EDGE New York City

Pop is exactly that: classic-style Pop Art, in this case, as the subtitle explains: "art inspired by New York’s own subcultures from celebrity to subway."

Actually, there’s a lot more celebrity than subway. Montgomery has taken his own photos of everyone from Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto to Debra Harry. Sometimes, he goes for the close-up, as with (Sir) Alan Cumming, but most of the time he uses the middle distance for a full-body shot.

Montgomery’s style is reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein (whom he acknowledges), but especially Francis Bacon and very, very especially Andy Warhol. He builds on Warhol’s famous use of photo images, which he silk screened in various shades for multiple images.

In Montgomery’s case, he doesn’t multi-image so much. But he does utilize much of Warhol’s brighter-than-life color schemes. The effect is like a gouache, with colors streaming into each other.

There’s some homoeroticism here as well, such as the cover illustration of a man looking at porn in a typical New York tenement flat. His dog beside him, he’s got his Colt underwear on, but in subsequent pictures, the underwear comes off and we get the full monty, at full staff.

In an image that combines homoeroticism with Warhol imagery, a man’s butt with underwear that shows a photo of Marilyn Monroe is multi-imaged. It’s a nice metaphor for an artist who has taken Andy’s suppressed homoeroticism and combined it with his mania for Downtown Manhattan’s "superstars," real, or self-imagined.

by Olan Montgomery

POP
Hardcover $95
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