Pop art is an art
movement that
emerged in the mid1950s in Britian and in
the late 1950s in the
United States.
POP ART: mass culture, advertising, comic
books!
Pop Art:
Great Britian and the United States: 1950’s and 1960’s.
• Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including
imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc.
• In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known
context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material.
• The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the
attitudes that led to it.
POP ART!
• Pop Art was born in Britain in the mid 1950s. It was the brain-child of several young subversive
artists - as most modern art tends to be.
• The first application of the term Pop Art occurred during discussions among artists who called
themselves the Independent Group (IG), which was part of the Institute of Contemporary Art in
London, begun around 1952-53.
• Pop Art appreciates popular culture, or what we also call “material culture.”
• It does not critique the consequences of materialism and consumerism; it simply recognizes its
pervasive presence as a natural fact.
• POP ARTISTS were considered Rebels, who were rebelling against the esoteric vocabulary of
abstract art, they wanted to express their optimism after so much hardship and privation in a
youthful visual language. Pop Art celebrated the United Generation of Shopping.
•
Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as
opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the
banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most
often through the use of irony.
•
It is also associated with the artists' use of
mechanical means of reproduction or rendering
techniques.
•
•
In this instance, Andy Warhol used Campbell Soup cans to
create his art.
What would you use in your environment?
How long was the movement?
• The movement was officially christened by Lawrence Alloway in his article "The Arts and Mass
Media," Architectural Record (February 1958). Art history text books tend to claim that Richard
Hamilton's Just What Is It that Makes Today's Home So Different and So Appealing? (1956)
signaled that Pop Art had arrived on the scene.
• Pop Art, for the most part, completed the Modernist movement in the early 1970s, with its
optimistic investment in contemporary subject matter.
• It also ended the Modernism movement by holding up a mirror to contemporary society. Once
the Postmodernist generation looked hard and long into the mirror, self-doubt took over and the
party atmosphere of Pop Art faded away.
Andy Warhol’s painting of Jackie Kennedy, Roy Lichtenstein’s “pop” and James Rosenquist’s
lipsticks all emulated things in popular culture in their works of art.
Pop Art was in part a reaction to the status quo. Here Jasper Johns shows us an
abstract map of the United States of America, popular iconography shown in a
different way, all through his use of paint and color.
Jasper Johns, “Three Flags” used the popular American Flag as inspiration.
Who could resist comic book art? Roy Lichtenstein couldn’t! How many of you read comics?
His work defined the basic premise of pop art through parody.
Favoring the comic strip as his main inspiration, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise
compositions that documented while using parody often in a tongue-in-cheek; humorous manner.
His work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style.
More of Roy Lichtenstein’s Art.
More of Andy Warhol’s Art:
Look at how he uses repeating elements in order to enhance his pictures? Can you think of an
instance where you saw repeating elements?
He often depicted celebrities in his work.
This was of a famous actress in the 1940s and 50s named Marilyn Monroe, one of the more
famous people of the time, made even more famous by Andy Warhol’s “Pop Art”.
More of Andy Warhol’s Art- once again, think of items on our popular
culture today that you might make if you had to do ‘pop art’?
It may seem a bit silly to do a painting of bread, a
knife, or dishes until you look closely at the intricate
details of the paintings and what they represent.
Once again, POP ART was a reflection of what was
going on at the time.
More of James Rosenquists work.
Think about objects you might paint
or draw and put your own personal
‘flair’ on them!
It’s that one element of ‘spin’ or
change that makes it as unique as
you are!
Another James Rosenquist Painting/collage of popular culture. This one includes the
President of The United States at the time, John F. Kennedy.
More work by James Rosenquist. Note even the smallest items could be subjects!
There was also another pop artist that used the environment and doing things on a very
large scale (everyday objects), in order to create a NEW message. His name was Claes
Oldenburg. Some of his subjects look very interesting in the environments he chose to put
them in and the scale that he showed. These are life size in front of buildings!
More of Claes Oldenburg’s work, a favorite!
What would you do if you saw this on
the top of PSE when you were coming
into school in the morning?
This is another example of Claes
Oldenburg using the outside
environment to reflect everyday objects
in an interesting way in his artwork
This looks like fun- what do you think?
Out of all of the pop artists, Andy Warhol was probably the
most famous.
Click on this link or copy to the browser. Note especially
how he came to use Campbell Soup Cans in his work!
See which one of you can answer that question!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZTsbJcr9VI
Time for activities and discussion!