Essay
Getting the Picture: Pop Art’s Influence on the World
Pop Art’s presence in the now allows it to go down in history as one of the most powerfully curious art movements ever. It held a disregard for old guard, new guard, anything, even the people who made it. In the words of Jim Dine, "Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades. It's basically a U-turn back to a representational visual communication, moving at a break-away speed…Pop is a re-enlistment in the world…It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous and naive." (The Art Story) But in spite of that seeming disillusionment and distance, it was made to make people ask questions. It was made to make you wonder why things were. It was made because things had been taken, and artists wanted to have them back. They wanted the world to have them back. But that makes you wonder; where did pop art come from? And more importantly, the main question: what was its impact on the world?
After World War II, the United States and Britain were at a great disparity from each other, societally and economically (James). Britain painted a bleak picture of its postwar self, with black and white films commenting on the woes and problems of middle-class Britons in a society suffering from aftershocks (James). In the wake of limited resources, many luxuries were rationed or outright abstained from, leading to artistic choices like color printing or brightly-colored fashion being seen as unpatriotic (James). Meanwhile, the United States began enjoying a boom from the spoils of war, without having to do any of the reconstruction or suffer any of the tangible damage Britain had. There were full-color films and magazines, able to reflect the equally technicolor culture, spirit, and fashion of the explosion in American excellence (James). It became an image that would seep into the rest of the world, an image of a perfect land with perfect people in perfect color. It was the contemporary product of a commercially titanic America, one with a patented sense of pride for who it was. That image, like the things it was made from, however, would not last forever, especially in useful conditions. Commercialism and capitalism needed a safe, massively appealing way to communicate visually that this was a lifestyle that could be achieved and was being achieved. So they used beautiful women, beautiful men, beautiful buildings, beautiful places, and beautiful scenarios to portray it. When the desire for mainstream appeal took things from art in spades, such as nude models going from being used to make paintings or sculptures to being photos featured inside magazines, pop art responded with heart, pushback, and return fire.
Personal Expression Within Pop Art
Pop art, simply explained, is “...an art movement that emerged in the 1950s and flourished in the 1960s in America and Britain, drawing inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture.” (Tate). Pop art’s basis in the appraisal and the appreciation of the everyday grants it a power that corporate safety stripped back: the ability to come face to face with something big, esoteric, thought-provoking, and confusing, despite how common, straightforward, normal-seeming, and recognizable its sources and origins may be (Angelotti). With its use of common objects, figures, language, phrases, visual metaphors and motifs, pop art borrows a lot of its lexicon from the extremely clear, sanitized, or cleanly formatted, before sending it on a collision with disarray, viewer interpretation, and artistic intention.
Combine paintings are an example of this aspect. Invented and popularized by Robert Rauschenberg, they combine elements of American excess and curious intent into pieces much bigger than the sum of their parts (James). They would incorporate broken objects like smashed clocks, one-time use items like Coca-Cola bottles, and generally used and discarded items, like old shoes, together with newspaper clippings and paintings to create new art, often large in scale, intention and scope (James). In an interview with Rauschenberg by the Smithsonian Institute, pop art (to him) was about objectively capturing and observing the scenery and feelings ,especially his own, but without letting that color his view. He made art of what he observed around him in his day, and made that art without bias and without judgment (Rauschenberg). He commented on the juxtaposition of the different varieties of buildings you could find in the city By extracting items of corporate importance and isolating them from real life situations, and placing them on generic or unexpected backdrops, they became the one thing you could recognize, the one element of real life in an otherwise surreal art piece. This betrays the fact that in their original context, things like bottles of Coke and bars of soap would be the most artificial thing in their advertisements, aside from the situation.
Pop art has an extensive history of fighting for progressive change, which follows back to its roots and popularity in artists like David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. One thing they had in common, despite one being English and the other American, was that they were both gay men who fought for elevated voices and believed in art’s ability to carry a message beyond words. Pop art is heavily indebted to the efforts, contributions, ideas, and perspectives of queer folk, particularly gay men. They used it to be bold, brash, and frank, but above it all, themselves,
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol was one of the boldest figures in this regard, with his honesty and confidence towards who he was and what he could do.
‘Cavalier: When did you start painting?
Andy Warhol: About four or five years ago.
Cavalier: What about the time prior to that?
Andy Warhol: Before that time I was very young.
