wi Ste, Noo Pop in the US and Europe, 1977-80: The Pictures Group to the Social Activists Around 1980 the art world witnessed three major revivals. One was the return of painting, which many observers during the 1970s had declared ‘dead, In 1979-80 a numberof painters hastily dubbed Neo-expressionists had eriically acclaimed one-person shows in New York. Many, including Eric Fischl, David Salle and Julian Schnabel, were Americans, but an ‘even ler number were Europeans, especially Halians and [European an, largely ignored outside Europe after the rise of Abstract Expressionism, thereby returned to a central place in Western art citicism and history. The longterm result was the growing recognition that the communications revolution had made art, Ike business, a global phenomenon, in which national ingrecte 3s provided the favouring The retum that went largely unnoticed was that of Pop. By the early 1980s tne chief competitors for eritial attention with the Neoexpressionists were twee loosely categorized groups, many of whose members appropriated their Imagery and techniques from popular cutue, particularly advertisements and films: the Pictures Group, those who protuced so-called Commodity ‘1, and a to of feminists, By the middle of the decade a varity of artists Committed, lke the feminist, to progressive social causes were also ‘employing popular imagery. Although the connections between the work of these diverse groups and that of American Pop artists, particularly Warhol, ‘wore frequently noted, nane of these developments, considered individually ‘a8 whole, was labelled Neo-Pop until the following decade, for two basic reasons: fist, because the term Pop was (and for many, still is) narrowly ‘identified with its pioneers from the 1960s: and second, because the new ‘developments were rooted in ideas and examples coming not from early Pop but from the post Minimalist orbit, ‘That the NeoPop label was not applied earlier Is nevertheless od, gen the degree of selfconsciousness these artists and their critics sharedwith regacd to both the extent to which popular media had come to dominate daily experience and what that meant for the ordinary individ, ‘The artist and ertie Thomas Lawson, for example, wrote in 1982 that the insistent penetration ofthe mas med into every facet of our ai es has made te possibilty of authentic experience dicut {ot possible, Ow daily encounters with one another, and wth ‘ature, our gestures, ou speech ae So thoroughly impregnated with 2 ‘metas absores trough te med} that we have no certain ca to th einai of anyone of our thous cations. ‘The eollecte decision to re-engage the mass media was spurted by ‘wo major factors, The frst was the conception ofthe self as socially ‘constructed’, which developed in the late 1970s largely in reaction to the ‘essentialist’ notion being espoused by leading second wave feminist artists and erties such as Judy Chicago, Miiam Setapiro and Lucy Lippard. Rejecting the notion that men and women were naturally titferent, a number of women argued that identity is shaped by culture, its language and its imagery. A key document for these later feminists was the British film theorist Laura Mulvey's essay on “Visual Pleasure ‘and Narrative Cinema’ (21975) in the journal Screen, which examines how Hollywood fms shape our conceptions of gender differences. ‘Te position that Mulvey helped to establish was but a facet ofthe lager post structuralist discourse that became fashionable in the late 1970s in atistic and iterary cies, particularly in colleges and universities. Post “structuralism isa blanket term forthe work ofa loose collection of French intellectuals who emerged from the structuralist movement ofthe 1960s, By synthesizing the linguistic theovies of Ferdinand de Saussure (which focused on the structure of language), the Marist analysis of society (which emphasized the fundamental stucture of capitalism) and the psychoanalvticl theories of Sigmund Freud (which sought to identify the basic structures ofthe psyche), socal scientists such as the anthropologist Claude LeviStrauss — in response tothe existential claim that each person makes him/herself ~ attempted to demonstrate thatthe individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures over which S/he has no control. As a result ofthe isilsioning failure of the May 1968 "uprising a number of those trained in structuralist ideas adopted a more ‘essimistc view ofits implicit claims that we can understand and thus {eventually master human experience. While accepting many of the basic Sructuralist ideas, post-stucturalists developed a multifaceted enique of ts aspirations to unimpeachable Truth, whether social (a inthe work of Miche Foucault), psychological (as inthe work of Jacques Lacan) or interpretive (as in the iteray crticism of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes). For the re-emergence of Pop the most significant ideas circulating in ‘American artistic circles in the late 1970s came from Lacan and Derrida ‘Lacan, who considered himself Freud's true heir, insisted that there is ho Separation between self and society because the unconscious is Structured by language, which is given by society. We can only think of the world and ourselves by employing the freighted language