What you need to know
A new exhibition of international contemporary art, Post Pop: East Meets West, has opened at the Saatchi Gallery, London. The exhibition explores the lasting influence of the 20th century Pop Art movement on art around the world, focusing on Pop-influenced work made over the past 40 years in the US, UK, the former Soviet Union and China.
The show features over 250 works by 112 artists including Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Ai Weiwei, AES +F, Oleg Kulik, Gary Hume and Julian Opie, and compares and contrasts their use of imagery from mass culture sources including commercial advertising, news and political propaganda. Runs until 23 February.
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What the critics like
There are "many intriguing, disconcerting and occasionally downright nutty moments" in this bonkers art-department-store exhibition, says Mark Hudson in the Daily Telegraph. You stagger out struck by a sense that nowadays art the world over is big, colourful, noisily entertaining and pretty much devoid of subtlety.
This "a refreshingly unprescriptive show", totally unrepressed by today's idea of cool, says Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Like our time, this exhibition is fun, shocking and finally too much, but it's the best survey of contemporary art in any London gallery right now.
Much of the non-Western art remains little known in London but it "sheds light on the international allure of pop art", says Ben Luke in the Evening Standard. The Pop-inspired work from communist and former communist countries is surprising - wonkier, less polished and its aims are often very different - but what links it all is the artists' attempts to capture everyday stuff around them.
What they don't like
Not all of the work is likeable, but this is where we are and how we live, says Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. "The market pours forth wonders until they pall."