Cavalier: Yes. I’m sure you were. Are you interested in what the critics say about your work?
Andy Warhol: No, just Henry Geldzahler. He’s a good friend – a fan. And I want him to care. Whatever anyone else says has no value to me concerning my work. I don’t need approval. I have confidence in what I’m doing.
Cavalier: What is the future of Pop Art?
Andy Warhol: It’s finished.’
(McIlhenny and Ray)
Through this interview, we can see Warhol’s conviction in his art, his dedication to his statement and personal beliefs. His art, even for all its difference to what else was being made, was his project, his child, yet also part of a movement much larger than itself. As much as he was a figurehead he was the person who popularized it, allowing it to seep into the public consciousness. Warhol would eventually become part of the recognizable pop culture he pulled from to create his pieces (James). Andy Warhol played with the concept of ubiquity so much that he became ubiquitous in himself. He took recognizable, clearly understood imagery and made it his own. He made it something with questions, questions about yourself and questions you had about the art. He became equally as famous as any of the movie and music stars he made silk screens of, as common a mention in the newspaper as the headlines that informed his Death and Disaster series (James). At the peak of his ubiquity and power, he was designing covers for clients like Time Magazine and The Rolling Stones; images that would become popular imagery in their own right (James). However, in 1968, Warhol was shot by a mentally unstable woman named Valerie Solanas, who had had small parts in two of his films, and felt she didn’t get the attention she deserved from him (James). It could be inferred that she felt her contributions to his fame were undervalued, or that she didn’t even get a chance to be famous. And in the next day’s paper, Warhol’s life became art as much as it was about art when he was the headline of the New York Daily News (Faso et al.).
With pop art becoming such a fixture of the mainstream culture it pulled from, what was source material, what was art made from that material, and what was made for the money or for love became increasingly blurry. What was once revolutionary for its construction from commonplace things soon became commonplace itself (James). And soon came a second wave of pop art, by the generation after the forefathers that had been the first to experiment.
The Second Wave
This second wave was born in the early-to-mid 1950’s, a generation nearly 30 years younger than pioneers of pop art like Rauschenberg and Warhol, who were respectively born in 1925 and 1928. This second wave applied the principles of ephemeral art about current society to new mediums and meanings. Chalk and spray paint on the sides of walls in urban centers became the main focus of street artists.One of the artists at the center of this new wave was Keith Haring. Like many of the forefathers of pop art, Keith was openly gay. Like previous pop artists who had worked to advance society through social and artistic movements, Keith used his art to advocate for safe sex and knowledge in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, which was claiming people he closely knew (The Keith Haring Foundation and Scheff).
He also inspired and supported people in various communities. In 1989, he worked with 300 schoolchildren in Chicago to create art pieces and spread important messages through the power of art. He made them feel heard, as exemplified by the statement of a seventeen-year old student named Joe Asencios: “”I haven’t ever taken art[,]” Asencios says. “I’ll take it next year.” This experience has transformed him. Asencios, who lives with his father, an exterminator, and hasn’t seen his mother except twice in nine years, says Haring is the nicest person he has ever met in his life.” (The Keith Haring Foundation and Scheff).
Haring himself had been HIV positive for about two years in 1979, but similar to Warhol’s self-confidence and openness in the very different landscape of 1965, he pressed onward, not letting it stop him or inform when he had to until his very last breath. Even in the knee-deep of it, when lesions were appearing behind his ears and on his forehead, he would keep traveling to do more paintings, murals, and art (The Keith Haring Foundation and Scheff). One of the spots he visited, a Gay And Lesbian Community Services Center in New York, which he would visit soon after his Chicago visit, was of particular note. This visit shows the ever-continuing progressive trends of pop art, from supporting and working with communities to allowing personal growth through understanding and appreciating the world that goes on around you, truly, revolves around giving yourself and others what you have to offer in a world of things taken, a peaceful exchange rather than a straight sale of who you are or where you’re from.
The Spirit of Pop Art (Only Reborn)
Whether it was celebrating the ordinary or acknowledging it as just simply ordinary and nothing more, pop art made important subjects of the things we saw every day, for both criticism and appreciation, often in the same piece. It allowed things to come through about these ordinary things, new and old, that we hadn't seen before, or had seen, just not quite like this. Keith Haring has a quote about the power of pop art, and how important it is to stay who you are in a world that might try to claim you and your art like it has claimed art before.
