IT’S A HARD POP LIFE
by Laura K. Jones

Andy Warhol, bad or good? This is the dilemma facing the poor old Tate Modern in its current blockbuster, "Pop Life: Art in a Material World." It’s a show that restages Keith Haring’s "Pop Shop," his SoHo store that opened in 1986 and lasted till 2005; Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’ Bethnal Green "Shop," which did business during the early 1990s; Jeff Koons’ notorious and rarely reunited "Made in Heaven" series of photos of himself and his then-porn-star wife in marital congress; and Richard Prince’s provocative "Spiritual America" (1986), his appropriated image of a ten-year-old Brooke Shields from the Hollywood movie Pretty Baby (which proved its continuing vitality by being promptly removed from the show by local authorities).
"Pop Life," then, examines the brassy legacy that Warhol offered up to his epigones: Let the concept of showbiz and making money sit easily on your shoulders; Do editions; Embrace yourself as a brand; Make yourself look slightly silly but never whimsical; Branch out into TV and even a spot of party-reportage.

The show is very much a crowd-pleaser, nowadays a specialty of this behemoth of an institution. It even has its own massive shop, selling a velour reproduction of Murakami’s Flower Ball for £3,000, along with postcards and books and T-shirts which were a fair bit cheaper. (I don’t recall a Tate show that had its own shop built especially for it before.)

It’s lively and bright and involved and looks good thronged with people, milling about in front of the work. At the evening party, superdealer Jeffrey Deitch agreed with me. "I’ve flown in especially for tonight," he said. "The best thing for me is that I was there when all this happened in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Also the ‘90s. The reason you think it looks better tonight is because art always looks better with people in front of it."

"Pop Life"’s first room reminds us, just in case we’d forgotten, that Andy Warhol created a lasting impression. His red fright wig Self Portrait from 1986 is hung low down so his eyes are at our eye level, and looks across to Takashi Murakami’s leaping, manic Hiropon, that life-sized statue of a mighty-breasted Manga-esque and manic schoolgirl whose breasts sprout a world of what could be whipped cream.

Check out the rest of her review here: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/jones/pop-life10-1-09.asp