PLANIFICACIÓN DE RECURSOS HUMANOS EN SALUD

Hugh Adams states inArt of the Sixties(1978) that the rise in diversity during the 1950s was unique in the history of art and that this was further elaborated upon throughout the 1960s. Neo-Dada, Op, Pop, Kinetic, Hard Edge and Nouveau Réalisme were, according to Adams, examples of this. The pluralism that arose led to a greater tolerance for what art could be, and the manifold forms of unorthodoxy ended up asking essential questions about the nature of an

6_{Helliesen, Sidsel, ‘Silketrykkets seiersgang’, p270}

7_{An example of this isKomposisjon med figurer(Composition with figures, 1952).}

8_{Gundersen’s abstract art is similar to the previously mentioned Danish artist Richard Mortensen, who had been}

making such geometric prints and paintings since the early 1950s. Mortensen took part in a travelling exhibition that visited Oslo in the beginning of the 1950s, which most likely had an impact on Gundersen.

artwork and by what criteria it could be judged. In late 1950s’ London and early 1960s’ New York, artists began to show substantial interest in popular culture and consumer society, which became the foundations from which their art would be shaped. Everyday symbols of commercialism such as mass-produced cars, convenience foods, advertisements, cartoons and celebrities were included into the artist’s vocabulary. Furthermore, artworks were on occasion exhibited and sold in a constructed commercial context, as for example the shop.10

Bård Bie-Larsen has examined the development of Norwegian Pop art in his PhD thesisPopkunsten i Norge: Norske kunstnere og kritikeres formidling av amerikansk popkunst på 1960-tallet(Pop art in Norway: Norwegian artists’ and critics’ mediation of American Pop art during the 1960s), in which he employs Christopher Finch’s broad definition of Pop art: “Above all […] it is an art of acceptance – not of rejection. This acceptance is represented by its ability to encompass a range of imagery taken from everyday sources which had previously been excluded from the sphere of fine art.”11Given that genres of 1960s American art were treated as Pop art by Norwegian critics and in part by artists, who simultaneously incorporated a wide range of styles into their work while classifying it as Pop, Bie-Larsen’s employment of Finch’s definition seems completely warranted.12 For instance, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, George Segal, Warhol and Tom Wesselmann – artists ranging from neo-Dada to unblemished Pop – were all considered to be American Pop artists in Norway.

Bie-Larsen focuses on the timeline between 1964, the year in which the Norwegian art world had its first significant meeting with Pop art, and 1970. The previously mentioned exhibitionAmerikansk popkunstalongside the Venice Biennale (both 1964) were passionately discussed in the Norwegian press, and from 1965 onwards Pop influences could be seen in the work of a small group of Norwegian artists. Although most artists did not have the means to visit the exhibition, two established artists, Kjartan Slettemark and Per Kleiva, did see it first hand and were subsequently influenced by the works on display. Other Norwegian artists who were affected by Pop, though to differing degrees, included Inger Sitter, Berit Soot Kløvig, Sidsel Paaske and Bjørn Ransve. Moreover, Bie-Larsen declares Kleiva “…the foremost representative of Norwegian pop…” possibly due to the fact that Slettemark had moved to Sweden by the late 1960s. Probably in reaction to the stagnation and conservatism he felt to

10_{Claes Oldenburg’s ‘The Store’ in December 1961 and Andy Warhol’s Campbell works exhibition in the}

Bianchini Gallery in November 1964 were two monumental events in this environment.

11_{Finch, Christopher,POP ART Object and image, 1968, p6} 12_{Bie-Larsen,Popkunsten i Norge, p2}

be prevalent within the Norwegian art milieu.13Pop art’s influx into Norway culminated with a Warhol retrospective in 1968 at Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House) in Oslo.

As soon as it was clear that the American Pop art exhibition was not going to be shown in Norway, widespread discussion arose amongst art critics on the assimilation of new styles.14 The distribution and showing of new, innovative international art was almost nonexistent at the time. It was therefore appropriate and important that the press addressed the issue, nonetheless, the negative trend did to some extent continue throughout the twentieth- century. The Norwegian curator and art historian Alf Bøe voiced his opinion in the national newspaper Dagbladet, experiencing the exhibition as – rather than a show of contemporary art – merely a display of what was going wrong in modern life.15 He predicted, however, a great potential in Pop art for the critique of society, which would be realised in the late 1960s in the graphic production of the GRAS workshop.

On the other hand, the critic Ole Henrik Moe saw the exhibition as a valuable statement about contemporary society and the individual’s place in that society, as well as giving Norwegian artists an indication of what was to come.16 It puzzled him, however, that the American artists did not include any critical elements or explicit references to politics. Rather, in Moe’s view, the artworks were purely aesthetic representations of American society’s commercial products and placed in the gallery space – a continuation of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. To a viewer such as Moe, whose preoccupation was the relationship between art and politics, Pop had no meaning. Consequently, Pop art only truly becomes art through its potential to change the audience’s view of reality, and by Moe’s definition this alteration can be an art criterion in its own right. The viewer might then consider the construction of pop art as simultaneously looking and changing set ways of thinking about society and the items found within it.17 Bøe and Moe equally expressed an interest in the critical potential found in the Americans’ works, and they indicated that it was this area of the ‘new’ style that artists should explore further. Norwegian Pop artists would quickly engage the style at the service of politics.

At the Venice Biennale in the same year, Rauschenberg won a disputed Grand Prize, which quickly inspired its renaming as the ‘pop art biennale’. Nonetheless, Norwegian art critic J.P. Hodin reported from Venice that the Pop art section, represented by, besides

13_{Ibid., p7}

14_{Norway was the only Scandinavian country not to experience the Pop art exhibition first hand.}

15_{Bryn, Erle, ‘Hvorfor får ikke Norge se den amerikanske popkunst-utstillingen?’,Dagbladet, 14.04.1964} 16_{Moe, Ole Henrik, ‘Pop-kunst – en utstilling til eftertanke’,Aftenposten, 21.05.1964}

Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg, received no real attention, and the French and German critics seized the opportunity to ridicule it.18 Similarly Magne Malmanger, a Norwegian reporter, stated he refused to take the American exhibits seriously.19 One could argue that these two accounts reflect the prevailing Norwegian conservatism towards the relatively new style, yet the European press and critics were unconvinced too – the French described it as an American ‘cultural colonisation’.20 Furthermore, the Norwegian commentaries demonstrate the continued importance placed upon French art criticism and the French School in Norway.

At the Unge Kunstneres Samfunn’s (The Young Artists’ Society, UKS) spring exhibition in 1964, there was little or no sign that any of the exhibitors had assimilated Pop; hence critics became increasingly impatient with artists.21 In comparison to international artists, the Norwegians seemed backwards when they were still vigorously experimenting with non-figuration and ‘nature-abstraction’. For that reason frustration as well as concern was voiced about the stagnation of stylistic experimentation by younger artists. The critics were not satisfied until December 1965 when the travelling exhibition Fjorten Unge Kunstnere (Fourteen Young Artists) opened at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Among the exhibits a degree of Pop art interests could finally be found in Norwegian art.22