“...[W]hen I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality. When it is working, you completely go into another place, you’re tapping into things that are totally universal, of the total consciousness, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That’s what it’s all about. …How do you participate in the world but not lose your integrity? It’s a constant struggle. Part of growing is trying to teach yourself to be empty enough that the thing can come through you completely so it’s nor affected by your preconceived ideas of what a work of art should be or what an artist should do. Since there have been people waiting to buy things, I’ve known that if I wanted to make things people would expect or people would want, I could do it easily. As soon as you let that affect you, you’ve lost everything. As soon as you get some acclaim, you have alienated some people that think that they deserved it instead of you. So you sold out. I never sold out.” (The Keith Haring Foundation and Scheff)
Pop art’s unwavering dedication to the power of give and take has shown its unwavering journey to make things change. Similar to the words of Jim Dine, it was a return to visual communication and the power of an optimistic dream for a better society. Its spirit has never died, only changed to be a better sign of the times it’s in. Better, worse, more corporate, more individual, for everyone, impersonal, deeply impersonal, those are just some of the moments and places and things that pop art has reflected. Given its roots in the unrealistic flashy high-color beauty of post-war American Exceptionalism, it gave birth to possible legitimate actualization of a better tomorrow for every color.
The Crispehssay
NOTE: any time i say "the series" here im referring to the mario & luigi series, not mario as a whole
-the beginning of the game is. rough, to say the least. i really really dont like it. after going through the bowser's airship section (which is fine in my opinion; sure intrusive tutorials be damned but it's not too bad) you're immediately thrust into stardust fields, which i think is my least favorite area of the game, right off the bat (or maybe joke's end). it has such a draining purple pallete (that actually looks really nice in the remake but im not talking about that) and immediately the first thing you do is: arbitrary minigame thats weirdly strict with its timing. it's not that bad though and you do get 3 hits on both bros before you lose so it's not that annoying, but it is a VERY strange beginning to the game. almost as strange as the fact that immediately following is... a fetchquest to get 100 coins! and thats the whole first area, save for a little boss at the end. i just dont get it i think. i dont want to go over like every area in the game like that though. thats dull and id much rather make sweeping statements about the game. i wanted to point out the first area as specifically rough though because it is literally the introduction to the game.
-the combat system is BY FAR the roughest in the series (that ive played; idk maybe paper jam's is bad. thats the only one i havent played) and im really annoyed that people always point out partners in time as the odd one out in this regard when like. it's not as bad. enemy attacks always feel awkward to dodge (the dodging and counterattack always feel a little too sluggish), the bros attacks all look the exact same on account of basically just the bros moving acrobatically a little bit, they also FEEL about the same since each of them are basically just "press a or b 3 times with certain timings" except with twists such as "this one has you press ONLY b" or "this one has you HOLD a" ; the stand out one that i actually kinda liked was chopper bros., because at least mashing a for a sec feels a Bit different. it's funny though, because the attacks are all so similar in concept that when you get the advanced versions they ALL feel like they might as well have just been COMPLETELY separate attacks on the menu and NOTHING would change. the bros attack "difficulty" system, while good in theory (allows you to learn the attacks via them being slowed down more at the cost of power and more BP on usage) is actually not that great i think, because all it Really teaches you is the order to press the buttons. literally all that the harder difficulty does is remove the slowdown (ergo it has a different timing; ergo you cant use the lower difficulties to practice timing Aka The Important Part) and gives you a Little Less indication on which button to press (which like. i dont think removing visual information makes for an interesting challenge. not that it removes the indication altogether though since the bros still shine their color when you should press the button so ??). i think a better system is bowser's inside story's, where you can use the menu to access "practice modes" or whatever to practice bros attacks in fake little battles. it's not perfect and i like the fact that in superstar saga youre pushed to learn as you go in actual fights, rather than practicing in a sectioned off little thing, but for the sake of practicing superstar saga's system Does Not Do It For Me
