POP ART

1950 - 1960
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Pop art started with the New York artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist,
and Claes Oldenburg, all of whom drew on popular imagery and were actually part of an international
phenomenon. Following the popularity of the Abstract Expressionists, Pop's reintroduction of
identifiable imagery (drawn from mass media and popular culture) was a major shift for the direction
of modernism. The subject matter became far from traditional "high art" themes of morality,
mythology, and classic history; rather, Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of
everyday life, in this way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art. Perhaps owing to
the incorporation of commercial images, Pop art has become one of the most recognizable styles of
modern art.
FACTORS AFFECTED THE PERIOD
Pop art represented an attempt to return to a more objective, universally
acceptable form of art after the dominance in both the United States and Europe of
the highly personal Abstract Expressionism. It was also iconoclastic, rejecting both
the supremacy of the high art of the past and the pretensions of other
contemporary avant-garde art. Pop art became a cultural event because of its close
reflection of a particular social situation and because its easily comprehensible
images were immediately exploited by the mass media. Although the critics of Pop
art described it as vulgar, sensational, nonaesthetic, and a joke, its proponents (a
minority in the art world) saw it as an art that was democratic and
nondiscriminatory, bringing together both connoisseurs and untrained viewers.
ARTISTIC CHARACTERISTICS
Pop Artists use commercial art elements as fine art. Most Pop artists aspired to an
impersonal, urbane attitude in their works. Some examples of Pop art, however, were subtly
expressive of social criticismfor example, Oldenburgs drooping objects and Warhols
monotonous repetitions of the same banal image have an undeniably disturbing effectand
some, such as Segals mysterious, lonely tableaux, are overtly expressionistic.
American Pop art tended to be emblematic, anonymous, and aggressive; English
Pop, more subjective and referential, expressed a somewhat romantic view of Pop culture
fostered perhaps by Englands relative distance from it. English Pop artists tended to deal
with technology and popular culture primarily as themes, even metaphors; some American
Pop artists actually seemed to live these ideas. Warhols motto, for example, was, I think
everybody should be a machine, and he tried in his art to produce works that a machine
would have made.
ARTISTS
POP ART
ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid
commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to
make art destined for galleries. Nevertheless, his
screenprinted images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and
sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous
with Pop art. He emerged from the poverty and obscurity of
an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, to
become a charismatic magnet for bohemian New York, and to
ultimately find a place in the circles of High Society. For many
his ascent echoes one of Pop art's ambitions, to bring popular
styles and subjects into the exclusive salons of high art. His
crowning achievement was the elevation of his own persona
to the level of a popular icon, representing a new kind of fame
and celebrity for a fine artist.
EDUARDO PAOLOZZI
Eduardo Paolozzi was a prolific and inventive artist
most known for his marriage of Surrealism's early principles
with brave new elements of popular culture, modern
machinery and technology. He was raised in the shadows of
World War II in a family deeply affected by the divisive nature
of a country involved in conflict, which birthed his lifelong
exploration into the many ways humans are influenced by
external, uncontrollable forces. This exploration would come
to inform a vast and various body of work that vacillated
between the darker and lighter consequences of society's
advancements and its so-called progress. On the one hand, he
would create abstract sculptures, which were dark and brutal
in both material and form, portraying the idea of man as a
mere assemblage of parts in an overall machine. On the other
hand, he would create collages, brighter in nature that
reflected the way contemporary culture and mass media
influenced individual identity. Some of these collages, with
their appropriation of American advertising's look and feel
would inspire the future Pop art movement.
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Roy Lichtenstein was one of the first American Pop
artists to achieve widespread renown, and he became a
lightning rod for criticism of the movement. His early work
ranged widely in style and subject matter, and displayed
considerable understanding of modernist painting:
Lichtenstein would often maintain that he was as interested
in the abstract qualities of his images as he was in their
subject matter. However, the mature Pop style he arrived at in
1961, which was inspired by comic strips, was greeted by
accusations of banality, lack of originality, and, later, even
copying. His high-impact, iconic images have since become
synonymous with Pop art, and his method of creating images,
which blended aspects of mechanical reproduction and
drawing by hand, has become central to critics' understanding
of the significance of the movement.
ED RUSCHA
For over 50 years, Ed Ruscha has delivered wryly
detached portraits of the ephemera of our lives, found deeply
embedded within various subcultures, most notably that of
Southern California. Through his lens, familiar imagery such as
specific architectural gems, common motifs within consumer
culture, or font-specific words elevated as objects are
bestowed an iconic status. His fodder is often garnered from
the environments in which he lives and works, pulling in a
mixed bag of visuals from the film and advertising industries
as well as a thriving vortex of trends and memes stemming
from an area often noted for being the birthplace of "cool." Ed
Ruscha is the quintessential Los Angeles artist whose work
catapulted Pop art from a form that merely highlighted the
universal ordinary into a form in which the ordinary could now
be viewed in relation to its geographically intrinsic cultural
contexts. In his hands Pop becomes personal.
DAVID HOCKNEY
David Hockney's bright swimming pools, split-level
homes and suburban Californian landscapes are a strange
brew of calm and hyperactivity. Shadows appear to have been
banished from his acrylic canvases of the 1960s, slick as
magazine pages. Flat planes exist side-by-side in a patchwork,
muddling our sense of distance. Hockney's unmistakable style
incorporates a broad range of sources
from Baroque to Cubism and, most recently, computer
graphics. An iconoclast obsessed with the Old Masters, this
British Pop artist breaks every rule deliberately, delighting in
the deconstruction of proportion, linear perspective, and color
theory. He shows that orthodoxies are meant to be shattered,
and that opposites can coexist, a message of tolerance that
transcends art and has profound implications in the political
and social realm.
SIGMAR POLKE
Multi-media artist, Sigmar Polke, had the capacity to
be at once irreverent, playful, and acerbic. From painting to
photography and film to installations and prints, Polke's work,
which often incorporated non-traditional materials and
techniques, was above all a critique of art itself. Sometimes
veiled and sometimes confrontational, the messages
conveyed in his work raise serious questions about aesthetic,
political, and social conventions. For Polke, the production of
art was consistently a dialogue between himself and the
viewer, which presented virtually limitless interpretive
possibilities. Along with a group of fellow artists that
included Gerhard Richter, he introduced the term, Capitalist
Realism, which refers loosely to commodity-based art.
Further, and specifically in the case of Polke's work, Capitalist
Realism constitutes not only a critique of Pop art and the
commodification of art and capitalism overall but also of the
idealistic and overtly nationalistic Soviet Social Realism that
Polke was particularly exposed (and opposed) to.
JAMES ROSENQUIST
A seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, James
Rosenquist is best known for his colossal collage paintings of
enigmatically juxtaposed fragmentary images borrowed
largely from advertisements and mass media. Brought
together and enlarged so as to cover entire gallery walls and
overwhelm the viewer, these seemingly unrelated pictures of
consumer products, weaponry, and celebrities hint at the
artist's social, political, and cultural concerns. The billboard
painter-turned-artist's early works are also considered
emblematic of a burgeoning consumer culture in America
during the 1960s. Six decades into his career, Rosenquist
continues to create massive, provocative paintings, whose
relevance hinges on their engagement with current economic,
political, environmental, and scientific issues.
MEDIUM POPULAR
o Synthetic polymer paint

