Pop Artists Reacted to the Emotional Intensity and Concern With Materials of This Style of Art
"Pop is everything fine art hasn't been for the last 2 decades. It's basically a U-turn dorsum to a representational visual advice, moving at a break-away speed...Pop is a re-enlistment in the world...It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous and naïve."
1 of 7
"Buying is more American than thinking, and I'm as American every bit they come."
ii of 7
"Everybody has called Pop Art 'American' painting, but it'southward actually industrial painting. America was hit by industrialism and capitalism harder and sooner and its values seem more beveled... I remember the meaning of my piece of work is that it'south industrial, it'due south what all the world volition presently become."
3 of 7
"Popular is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades...It springs newborn out of a colorlessness with the finality and over-saturation of Abstruse Expressionism, which, by its ain esthetic logic, is the END of fine art, the glorious pinnacle of the long pyramidal creative process. Stifled by this rarefied temper, some immature painters plough back to some less exalted things like Coca-Cola, ice-foam sodas, large hamburgers, super-markets and 'Swallow' signs. They are heart-hungry; they pop..."
4 of vii
"Everything is cute. Pop is everything."
5 of 7
"A Coke is a Coke and no corporeality of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and y'all know it."
half dozen of vii
"[Pop Art is:] Popular (designed for a mass audience); transient (curt-term solution); expendable (easily forgotten); low price; mass produced; young (aimed at youth); witty; sexy; gimmicky; glamorous; and final but not least, Big Business organization."
7 of 7
Summary of Pop Art
Pop Art'due south refreshing reintroduction of identifiable imagery, drawn from media and popular culture, was a major shift for the direction of modernism. With roots in Neo-Dada and other movements that questioned the very definition of "art" itself, Popular was birthed in the Uk in the 1950s amidst a postwar socio-political climate where artists turned toward celebrating commonplace objects and elevating the everyday to the level of fine fine art. American artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and others would soon follow adjust to become the well-nigh famous champions of the movement in their ain rejection of traditional historic creative subject thing in lieu of contemporary guild'due south ever-nowadays infiltration of mass manufactured products and images that dominated the visual realm. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial images, Pop Art has go one of the most recognizable styles of modern fine art.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop Art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that fine art may borrow from any source has been one of the well-nigh influential characteristics of Pop Art.
- It could exist argued that the Abstruse Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul, while Pop artists searched for traces of the aforementioned trauma in the mediated earth of advertising, cartoons, and popular imagery at large. Just it is perhaps more precise to say that Pop artists were the first to recognize that at that place is no unmediated admission to anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built environment. Pop artists believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make those connections literal in their artwork.
- Although Pop Art encompasses a wide variety of work with very different attitudes and postures, much of it is somewhat emotionally removed. In dissimilarity to the "hot" expression of the gestural abstraction that preceded it, Pop Art is generally "coolly" ambivalent. Whether this suggests an acceptance of the popular world or a shocked withdrawal, has been the subject area of much debate.
- Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-Earth War Two manufacturing and media boom. Some critics have cited the Popular Fine art pick of imagery as an enthusiastic endorsement of the backer market and the goods it circulated, while others accept noted an chemical element of cultural critique in the Pop artists' elevation of the everyday to loftier fine art: tying the article status of the appurtenances represented to the condition of the art object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at base, a commodity.
- Some of the most famous Pop artists began their careers in commercial fine art: Andy Warhol was a highly successful magazine illustrator and graphic designer; Ed Ruscha was likewise a graphic designer, and James Rosenquist started his career as a billboard painter. Their background in the commercial art world trained them in the visual vocabulary of mass civilization as well as the techniques to seamlessly merge the realms of loftier art and popular culture.
Overview of Pop Art
From early innovators in London to later deconstruction of American imagery by the likes of Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist - the Pop Art movement became one of the most thought-subsequently of artistic directions.
Fundamental Artists
-
Andy Warhol was an American Popular artist best known for his prints and paintings of consumer goods, celebrities, and photographed disasters. 1 of the most famous and influential artists of the 1960s, he pioneered compositions and techniques that emphasized repetition and the mechanization of art.
-
Roy Lichtenstein was an American painter and a pioneer of the Pop art movement. His signature reproductions of comic book imagery eventually redefined how the art world viewed high vs. lowbrow art. Lichtenstein employed a unique form of painting chosen the Benday dot technique, in which pocket-sized, closely-knit dots of paint were practical to form a much larger image.
-
James Rosenquist is an American Pop artist whose paintings feature fragments of faces, cars, consumer goods, and other items in bizarre juxtapositions. With their realist rendering and attention to surface textures, his works have up the visual language of advertising and entertainment.
