Was ‘pop art’ a term used by yourself or colleagues or was there a different terminology that referred to a new figurative art movement in the 1960s and early 1970s?
Cornel Brudaşcu
Composition 1970
Museum of Art Cluj-Napoca, Romania
© Cornel Brudaşcu
The term that we were using at the time was ‘hyper-realism’ or ‘photographic realism’. There was a figurative movement at the time, but what I was doing was more particular.
Did you ever consider yourself (now or in the past) a pop artist?
No, I never considered myself a pop artist until now.
Did your work engage with current events in the 1960s and early 1970s?
Yes, it did. One example is the work Youth on the Building Yard.
How did you choose the subject matter for your work included in The World Goes Pop?
I was working with the familiar, with subjects of everyday life.
Where did you get your imagery from (what, if any, sources did you use)?
I used solarised photographs from my own collection that portrayed friends and colleagues. Also, I was using images from magazines of that period. Sometimes I would manage to have access to magazines from the West, for example the German magazine Popcorn, which I used to borrow from a friend who had a subscription. A work inspired by an image I saw in Popcorn is Guitarist.
Were you aware of pop art in other parts of the world?
I was aware of what was going on in America, but I didn’t consider myself part of that movement.
Was commercial art an influence on your work or the way in which it was made?
No, I didn’t feel that it was.
Was there a feeling at the time that you doing something important and new, making a change…?
Yes. For me it was a chance to evaluate my own technique and at the same time an opportunity to express myself and to explore my limits. I wanted to see how far I could go. It was a challenge. In the context of that time, my works were seen as innovative by critics and the public.
Was there an audience for the work at the time – and if so what was their reaction to it?
The impact was a positive one, though this didn’t also mean commercial success.
Looking back at these works, what you do think about them now?
Looking back, I’m glad that I was part of that moment. It was the correct time for experiments, important for my artistic endeavour. Looking at these works now, I have a feeling of satisfaction that they are the result of my own research regarding representation and that these were not made using other techniques, like the projector or transfer techniques such as monoprint.
September 2015