Lawrence Alloway

Lawrence Reginald Alloway (born September 17, 1926 in London , † January 2, 1990 in New York ) was an English art critic and curator who lived and worked in the United States since the 1960s .

He was an influential writer for the British Independent Group in the 1950s and a major writer, critic and curator on the US art scene in the 1960s. He used the expression “mass popular art” in 1958 and coined the term “ Pop Art ” in the 1960s to show that art has its origins in contemporary popular culture and that it draws a belief in the power of images.

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Early career and the Independent Group

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

Alloway's art theories, which reflected the concrete materials of modern life, gave way to an interest in mass media and consumption. He had been a member of the Independent Group since 1952 and taught his theories on the circular relationship between pop culture low art and intellectual high art . He organized the exhibition Collages and Objects (Oct., Nov. 1954). From 1955 to 1960 he was Assistant Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 1956 he was involved in organizing the This Is Tomorrow exhibition . He described the content of this show and other works that he had seen on a trip to the USA as "mass popular art".

Career in the United States

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

In 1966 he was curator of the Systemic Painting exhibition , which focused on geometric abstraction in American art in the form of minimal art , shaped canvas and hard-edge painting . Alloway was also an ardent advocate of Abstract Expressionism and American pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. In 1967/68 he became a lecturer at the art faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale , where John McHale and Buckminster Fuller were also part of the SIU Design Department. In the 1970s he wrote for The Nation and Artforum and was a lecturer at the State University of New York .

In the same year (1966), Lawrence Alloway coined the term “ Systemic Art ” to describe “a type of abstract art created through the use of very simple, standardized forms, mostly of a geometric character, either concentrated in a single image or repeated in one System that has a clearly visible principle of organization. "

Pop Art - In his own words

With regard to the origin of the term Pop Art , Alloway presented in his essay "Pop Art the words":

"" The term, originated in England by me, as a description of mass communications, especially, but not exclusively, visual ones. ""

- Lawrence Alloway

In a footnote, he continues:

"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 were discussed by Reyner Banham , Theo Crosby, Frank Cordell , Toni del Renzio , Richard Hamilton , Nigel Henderson, John McHale , Eduardo Paolozzi , Alison and Peter Smithson , sculptor William Turnbull , and myself.

- Lawrence Alloway

However, there are conflicting memories about the origin of the term: after John McHale's son, his father coined the term in 1954 in a conversation with Frank Cordell , and it was then used in the Independent Group until mid-1955. Alloway wrote of "mass popular art" in his much-cited 1958 article, but he did not use the specific term "Pop Art" there.

supporting documents

1. ^ ^{A b c} Lawrence Alloway: Pop Art the words , In: Topics in American Art since 1945 WWNorton and Company, New York 1975; Pp. 119-122. ISBN 0-393-04401-7
2. ^ Guggenheim Prize Of $ 2,500 Refused By Danish Painter . Jan. 17, 1964, The New York Times ; P. 41
3. ↑ Tom McDonough : Art in America July 2002.
4. ↑ "describe a type of abstract art characterized by the use of very simple standardized forms, usually geometric in character, either in a single concentrated image or repeated in a system arranged according to a clearly visible principle of organization." 'From: "Systemic art. " Ian Chilvers (Ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Systemic art. Oxford Reference, accessed March 19, 2016 . 
5. ^ Warholstars.org
6. ^ The Arts and the Mass Media Lawrence Alloway, Warholstars.org