1950s & 1960s
 Beat Background
 Assemblage
 Happenings

Pop Art
 Artists gather seemingly random objects and put them together in
unruly compositions to see what kind of meanings might emerge
 Emphasis on everyday surroundings for subject matter
 Create their works from the “refuse” of modern society
 Artists: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns
 Influences: Composer John Cage, Artist Marcel Duchamp (Dada)
Pop Artists used bold, flat colors and hard edge compositions adopted
from commercial designs like those found
Billboards
Murals
Magazines
Newspapers
Backdrop was rise of consumer culture/ advertising/ celebrity
Pop Art was the union of art and popular culture.
culture
They embraced mass
Deal with the “new”, the “store-bought”
Pop artists borrowed images that were mass produced and made them
repetitive
British Pop Art came first: Richard Hamilton
American Pop Art: Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol
 Pop artists made an effort to make viewers aware of the extent to
which advertising and the production/consumption cycle dominated
everyday life
 America’s shared knowledge no longer came from “high culture”
sources like literature, mythology, or religion, but rather from
television, movies, and advertisements. Pop artists reflected this
by blurring the distinction between art and consumption.
 The movement examined the effects of consumerism on human thought,
emotion, and creativity. It posed the question: what is more
important, the thing or its image?
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Pop Artists reflected 60’s culture by using new materials in their
artworks including:
•
Acrylic Paints
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Plastics
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Photographs
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Fluorescent and
Metallic colors
As well as new technologies and methods:
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Mass production
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Fabrication
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Photography
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Printing
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Serials
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Andy Warhol was one of the most famous Pop Artists. Part of his
artistic practice was using new technologies and new ways of making
art including Photographic Silk-Screening
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Repetition
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Mass production
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Collaboration
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Media events
Warhol appropriated (used without permission) images from magazines,
newspapers, and press photos of the most popular people of his time
Warhol took common everyday items and gave them importance as “art” He
raised questions about the nature of art:
What makes one work of art better than another?
Pop artists stretched the definitions of what art could be and how it
can be made.