-
The Swedish-American creative person and architect Claes Oldenburg, an early figure in New York happenings and Pop art, is all-time known for his floppy sculptures and larger-than-life public works of consumer goods, musical instruments, and everyday objects.
-
Eduardo Paolozzi was a Scottish sculptor, printmaker and multi-media artist, and a pioneer in the early development of Pop art. His 1947 impress 'I Was a Rich Human being's Plaything' is considered the very first work of the movement. He was too a founder of the Independent Group in 1952.
-
Corita Kent, a Catholic nun that became a famous Popular Artist created bold and colorful silkscreen prints that championed social justice causes.
-
Richard Hamilton is an English painter and collage artist, and is best known as a founding member of the British Contained Grouping, which launched the mid-century Popular art movement. Hamilton's 1956 collage 'Just What Is Information technology That Makes Today's Homes Then Unlike, Then Highly-seasoned?' is widely considered ane of the commencement works of Popular art.
-
Wesselmann was known for his paintings of nudes and his exploration of the female person form. He reinterpreted the classic subject of the female person nude by breaking the trunk downward into its most suggestive elements: lips, nips, and pubes, so juxtaposing it with general, consumerist, popular civilisation.
-
Sigmar Polke was a German painter and photographer who founded the painting movement Backer Realism with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer. Much of his piece of work is in appropriating the pictorial short-hand of advertising constitute in much Pop Art and exploring the meaning behind various modernist and postmodernist movements.
-
David Hockney is an English painter, photographer, collagist and designer. Hockney's influence was particularly felt during the Pop art movement on the 1960s, yet his work has also suggested mixed media and expressionistic tendencies. Although based in London for nigh of his career, Hockney'due south most famous paintings occurred during an extended trip to Los Angeles, in which he painted a serial of scenes inspired by pond pools.
-
Alex Katz is an American figurative creative person associated with the Pop fine art motion. His works seem uncomplicated, but according to Katz they are more than reductive, which is fitting to his personality. Katz has received numerous accolades throughout his career, and has been the subject of a documentary and numerous publications.
-
American sculptor and painter George Segal is best known for his life-size plaster bandage figures, often in monochromatic white. He too worked with artists such as John Muzzle and Allan Kaprow at Rutgers University in the 1950s and 60s; Kaprow's famous "happenings" performances first took place on Segal'south farm in New Jersey.
-
Ed Ruscha is recognized as ane of the leading figures of Pop art and Conceptualism on the Due west Declension. From his iconic images of gasoline stations to his 'word paintings,' his work is securely influenced by the graphic arts and deals largely with themes of commercial culture, linguistic communication, and the mundane.
-
Robert Rauschenberg, a central figure in early Pop fine art, admired the textural quality of Abstruse Expressionism but scorned its emotional pathos. His famous "Combines" are office sculpture, part painting, and part installation.
-
Jasper Johns is an American artist who rose to prominence in the late 1950s for his multi-media constructions, dubbed by critics every bit Neo-Dada. Johns' piece of work, including his earth-famous targets and American flags serial, were important predecessors to Pop art.
-
Peter Blake is a British Pop artist that has made many iconic images including the cover for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Alone Hearts Club Band album.
-
Rosalyn Drexler powerfully repurposed media images and is at present becoming recognized as a key feminist voice in the Pop Art motion.
Do Not Miss
-
The Pop art movement emerged in Britain before becoming enourmously popular in the United States. Early on practitioners such every bit Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton set the scene for the accomplishment of legends such as Warhol and Lichtenstein.
-
Photorealism is a style of painting that was developed past such artists equally Chuck Close, Audrey Flack and Richard Estes. Photorealists oftentimes utilize painting techniques to mimic the furnishings of photography and thus blur the line that take typically divided the ii mediums.
-
The Capital Realists shared a critical opinion toward the invasion of American consumerism into W Germany.
-
The artistic history of the Usa stretches from indigenous fine art and Hudson River School into Gimmicky art. Enjoy our guide through the many American movements.
Important Art and Artists of Pop Art
I Was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947)
Paolozzi, a Scottish sculptor and artist, was a central fellow member of the British post-war avant-garde. His collage I Was a Rich Man'southward Plaything proved an important foundational work for the Popular Fine art movement, combining pop civilisation documents like a pulp fiction novel cover, a Coca-Cola advertizing, and a military recruitment advertisement. The work exemplifies the slightly darker tone of British Popular Art, which reflected more than upon the gap between the glamour and affluence present in American popular culture and the economic and political hardship of British reality. As a member of the loosely associated Independent Group, Paolozzi emphasized the impact of technology and mass culture on high art. His use of collage demonstrates the influence of Surrealist and Dadaist photomontage, which Paolozzi implemented to recreate the avalanche of mass media images experienced in everyday life.
