“Popular, mass produced, expendable, cheap, witty, sexy, playful, conspicuous, seductive”- according to Richard Hamilton these are the characteristics that make something interesting and that he also demanded of his own artistic work. What the British artist formulated in 1957 as a new standard was considered scandalous at the time. A rejection of the prevailing art and its sublime values originality, authenticity, and “depth.” Pop Art was a liberation for some-and a trivial affront for others.
The exhibition "Ludwig Goes Pop" offers an opportunity to explore this phenomenon and to comprehend Pop Art as an expression of a modern attitude toward life. In the 1960s the “everyday” had arrived—it had made its way into art: in all manner of play, from humorously ironic to biting and critical, artists explored the Zeitgeist in their art, integrated fragments and quotes from the world of consumerism and advertising, comics, science, technology, erotic, and mass media.
