Pop Art Design by Vitra
From the Vitra Design Museum, 2012
No other artistic movement of the twentieth century is more closely intertwined with the visual culture of our time than Pop Art, and a fundamental aspect of this art form was its dialogue with design. Pop Art Design is the first comprehensive examination of the reciprocal influence of these two disciplines. Containing over 170 illustrations, the book juxtaposes key works of Pop Art by such figures as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Richard Hamilton, and other artists with works by designers from the same era, including Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, or Ettore Sottsass. These are complemented by many additional images from the areas of everyday culture, interior design, and contemporary history.
Prominent authors describe how artists and designers employed the same motifs and methods, and also elucidate the intermingling of art and life: utilitarian objects were artistically transformed into pictorial motifs and sculptures, while irony, quotation, and collage were used to develop a new everyday aesthetic. Among the book´s authors are experts on Pop Art such as Marco Livingstone and Steven Heller, the German Pop theoretician Diedrich Diedrichsen, and Mathias Schwartz-Clauss, curator of the eponymous exhibition that is accompanied by this publication. Their sound scholarly analyses and the book´s opulent graphics make Pop Art Design into a kaleidoscope for rediscovering the era of Pop!
