Lawrence Alloway

Lawrence Alloway (born 17 September 1926 in London, † January 2, 1990 in New York ) was an English art critic and curator who has lived and worked since the 1960s in the United States. In the 1950s, he was an influential British author of the Independent Group in the 1960s and an important author, critic and curator in the U.S. art scene. He used the term "mass popular art" in 1958 and coined the term " Pop Art " in the 1960s to show that art has its origin in contemporary popular culture and draws from a belief in the power of images.

Work

Early career and the Independent Group

From 1953 to 1957 Alloway wrote art criticism for Art News, from 1958 mainly for Art International. With his book Nine Abstract Artists of 1954 he promoted several artists of Constructivism, which developed in Britain after the Second World War: Robert Adams, Terry Frost, Adrian Heath, Anthony Hill, Roger Hilton, Kenneth Martin, Mary Martin, Victor Pasmore and William Scott.

Alloway theories of art that reflected the concrete materials of modern life, gave way to an interest in the mass media and consumption. He was since 1952 a member of the Independent Group and taught his theories about the circular reference between pop culture and low art, the intellectual high art. He organized the exhibition Collages and Objects (October, November 1954). From 1955 to 1960 he was Assistant Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 1956 he was involved in the organization of the exhibition This Is Tomorrow. He rewrote the contents of this show and other works, which he had seen on a trip to the U.S., called "mass popular art".

Career in the United States

In 1961 Alloway moved with his wife, the painter Sylvia Sleigh realistic to New York. From 1961 to 1966 he was Kuratur at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1963 he organized the Pop Art exhibition Six Painters and the Object of works by Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol, the canonized those six American Pop Art artists were. He was also chairman of the jury for the award of the Guggenheim International Award in 1964, one of which was denied by the painter Asger Jorn one.

In 1966 he was curator of the exhibition Systemic Painting, which is the geometric abstraction in American art in the form of Minimal art, Shaped canvas and hard -edge painting. Alloway was also an ardent supporter of Abstract Expressionism and American Pop Art artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. 1967/68 he became a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where John McHale and Buckminster Fuller were part of the staff of the SIU Design Department. In the 1970s, he wrote for The Nation and Artforum and worked as a lecturer at the State University of New York.

In the same year (1966 ) Lawrence Alloway coined the term " systemic nature " to describe a style of abstract art, created through the use of very simple standardized forms, usually with geometrical character, either concentrated in a single image or repeated in a system, which after a clearly visible principle of organization.

Pop Art - In his own words

Regarding the origin of the term Pop Art presented Alloway in his essay " Pop Art the words " is:

In a footnote he adds:

" " The first published appearance of the terms that I know is: Lawrence Alloway, " The Arts and the Mass Media, " Architectural Design, February, 1958, London. Ideas on Pop Art by Reyner Banham Discussed were, Theo Crosby, Frank Cordell, Toni del Renzio, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi, Alison and Peter Smithson, sculptor William Turnbull, and myself. " "

However, there are conflicting memories about the origin of the term: by John McHale's son his father coined the term in 1954 in an interview with Frank Cordell and he was then placed in the Independent Group to mid-1955 .. Alloway wrote of "mass popular art" in his much- quoted article from 1958, but he used there not the specific term " Pop Art ".

Documents

  • Pop Art
  • Art critic
  • Exhibition Curator
  • Americans
  • Born in 1926
  • Died in 1990
  • Man
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