 |
| Roy Lichtenstein Wall Explosion II 1965 enamel on steel Tate Gallery |
 |
| Ellsworth Kelly Yellow over Dark Blue 1964-65 lithograph Tate Gallery |
 |
| Patrick Caulfield Bathroom Mirror 1968 screenprint Tate Gallery |
At the Museum of Modern Art
At the Museum of Modern Art you can sit in the lobby
on the foam-rubber couch; you can rest and smoke,
and view whatever the revolving doors express.
You don't have to go into the galleries at all.
In this arena the exhibits are free and have all
the surprises of art – besides something extra:
sensory restlessness, the play of alternation,
expectation in an incessant spray
thrown from heads, hands, the tendons of ankles.
The shifts and strollings of feet
engender compositions on the shining tiles,
and glide together and pose gambits,
gestures of design, that scatter, rearrange,
trickle into lines, and turn clicking through a wicket
into rooms where caged colors blotch the walls.
You don't have to go to the movie downstairs
to sit on red plush in the snow and fog
of old-fashioned silence. You can see contemporary
Garbos and Chaplins go by right here.
And there's a mesmeric experimental film
constantly reflected on the side of the wide
steel-plate pillar opposite the crenellated window.
Non-objective taxis surging west, on Fifty-third,
liquefy in slippery yellows, dusky crimsons,
pearly mauves – an accelerated sunset, a roiled
surf, or cloud-curls undulating – their tubular ribbons
elongations of the coils of light itself
(engine of color) and motion (motor of form).
– May Swenson, from To Mix With Time (Scribner's, 1963)
 |
| John Chamberlain Kora 1963 painted steel Tate Gallery |
 |
| Karel Appel Untitled 1960 lithograph Tate Gallery |
 |
| Mary Fedden Red Still-life 1967 oil paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
 |
| Leon Golub Wounded Sphinx 1965 lithograph Tate Gallery |
 |
| Harold Cohen Before the Event 1963 oil paint and tempera on canvas Tate Gallery |
 |
| Bernard Cohen Matter of Identity I 1963 oil paint, tempera and metallic paint on canvas Tate Gallery |
 |
| William Gillies Still-life with Blue Gloves 1968 watercolour on paper Tate Gallery |
 |
| Henri Hayden Still-life 1969 lithograph Tate Gallery |
 |
| Stephen Willats Drawing for a Project No. 12 1965 graphite and gouache on paper Tate Gallery |
"Someone said that Brecht wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being a Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way."
– Andy Warhol, from What is Pop Art? (published in ARTnews, November 1963)
 |
| E.L.T. Mesens The Staff 1962 watercolour and collage on board Tate Gallery |
 |
| Joseph Beuys Cross 1961 oil paint, watercolour and collage on card Tate Gallery |