Pop Grows Up

“Pop got its start by making fun of the platitudes that second- and third-generation Abstract Expressionism had settled into, mocking the increasingly popular movement’s increasingly shrill insistence on gestural spontaneity, existential anxiety and psychological authenticity.” But Pop Art has grown up. “Pop and connoisseurship are no longer opposed. Sophistication is not limited to highbrow cultivation but encompasses enthusiasms that cut across classes, arising wherever passion has room to pursue its own ends, on its own terms.”