Xavier Rubert de Ventós, “Abstraction and Pop Art,” translated from Spanish by Antonio Romero Limón, originally published as “Abstracción y Pop Art,” in Revista de Occidente (January–March 1965), 89–91

Abstract

In 1965, for Xavier Rubert de Ventos, a young philosopher at the Universidad de Barcelona, the arrival of Pop art suggested the end of ensimismamiento—an inward-looking tendency of an autonomous abstract art. For Rubert de Ventos, the rise of Pop art is not just a question of artistic quality but also a result of the crisis of the market for abstract European art, and therefore, a confirmation of the triumph of New York as commercial capital of art. The First Prize at the 1964 Venice Biennale, awarded to the American painter Robert Rauschenberg, seems like a formal recognition of the so-called Pop art. More interesting, in my opinion, is the story of the emergence of Pop art after the last Informel abstraction. Pop art is mostly, but not only, a reaction against the way abstract art has recently been produced, and its resistance to forsake the golden twenties.