-this kind of ties in with the last point since it's Also about the battle system but i think it's distinct enough to warrant its own point: the difficulty curve is Really Strange; it feels like it rises until you get to the third boss in the game and then just kinda. plataeus. nothing really feels like it gets any harder, and if you choose to use the mush badge it drops to pissbaby easy real quick since you can one-shot basically any enemy including bosses with the mushrooms you buy with pocket change + chopper bros (however it's so notoriously overpowered a lot of people just forgo using it altogether to make the rest of the game actually A Game). throughout almost the WHOLE GAME the enemy attack patterns..really never get more interesting, complicated, harder, etc. they just kinda plataeu. with a few exceptions which ill get to in a sec. and that creates a weird case for joke's end (2nd last area in the game) where the enemies are so easy to dodge that they Still Dont Pose A Real Threat, but they DO have higher numbers than what came before them. so in the offchance you Do accidentally fuck up an attack you will Probably Die. which might actually be because i didnt bother to buy new gear since the prior few areas had been so pissbaby easy but what Ever. and then it's immediately followed by the final area in the game where NOW they decided "okay time to make the enemies have harder attacks" i still have no idea how youre supposed to dodge the sniper bill's attack what. there are some other oddities too, like for whatever reason, the chuckola woods bossfight has one attack that feels like you have only a few FRAMES to dodge it-- but ONLY when it's attacking mario. i eventually started dodging enemies because the battle system was not fun enough to warrant it
-it is the least visually appealing game in the M&L series in my opinion. sure i think a lot of the weird off-model designs are cute and charming, and im upset that they just made them more generic versions in the remake. but also so much of the sprite art looks so strange and clunky. i dont really care that much about this point since i still think it looks GOOD, but fwiw i think partners in time, aesthetically, is just this game but a little upscaled and more refined (and a little darker, ambiently), and looks so much better to me. obviously that one is on the DS and this is a GBA game, so i cannot judge it for everything. but i can judge it for the toads looking like that What The Hell
-i complained for so long about the battle system. but it's not like the overworld feels much better to play. action navigation is a DISASTER. having to switch bros constantly to figure out which bro has what ability every time i needed to do something to progress was a chore -- worst of which being remembering which bro gets hammered into the ground and which bro gets hammered into being small, since it is quite literally the same action with different results. in theory i love using the same mechanic in multiple ways like that but mixed with confusing navigation it Constantly threw me over. an example for doing it better, to me, is dream team, where when luigi hammers mario, whether he goes into the ground or becomes small depends on the texture of the surface youre hammering him into! thats so much more intuitive, to me, at least. firebrand and thunderhand are really undeniably Cool, but in practice are uninteresting and i see why they were very quickly phased out. when used by the front bro, what they do is. Activate Special Switches That Will Only Activate If Hit By That Element. which is really lame, because thats also exactly how buttons function with the hammer, except i guess these ones are bro-specific. not that it matters, since theres like one or two puzzles that actually utilize that aspect of it. they dont even work for first striking enemies. which is really weird, because they otherwise DO function in battle, even if they're just. elemental hammers, basically. and thats kind of how they feel in general, except elements hardly come into play because your elemental attacks arent as strong as bros attacks, and you unlock the elemental bros attacks really late in the game and by that point there arent that many enemies with elemental weaknesses anyways; speaking of that point in the game, you also get the ability to "tickle" the other bro from behind with the element of the bro in the back which is.. weird but this series has shit like that constantly, you kinda get used to it. tickling luigi with fire allows you to run fast like the zelda pegasus boots. this one's fine, it's versatile enough out of it's strictly intended purpose that it's fun to have, even if it happens to be less useful than youd probably think. tickling mario with electricity allows you to move in any direction while the bro in the back remains in the same position relative to the bro in the front! this is so non-useful, that literally the main intended use of it (fitting in between tight moving obstacles) can literally just be done with the spin jump. the other one is the ability to flick boo switches, which can only be activated while youre not looking at them, so the electricity stopping your turning is required. which is fine, in concept except Oh Wait That Means It Is Functionally the Same As The Thunder/Fire Switches And Thus Carries My Same Complaints. also these have the same issue of increasing the tedium of menu navigation and having to remember which bro should be in front and when, except it's slightly less bad than the hammers since at least thunder and fire look a bit more visually distinct than Two Identical Hammers even if their hand icons Do Not. another significant issue is that swapping who's in front brings an inconsistency: luigi. when he's in front, he uses the A button and mario uses the B button. battles do not change, however. regardless of who is where in the overworld, the buttons for each are consistent in battle. okay. not that hard to adjust when im swapping back and forth on the fly, albeit i am a bit peeved that it breaks the rule of "A is Mario, B is Luigi". but when it's a luigi solo section, i find it exceptionally jarring to go from the overworld where im pressing A to do everything, to the battles where suddenly i have to switch to B to counterattack. its one of those really weird annoying inconveniences that just kept getting to me.
