"The pop artists did images that anybody walking down broadway could recognize in a split second--comics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, coke bottles--all the great modern things that the abstract expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all."-Andy Warhol

The 1960s were the most volatile years in 20th-century America. This single decade held the Vietnam War, birthed Earth Day, gave voice to civil, gay, and women's rights, witnessed a moon landing, saw the brutal end of segregation, fueled this country's largest mass demonstrations, and experienced a generation torn between serving in battle and resisting war. The sixties also saw the origination of two of this country's most important art movements, Minimalism and Pop.

This spring, the Walker explored aspects of Minimalism in the exhibition Elemental, drawn from its permanent collection. Now, Pop3 will survey some of the Walker's Pop masterpieces by focusing on three key artists: Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol. While Minimalism was allied with logic, seriality, and material elegance, Pop was more interested in a world filled with nonstop advertising, comics, magazines, billboards, television, movies, wearables, and edibles. It also managed to embrace the most reassuring elements of art--the figurative, narrative, and pictorial--but in a cheerfully subversive way. The works on view include a city tumbling from the sky by Oldenburg, soup cans and electric chairs by Warhol, and a rarely seen, heroically scaled explosion of a painting by Rosenquist.

An important exhibition sidebar is devoted to the Velvet Underground, the legendary house band that came together in Warhol's "Factory" studio. Dominated by John Cale and Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground was the quintessential "in" band that also produced a string of essential rock classics like "Sweet Jane" and "I'm Waiting for the Man." The group was captured on film in its Exploding Plastic Inevitable concert (on view). . . .

"The pop artists did images that anybody walking down broadway could recognize in a split second--comics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, coke bottles--all the great modern things that the abstract expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all."-Andy Warhol

The 1960s were the most volatile years in 20th-century America. This single decade held the Vietnam War, birthed Earth Day, gave voice to civil, gay, and women's rights, witnessed a moon landing, saw the brutal end of segregation, fueled this country's largest mass demonstrations, and experienced a generation torn between serving in battle and resisting war. The sixties also saw the origination of two of this country's most important art movements, Minimalism and Pop.

This spring, the Walker explored aspects of Minimalism in the exhibition Elemental, drawn from its permanent collection. Now, Pop3 will survey some of the Walker's Pop masterpieces by focusing on three key artists: Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol. While Minimalism was allied with logic, seriality, and material elegance, Pop was more interested in a world filled with nonstop advertising, comics, magazines, billboards, television, movies, wearables, and edibles. It also managed to embrace the most reassuring elements of art--the figurative, narrative, and pictorial--but in a cheerfully subversive way. The works on view include a city tumbling from the sky by Oldenburg, soup cans and electric chairs by Warhol, and a rarely seen, heroically scaled explosion of a painting by Rosenquist.

An important exhibition sidebar is devoted to the Velvet Underground, the legendary house band that came together in Warhol's "Factory" studio. Dominated by John Cale and Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground was the quintessential "in" band that also produced a string of essential rock classics like "Sweet Jane" and "I'm Waiting for the Man." The group was captured on film in its Exploding Plastic Inevitable concert (on view). Talking about the Velvet Underground's audience, Warhol remarked, "If they can take it for ten minutes, then we play for fifteen. . . . That's our policy. Always leave them wanting less."