1B: Cultural Criticism: High Culture? Low Culture?

Self-Portraits by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) of Leiden, Netherlands

New Yorker cartoon (June 9, 2014) by Roz Chast (b. 1954) of Brooklyn, New York

American basketball player Brittney Griner (b. Oct. 18, 1990) in her WNBA debut in 2013

Russian ballerina  Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) performing "The Dying Swan" in 1907

Maglite advertisement in art museum (2009)
See more examples of art and advertising.

Masterpiece (1962) by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97)
More about Pop Art at MOMA.

Snoop Dogg (b. Oct. 20, 1971) and Tupac Shakur (1971-96) hologram at Coachella (2014)

 Vincenzo Scalera (b. date unknown) and  Juan Diego Flórez  (b. 1973) at Carnegie Hall (2008)

Elvis I and II (1963)  by Andy Warhol

Nine Elvis impersonators

 Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) began work on The Gates of Hell in 1880.
 It includes The Poet, later commonly known as The Thinker.

 The Thinker can be found around the world, and there is a Thinker at the
  Norton Simon Museum, facing Colorado Blvd., Pasadena.

 It is available for viewing 24 hours a day.

Bob's Big Boys at a Bob's Big Boy graveyard.
The Bob's Big Boy chain was established in 1936.
There is a Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, CA.
It is open for service 24 hours a day.

Huck Finn and Jim, detail from mural (1935 ) by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)
 based on Mark Twain's (1835-1910) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

The Lone Lone Ranger and Tonto,
color still from Stuart Heisler's movie The Lone Ranger (1956)

Friedmann Hauss' Laetitia Casta for the magazine Elle France (1998), left,
 and Johannes Vermeer’s ( Dutch. 1632-75) Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665).
Who played the girl with a pearl earring in the 2003 film of the same name?
 The film was based on  the 1999 novel by Tracy Chevalier.

Is the  graphic novel a merging of high and low culture? See for yourself.
 Images from Art Spiegelman's Maus, a summary of it, and how it came to be.
Images from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and a summary of it.
Peter Kuper's adaptation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis

What is Cultural Criticism?
Some definitions oo the topic: Ross Murfin, Johanna M. Smith & Ross C. Murfin, and the Poetry Foundation. [Note: the Ross Murfin, and Smith/Murfin are the same; just different credits for the same article, for some reason.]