Pop,Pop,Pop Goes the Weasel Pop Art

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

By the Beatles

London, New York, Los Angeles and beyond all hold a special place for history’s Pop Art. From Jasper Johns to Keith Haring, Hirst and Koons. I was fortunate to photograph a rambling collection of cultural icons and form an interesting life. I was transported across oceans and continents to capture faces and places. It was an interesting life. My career has had quite a bit of pop.

I arrived at the Guggenheim Museum to get the inimitable Walter Hopps. It almost sounds like I was a cop making an arrest. Possibly it was more akin to Mogambo’s Clark Gable hunting for either Ava or Grace. Many esteemed personalities needed to be captured. I had amassed dozens of prominent Pop Artists from the hot point of the 50s and the 60s. The curator Walter Hopps, was essential.

When I landed on the museums’ fourth floor, I found Walter and Robert Rauschenberg congregating atop two ladders like gushing imps bursting with secrets. I had photographed Rauschenberg three times before that date. I had never met Hopps before that day. He invited me up to join them on the ladders. It was a wee bit crowded. Walter came down to me. He said, “lets take a walk. I get the feeling that you have been following me for years”.

Peter Blake: Sergeant Peppers Album Cover Designer

Robert Rauschenberg: My second Portrait session

“The real voyage of discovery consisted not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”.

Marcel Proust

Walter was and had been at the forefront of the Pop Artist movement. He was my

“Whale”. His planetary orbit like mine was almost encyclopedic: Pop Pop’s included artists Johns, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Ruscha, Warhol, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein Billy Al Bengston, Wayne Thiebaud, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Jim Dine, George Segal and more Pop. Art Dealers like Sydney Janis, Irving Blum, Hopps and more gave the world a peek into what the new eyes were seeing and creating. My camera captured and celebrated those who were POP in POP ART.

As we walked from level to level of the museum, Hopps quizzed me about the aforementioned artists and more. He had spent a career looking at the art. I had spent part of a career looking at the faces and spaces of artists.

I told Walter that I was surprised “Sergeant Pepper’s” Peter Blake seemed like a time bomb about to pop. Peter Max seemed popped. But the California crew and the New York powerhouses seemed like they were always in the phase of creating new phases. I had photographed a number of them more than once. There was always a sense of the same but an additional transitional execution. Maybe this is a common theme among great artists.

The brief scurrying around the Guggenheim was about to come to an end. It seemed like one hundred stellar Bob Rauschenberg’s became a “Pop” collage that I may not remember. But I do remember that one of the great curators of an era long gone had entertained me as a conductor might lead an orchestra: with sweeping gestures he hypnotized me with his quiet brilliance.

I didn’t “get” my Walter Hopps. I think there might be a bad snap somewhere of Bob and Walter on the ladders. I will need to remind myself to look through the archives. I just follow what the camera sees. I hope it snapped that moment.

Ed Ruscha: The first of my Portrait sessions with Ed