Don’t be confused by the title of the show currently running at Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum. Jump Cut Pop is more about the "jump" and the "cut" than it is about Pop. Sure, there’s plenty of pop culture around. But if you’re looking for cool Brillo boxes or soup cans, you’ll be disappointed. Or at least surprised. A substantial taste of six artists working in what could be called post-Pop or neo-Pop, Jump Cut Pop is rich and varied, but it’s anything but Warhol cool.
Rather, it’s political "hot," abounding with found images of war, violence and, I think, old-fashioned condemna
tions of American pop culture and consumerism. The photomontages of Martha Rossler, both old and new, are a prime example. "Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful," juxtaposes banal middle-class advertising images against the violence of war, both Vietnam (1967-1972) and, now, Iraq and Afghanistan. The results, I think, are as banal as the original magazine layouts. Leftist critique at its most vague and obvious.
Cliff Evans doesn’t stray too far from Rossler’s territory, but his
13-minute video projection (made with the collective TerrorFarmer), 15 Reasons to Go to War (2004), is far more interesting, filled with wide-screen spectacle and wit. After all, when you’re preaching to the choir, it helps to keep things spritely and tell a few good jokes along the way.
Jane Hammond’s altered photographs are in a similar spirit, though their juxtapositio
ns are rich and enigmatic rather than preachy. And the work is beautifully elegant as well, which adds another dimension entirely. And her full-length self portrait is as courageous as it is conceptually rich.
Eduardo Paolozzi’s silkscreens are the closest the exhibit gets to traditional Pop Art, and they have a glorious cacophony when stitched together to form a wall-sized collage. But spend some time with his delicate side, the small and enigmatic prints that riff on the intersection of the human and the robotic.
The artists here that capture the spirit of the age (and perhaps a past age) are Nobu Fukui and Tadanori Yokoo. Yokoo’s silkscreens from the ’60s and ’70s are a different sort of psychedelia, though they will remind you of those old black light posters that once hung in your room. And Fukui’s recent neo-Pop abstractions turn the tumult of contemporary pop culture into a swirling abstraction, pulsing with a tense compositions that want to burst from their geometric cages. If this school of art is all about cutting and pasting, Fukui shows how violent and energetic technique can say as much about the absurdities and strange beauties of an age as the recycling of tired iconography and pat messages.
JOIN THE CLUB! Keep up with all the goings on in Milwaukee arts. Follow Culture Club on Twitter or become a friend of CultureClub Milwaukee on Facebook. Or subscribe: Pipe me right to your Blog Reader with RSS or get email notices from Milwaukee Magazine.
And don’t forget to tune in to "Arts On Deck," every Friday morning on WUWM-FM’s "Lake Effect."
