The emergence of Pop Art in Britain is intrinsically associated with the exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. The exhibition was concerned with the idea of a synthesis of the arts and comprised of a number of distinct ‘spaces’ devised by groups of artists, architects and in some cases art critics. Many of these spaces would in fact be described today as installations. Although the Pop emphasis is usually placed upon Group 2 (Voelcker-Hamilton-McHale) with its installation that drew upon mass media imagery, the exhibition as a whole was demonstrative not of a common aesthetic or theory, but of the diverse elements and influences expressed by the groups and their individual members.


Although eleven years apart, Oiticica’s installation Tropic?lia for the exhibition Nova Objetividade Brasileira (Brasilian New Objectivity), at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio, 1967, and the installation Patio and Pavilion by This is Tomorrow Group 6, Smithson-Henderson-Paolozzi, are to varying degrees concerned with the precariousness of human existence. The former is an expression of the reality of underdevelopment, the latter of the spectre brought by the cold war: that of imminent annihilation. The Cold War angst expressed in Group 6’s Patio and Pavilion, whereby civilisation was under the threat of modernity itself, marked a shift from the notion of modernity embraced by the Festival of Britain. In this sense, it is possible to compare it to Tropic?lia, which recalled the condition of underdevelopment in the aftermath of the developmentalist era, responsible for the creation of Bras‘lia. In both cases, there was the presentation of a number of re-evaluations of the relationships between art, architecture and society at large. The respective exhibitions also marked the collision of art historical tendencies consensually seen to be irreconcilable such as Dada, Constructivism, Pop, and Art Brut.


The initial concept for This is Tomorrow had been conceived by Groupe Espace. Their proposal having been rejected was later re-evaluated and re-submitted by Theo Crosby and a group of individuals some of which were associated with the Independent Group. The fact that the project, albeit in a re-evaluated form, went ahead is indicative of a certain proximity of interest. This is confirmed by Banham’s emphasis on the issue of the synthesis of the arts and Alloway’s review of John McHale’s exhibition in André Bloc’s Journal Aujourd’hui: Arts et Architecture. Bloc had been a central figure in the formation of the Groupe Espace that arose out of a crisis within the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. The crisis was not dissimilar to the two tendencies contained within Neoconcretism, defined by Ronaldo Brito as an aesthetic laboratory of form and a radical questioning of art’s raison d’etre. The antagonism within the salon was described by Felix Del Marle in correspondence to Jean Gorin:

You see, there are two tendencies that without being hostile to each other, they are nevertheless, in spirit as in manifestations, totally different [...]. On the one hand, the object tendency, a tendency of manifestations that I would call ‘gratuitous’ coming from Calder, Moholy, etc. And then there is ‘ours’, the architectural tendency, rational, with all the important and fatal and happy consequences on the social plane par excellence. So sooner or later we will quit the objects for an architectural section.

The similarity of these points with Oiticica’s tenets for a new art in the catalogue essay of the Nova Objetividade exhibition are perhaps not so coincidental. Oiticica had defined Brazilian New Objectivity as a tendency that aimed at (1) a synthesis of the arts; (2) the abandonment of easel painting; (3) the integration of colour within space. Such intersections of seemingly distinct tendencies were also present within the scope of interests of the IG. Lawrence Alloway wrote for instance on Victor Pasmore and the establishment of the ideals of concrete art in Britain.