Mona Hadler – författare

Highlighting intersections of gender, race, and class and their explosive encounters with Pop Art during the Long Sixties, this book offers a new critical reading of Pop for the 21st century. 'a brilliant and important corrective to much writing on Pop art' - Jo Applin, The Courtauld Institute of Art, LondonFeaturing an array of rigorous chapters that examine the work of over 20 artists from 5 continents, Pop Art and Beyond transcends the borders of individual and national contexts, and suspends hierarchies to create a space for the work of artists like Andy Warhol and the women of the Black Arts Movement to converse. Casting an inclusive look at the intersectional complexities of difference in Pop at a moment that gave rise to a plethora of radical social movements and identity politics, it contributes bold new perspectives on Pop’s heterogeneity.While this book introduces revelatory non-canonical artists into the Pop context or amplifies the careers of others, it is not limited to the confines of fine art. Chapters explore the intersecting variables of oppression and liberation in rituals of youth subcultures as well as practices across media with Pop sources and parallels ranging from Native American objects, Harlem advertisements, and Cordel literature, to stand-up comedy, music, fashion, and design. Pop Art and Beyond thus widens the conversation about what Pop was and what it can be for contemporary art in its struggle for social justice and critiques of power.

In the early sixties, crowds gathered to watch rites of destruction - from the demolition derby where makeshift cars crashed into each other for sport, to concerts where musicians destroyed their instruments, to performances of self-destructing machines staged by contemporary artists. Destruction, in both its playful and fearsome aspects, was ubiquitous in the new Atomic Age. This complicated subjectivity was not just a way for people to find catharsis amid the fears of annihilation and postwar trauma, but also a complex instantiation of ideological crisis in a time with some seriously conflicted political myths. Destruction Rites explores the ephemeral visual culture of destruction in the postwar era and its links to contemporary art. It examines the demolition derby; games and toys based on warfare; playgrounds situated in bomb sites; and the rise of garage sales, where goods designed for obsolescence and destined for the garbage heap are reclaimed and repurposed by local communities.Mona Hadler looks at artists such as Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle, Martha Rosler and Vito Acconci to expose how the 1960s saw destruction, construction and the everyday collide as never before. During the Atomic age, whether in the public sphere or art museums, destruction could be transformed into a constructive force and art objects and performances often oscillated between the two.