded to everybody that art is essentially a way of expression and not just a way to make money.  Thanks to Pop Art, I think we are more aware of the consumer society that surround us, they succeed to recreate an art of contestation, very good representation of their times that we can qualified of revolutionary in many domains and not just Art. Finally, I think they successfully introduced a certain modern mythology with the help of Hollywood, or "myths-making machine", that provide them typical modern myths such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and many other figure of great charisma that we can't no longer find nowadays.