Pop art's bold imagery on display at Zimmerli

Top: "Reverie," by former Rutgers professor Roy Lichtenstein, from 1965, is among the prints on exhibit at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers. Above: Andy Warhol's "Vegetarian Vegetable" is from 1969.

NEW BRUNSWICK — They are now universally celebrated artists, but in the 1960s they were pioneers in a new era known as proto-pop and pop art.

Artists such as Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann were inspired by contemporary life, mass media and ordinary consumer goods, and enthusiastically embraced printmaking as a way to make art accessible to people.

This fall, their works are on display at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. The exhibition "Pop Art and After: Prints and Popular Culture" features 59 prints dating from 1964-2002 by the likes of Warhol, Dine, Oldenburg, Lichtenstein and Wesselman, as well as Red Grooms, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Eduardo Paolozzi, Mel Ramos, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers and James Rosenquist.

Selected primarily from the Zimmerli's extensive graphic arts collection, the exhibition also includes the loan of four prints by Lichtenstein that exemplify his fusion of high and low art forms. Ten photographs by Warhol, part of a gift of photographs from the artist's estate, are being shown at the Zimmerli for the first time. These include Polaroid portraits of actor Sylvester Stallone and arts patron Anne Bass.

Since Warhol's Campbell's Soup can images first appeared in the 1960s, pop art has remained an influential force in contemporary art. Artists made bold, colorful print imagery ranging from food packaging to politics, from rocket launches to sexy nudes, from ordinary objects to the American dream.

Among the pop art print icons in the exhibition are Warhol's "Vegetarian Vegetable" (1969) and his "Electric Chair" series (1971), which alludes to America's continuing debate over capital punishment.

Lichtenstein, whose pop art style evolved while he was teaching at Rutgers University in the early 1960s, is represented by "Sandwich and Soda," "Reverie" and "Sweet Dreams, Baby!" Paolozzi's "Moonstrips Empire News" exemplifies the British response to American pop culture. The prints of Ramos and Wesselmann reinterpret the nude in American art. Rivers' "Madame Butterfly" evokes the opera's clash of American and Asian cultures, while his other prints offer perspectives on past and recent American history.

A significant publication accompanies the exhibition, containing full-color reproductions of exhibited works; a foreword by Marti Mayo, the Zimmerli's interim director; an introduction by Marilyn Symmes; an essay by Professor Joan Marter; and print entries by the eight Rutgers University art history graduate students enrolled in the Rutgers' Certificate Program in Curatorial Studies.

The exhibition runs through Dec. 14.

The Zimmerli Art Museum is at 71 Hamilton St. on the College Avenue campus of Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Hours are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Saturday-Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, and free for museum members, Rutgers students, faculty and staff (with ID), and children under 18.

Admission is free on the first Sunday of every month. For more information, call 732-932-7237, ext. 610, or visit the Web site at www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu.