Renelio Studio: General Mediocrity and Pop Art

"Right at the end of his life,Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet giving advice to Europeans planning to come to America. He said it was a good place for those who wanted to become rich. But, he said, it was above all a haven for the industrious poor, for 'nowhere else are the laboring poor so well fed, well lodged, well clothed and well paid as in the United States of America.' It was a country, he concluded, where 'a general happy mediocrity prevails.' It is important for those who wish to understand American history to remember this point about "general mediocrity.' The historian is bound to bring out the high points and crises of the national story, to record the doing of the great, the battles, elections, epic debates, and laws passed. But the everyday lives of simple citizens must not be ignored simply because they were uneventful. This is particularly true of America, a country specifically created by and for ordinary men and women, where the system of government was deliberately designed to interfere in their lives as little as possible. The fact that, unless we investigate closely, we hear so little about the mass population is itself a historical point of great importance, because it testifies by its eloquent silence to the success of the republican experiment" (Johnson, Paul 283).

By the same token, it is important for those who wish to understand American Pop art to remember this point about 'general mediocrity.' Because at the heart of Pop art intentions is the recognition, conscious or sub-conscious of the role and the importance that ordinary people and their deeds and actions have played in American history.

Part of the misunderstanding or lack of understanding of Pop art lies in that it is often interpreted or exegetized in the fashion of the historian looking for the great events of history. Sure there are plenty of epic or magnificent events in Warhol's silkscreens such as Man in the Moon and Jackie K. series, but these events are seen through the lens of mass media and thus ordinarized. What predominate in his entire ouvre are the little objects and subjects of everyday life, newspapers,TV and Hollywood films: Campbell soups, Elvis Presleys, Marylins, car accidents; all those part of the quotidian sensorial input of ordinary Americans. The same 'general mediocrity' prevails in James Rosenquist's lip sticks, spaguetti pastas and American cars. Or in Jim Dine's working tools. All of them an anthem to the beauty and importance of "general mediocrity" in America.

Work Cited:
Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. Harper Perennial. 1999