Géza Perneczky, “Idols and Counter-Idols,” translated from Hungarian by Esther T. Thyssen, originally published as “Bálványok és Antibálványok,” in Tanulmányút a pávakertbe (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1969), 162–173

Abstract

The author, Geza Perneczky, is an art historian and critic who lived in Cologne from 1970. Pop art emerged only in the last years as “devoid of all taste.” Buffet paints representational pictures with human figures, streetscapes, still lifes; Pop art, however, paints nothing except if it incidentally layers paint onto objects intended for exhibition. Historians will probably assign the pop of Pop art to the 1963–1964 season. The movement started in America, in remembrance of the older European movement, Dada. American-born Pop art was imported first by the Benelux countries, then England and West Germany, that is, those states where the mechanics of consumption had begun to resemble that of the United States. Pop art gushes from a very deep wound, and today we cannot yet know what kind of virility might triumph tomorrow, where Pop art parades today with its disgusting piles of object heaps and detritus.