and ideas fist available to us as infants. What interested those who participated in the Pop revival was the corollary of this idea: if the language of consumer ulture fs imagery, then itis that communicative form, as much as language narrowly conceived, which moulds our subjectivity. Mulvey's ‘essay, for example, extends Lacan's ideas in precisely this way. Deri to, insisted thatthe self and society are constructs of, and therefore circumscribed by, language. He added that everything is @ kind ‘of text and that there Is nothing but texts, nothing but thelr cheulation and reckculation. Behind every text is another text, behind every word just another wot, behind every mage, he might have added, just another image, ‘The symbiotic relationship between post structuralis idews and Neo Pop production is evident in the event that commenced this chapter in the history of Pop, the Pictures exhibition at New York's Artists Space in 4977. The Space's director, Helene Winer, asked Douglas Crimp, a ‘ttc and art history graduate student, to curate a show featuring some ‘ofthe antist/members of the recently formed non-profit gallery. Crimp chose a group of artists ~ Jack Goldstein, Shere Levine, Robert Longo, Troy Brauntuch and Philip Smith — whose images were appropriated from 182 NeoPoo‘existing imagery, artistic or popular. the introduction to the catalogue Grimp observed that increasingly ‘ur experience is Koval y pices. Newspapers td ‘magazines, on television ain the enema, Nexto these pictures frsinand experience begs to retreat. We Konce seemed! that pitores had We function o iter weal now Sees that hey rave usupod i? Although Crimp’s essay seems to anticipate the idea then being developed by another French poststructuralist, Jean Baudlard, that simulacra are replacing realty in Westem culture, the writing retlects, instead, Cximp's ‘eadly engagement with the work of Dertida and Lacan, with which he was “beginning to grapple’ as a graduate student of Rosalind Krauss at the City University of New York” ‘The eatalogue opens witha description of Goldstein's unfinished short fm The Jump (1978), based on stock footage of a diver performing a 244. oe somersault from a high board. After stripping the scene of detail, Goldstein ‘converted the figure into coloured animation using a rotoscope, so that all a2 ‘that remained was luminous form, twisting and plunging through empty space. Often discussed as an expression ofthe artist's preoccupation ‘with death, such work is better understood as a coping device whereby time, the agent of death, is temporarily and beautiful suspended. In Goldstein's bestknown work, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (244), a two-minute lop ofthe Holywood fm company's trademark roaring lon, the viewer is held at ‘that wonderful cinematic moment when the story fs about to begin Goldstein (1945-2003) was bom in Montieal but moved as a eid to Los ‘Angeles. Alter receiving his BFA from the Chouinacd At institut in 1969 he |vas a member the following year of the school's fst graduate class when it \was rebom, with money from Walt Disney, as the California Insitute ofthe ‘ts. At Calf he stutied with John Baldessatin his famous ‘post stuo class, Baldessar focused on artists and ideas coming rom New York and Europe and instead of traditional art making skill he encouraged! the use of ‘Super8 cameras, photography and materials from popular culture. ‘The Pictures exhibition was essentially a product of Baldessad’s class at CalArts, Another member ofthe show, Ty Brauntuch, was aso one his students, and Winer, the galley director who initiated the extibition, was 4 close friend through Goldstein, her boyltiend. Before taking the job at the Artists Studio in 1976 she had been director ofthe nearby Pomona College Art Gallery. Another former Baldessan student, David Salle (0, 1952), would have been included in the show but for the fact that he had had a one-person exhibition atthe venue the previous year, and was therefore ineligible according to gallery rules.* Because Salle gained his fame in the midst of the Neoexpressionist trend he became identified with it, but he should more properly be considered part of the Pictures group, Born and raised in the Midwest, Salle entered CalArts in 1970, Although he began his studies as a painter, he gave up the medium, as did so many atthe school, in 1972. At CalArts he worked in all the fashionable media of the decade: vdeo, perfomance, installation and Conceptual Photography. In 1973, for example, he produced a set of four photogvaphs ‘of balh-obed women drinking cotfee while looking out of a window (245), ‘Adiferent coffee label is attached to each photograph, establishing a provocative dialogue between the world af commerce, with its implied glamour and that of oxdinary, mundane reality. While it is tempting to ead the set as an understated commentary on the claims of advetising, Salles later work suggests the quartet articulate the anaemic loneliness ‘of maxlem life, inthe tration of Edward Hopper [ter graduation, Salle moved to New York, where he took a job as a layout ‘designer for a publisher of soap opera, romance and men’s magazines. Using as his source material a collection of photographs he found in 385 neoPopin ine US and Eps, 1977-00