IN ITS INFANCY, Pop Art was nothing if not divisive. Now, some 50 years on, it is perhaps art’s most egalitarian movement.
In 1966, Pop Art theorist Lucy Lippard wrote of legendary artist Andy Warhol, “[his] films and his art mean either nothing or a great deal. The choice is the viewer’s.” Lippard may as well have been speaking for the entire Pop movement, which remained controversial for its elevation of the everyday to the status of high art. More than half a decade since the genre hit the mainstream, it appears viewers have settled on the latter — pop means a great deal. Further, its masters, Warhol, along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, remain some of the most significant figures in art’s post-modern landscape.
Today, one of the most legendary collections of Pop Art in the world belongs to New York’s Mugrabi Family. Worth an estimated $5 billion, the Mugrabi Collection boasts over 800 Warhols, as well works from Basquiat, Haring, Katherine Bernhardt, Kwesi Botchway, George Condo, Damien Hirst, Kaws, Joel Mesler, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Julian Schnabel, Mickalene Thomas and Tom Wesselmann.
So, how an iconic capsule of Pop Art ended up on the Gold Coast is anyone’s guess — even the curators of Home of the Arts (HOTA), still find it hard to grasp. In fact, when director, Tracy Cooper-Lavery cold-called her contact for the family back in 2018, the gallery didn’t even exist yet. Nonetheless, six years, a pandemic and a lot of hard work later, HOTA now stands as a colourful ornament in the skyline of Surfer’s Paradise, the proud temporary home of some of the most significant artworks in the world.
