Pop Art (1950-1970’s)

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.

Pop art employs aspects of celebrity and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.  And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. 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.

Much of pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Postmodern Art themselves.

Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising. Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping carton containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures. 

Key Artists:

·         Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

·         David Hockney (b.1937)

·         Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)

·         Robert Indiana (b.1928)

·         Jasper Johns (b.1930)

·         Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

·         Richard Hamilton (b.1922)

Tasks:

1.    Take something modern which is mass produced for consumption and reproduce it as a piece of art work.  E.g. Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbell Tomato Soup’ (1964) Silkscreen on canvas 

2.    Reproduce a comic strip in large format in paint or ink. E.g. Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Whaam!’ (1963) Magna on Canvas

3.    Create a (David) Hockney ‘Joiner’ using numerous pictures to make one large image. E.g. Hockney’s ‘Pearblossom Highway’ (1986) Photographic Collage