-i have heard that the story of paper jam is "paper thin and very nothing", but that it has "a lot of good humor sprinkled in to at least carry you over". i have not heard this about superstar saga, which is surprising to me because it is completely true. the important characters are completely nothing in personality (except prince peasley and fawful; the latter of which being deserving enough of getting his own game that he got his own game) and even if you like the little bits and parts of story that the game has it's kind of a bitch to pay attention to when like 80% of the game takes place in random arbitrary detour fetchquests! like seriously, when the plot itself isnt revolving around you finding some mcguffin of the hour (rare) it's finding some other random thing to have you go do a fetchquest for in order to progress it anyways. this is fine sparingly, but it gets to the point where in the part where main mcguffin fetchquest gets split into four fetchquests, one of the fetchquests requires you to do 7 micro-fetchquests to get some fruits around the kingdom, and one of the fruits has a micro-micro-fetchquest associated with it (thats really just a single "can-you-even-call-this-a-boss" fight but whatever). so much of the game's plot is just "go get this thing" "okay, you got this thing. now go get this other thing" and even though the game isnt even that long it feels like the plot moves at the speed of molasses. probably because the entire plot of the game is like a paragraph stretched over the course of like 15 hours or however long it takes to beat. "peach gets her voice stolen by cackletta and fawful, who are evil residents of the beanbean kingdom. the mario bros. go to the beanbean kingdom to stop them and get tricked into allowing them to retrieve the beanstar. the beanstar is a magical item in which its power is activated by a pure voice, and the only voice pure enough in this day and age is peach. they attempt to activate the beanstar and instead it gets angry and then gets split into four pieces. as it turns out, the higher-ups in the beanbean kingdom tricked cackletta and fawful into stealing birdo's voice instead of peach. mario and luigi defeat cackletta and recollect the beanstar pieces. cackletta's soul is put into bowser's body and she kidnaps peach. mario and luigi defeat bowletta." that is Every Single important plot beat that happens in the whole game. in fairness i did skip over bowser getting amnesia briefly but really all that adds up to is him being in the beanbean kingdom to get possessed by cackletta. to be clear, i think the plot is serviceable. i dont think these games need to have like A+ AWESOME INCREDIBLE STORYLINES THAT WILL MAKE YOU SHIT YOUR PANTS. but at least the other games feel like the characters have nice, fun interesting personalities to keep you entertained while you play, sometimes even bringing in mouthpieces for the mario bros to have a character always be able to react to situations, like starlow in bowser's inside story. superstar saga has a handful of funny jokes and whatnot, but the only actually important characters who i got attached to are prince peasley and fawful! the rest just feel kinda nothing. which i already said. but still.
-this game has by far the worst music in the series. the tracks get grating and repetitive very quickly, even the rather upbeat and cute battle theme gets so annoying when most of the e song consists of the same measures over and over until like halfway through, and you more often than not Only hear the part of the song before it starts to change up a bit since regular enemy battles dont last That Long. and then theres areas like the chuckola woods where its just a few NOTES over and over again and thats the whole song. and then theres joke's end. jesus fucking christ i have never been that close to muting a game for the remainder of the area just because the music is that fucking annoying. why they decided to have the worst music in the game also be the music for the longest area in the game i have no clue. what the fuck. to be clear i dont dislike all the music. popple's theme and teehee valley are standouts obviously, they slap like hell. but like, it has around the same number of songs that stand out in a good way as partners in time, except also multiple songs that standout in a bad way
tl;dr: clunky battle gameplay; clunky overworld gameplay; uninteresting story and the characters arent interesting to make up for it; the music is the worst in the series; it is visually the worst in the series
as a kid looking at quirks of superstar saga like swapping the bros or the elemental hands (via watching videos of gameplay) i would always be like "wow thats so cool and interesting why did they remove those for the later games" but like Everything they removed from this game in the transition to partners in time is something that consistently bothered me in my playthrough
ill replay through partners in time soon though. i havent played it since i was a kid, and unlike bowser's inside story ive only beaten it once or maybe twice. i absolutely loved it as a kid and thought it was about on-par with bowser's inside story, but who knows, maybe in this upcoming playthrough i will discover a newfound distaste for the game as i have for superstar saga. or maybe ill learn to appreciate it more!