Just What Is It That Makes Today'southward Homes And then Different, So Appealing? (1956)
Hamilton'due south collage was a seminal piece for the evolution of Pop Art and is oft cited every bit the very first piece of work of the movement. Created for the exhibition This is Tomorrow at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, Hamilton'south image was used both in the catalogue for the exhibition and on posters advertizing it. The collage presents viewers with an updated Adam and Eve (a torso-builder and a burlesque dancer) surrounded by all the conveniences modern life provided, including a vacuum cleaner, canned ham, and a goggle box. Constructed using a variety of cutouts from magazine advertisements, Hamilton created a domestic interior scene that both lauded consumerism and critiqued the decadence that was emblematic of the American postal service-war economic boom years.
President Elect (1960-61)
Like many Popular artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his painting President Elect, the creative person depicts John F. Kennedy's face up amidst an affiliation of consumer items, including a xanthous Chevrolet and a slice of cake. Rosenquist created a collage with the three elements cut from their original mass media context, so photo-realistically recreated them on a monumental scale. As Rosenquist explains, "The face was from Kennedy's entrada poster. I was very interested at that fourth dimension in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put upwardly an advertisement of themselves? And then that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a slice of stale cake." The big-scale work exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of combining discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, besides as his skill at including political and social commentary using pop imagery.
Useful Resources on Pop Art
videos
-
45k views
The Daze of the New - Pop Fine art Our Pick
Art historian Robert Hughes series - episode vii - Civilisation every bit Nature
-
Pop Go the Women The Other Story of Pop Art
British historian Alistair Sooke tracks down the forgotten women artists of pop, finding their art and their stories ripe for rediscovery. Artists include Pauline Boty, Marisol, Rosalyn Drexler, Idelle Weber, Letty Lou Eisenhauer, and Jann Haworth
Individual Creative person Overviews:
-
i.2M views
Andy Warhol Documentary: The Consummate Movie Our Pick
The definitive, carefully equanimous, 3 hour documentary on Warhol - and his function in Popular Art
-
43k views
Roy Lichtenstein at the Tate Modern (2013) Our Selection
Overview of the artist
-
3k views
James Rosenquist
Brief overview by British fine art critic Alastair Sooke
-
87k views
Claes Oldenburg
Cursory overview by MoMA
-
544k views
Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter talks nigh his life and work with Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate
Art History Lectures:
-
1k views
Critic Christopher Knight @ Smithsonian American Fine art Museum (SAAM) Our Pick
Proposes that Warhol's subjects are not about popular culture, they are chosen for their very detail, art specific themes
-
1k views
Leo Castelli: The Get-go Global Gallerist Our Selection
Professor and historian Annie Cohen-Solal overviews the life and brilliance of Leo Castelli, the gallerist that brought many Pop artists to fame from Rauschenberg to Rosenquist
articles
-
Pop Art International: Far Beyond Warhol and Lichtenstein Our Pick
A look into the varying international aesthetics of the Popular Fine art movement / By Holland Cotter / The New York Times / February 25, 2016
-
Where Are the Corking Women Pop Artists? Our Pick
By Kim Levin / ARTnews Mag / Nov 1, 2010
-
Reconfiguring Pop Our Pick
Past Saul Ostrow / Art in American Magazine / September 1, 2010
-
Pinnacle OF THE POPS - Did Andy Warhol alter everything? Our Option
An extensive look (and investigation) into the life of Andy Warhol, through the context of his personal life and art making practices / By Louis Menand / The New Yorker / January 11, 2010
-
The Pop Art Era
By Deborah Solomon / The New York Times / Dec 8, 2009
-
Elevation Ten ARTnews Stories: The Starting time Word on Pop
ARTnews Magazine / November 1, 2007
-
Popular Art Was Part French: Mais Oui! But Ask Them
Past Alan Riding / The New York Times / Apr 15, 2001
-
The Arts and the Mass Media Our Pick
By Lawrence Alloway / Architectural Design & Construction / February 1958
-
James Rosenquist, Pop Art Pioneer, Dies at 83
A snapshot of the life, work and inspiration for a Pop Fine art pioneer / Past Ken Johnson / The New York Times / April 1, 2017
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
"Pop Art Movement Overview and Assay". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published past The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on fifteen Oct 2012. Updated and modified regularly
[Accessed ]
Source: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pop-art/