o Hard-edged abstract painting

o Enamel, wood, and postcards on board

o Screenprint on paper

o Lithograph on paper

o Screenprint on plastic
POPULAR ART FORMS
o Photography

o Paintings

o Sculpture
ART WORKS
POP ART
 CONCEPTS AND STYLES
There was widespread interest on the part of artists in the incorporation of
popular culture into their work.

American artists soon followed suit and incorporated popular culture into their
artwork as well. Although the individual styles vary widely, all of the artists
maintain a commonality in their choice of popular culture imagery as their
fundamental subject.

Shortly after American Pop art arrived on the art world scene, mainland European
variants developed in the Capitalist Realist movement in Germany and the
Nouveau Ralisme movement in France.
BLAM (1962)
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein

Dimensions 172.7 cm 203.2 cm (68 in 80 in)

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Location: New Haven, CT
Gallery: Yale University Art Gallery
 BLAM (1962)
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein
Artwork description & Analysis: Lichtenstein took the image used for BLAM from a 1962
edition of the comic book All American Men of War (#89) by Russ Heath. Lichtenstein's
painting is not quite an exact replica of Heath's image, but it would be easy to confuse the
two upon first glance, as Lichtenstein altered the image only very subtly. One of his many
paintings that appropriate subject matter from popular comics, Lichtenstein defined his
career by experimenting with the boundaries between high and low art, which raised
such questions about the nature of culture and originality without providing any
definitive answers. As with the rest of Pop art, it is unclear whether Lichtenstein is
applauding the comic book image, and the general cultural sphere to which it belongs, or
critiquing it, leaving interpretation up to the viewer. BLAM and similar works were
painted using the Ben-Day dot technique, borrowed from comic book printing. Thus, not
only is the larger image itself a reproduction, but it was also painted using a repetitive,
almost mechanical technique.
Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)
Artist: Andy Warhol

Medium: Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

Dimensions: 20 by 16 inches (51 cm 41 cm) each
for 32 canvases
Location: New York
Gallery: Museum of Modern Art. Acquired through
the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, New York, NY
(32 canvas series displayed by year of
introduction)
 Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)
Artist: Andy Warhol
Artwork description & Analysis: Warhol's iconic series of Campbell's Soup Cans paintings
were never meant to be celebrated for their form or compositional style, like that of the
abstractionists. What made these works significant was Warhol's co-opting of universally
recognizable imagery, such as a Campbell's soup can, Mickey Mouse, or the face of Marilyn
Monroe, and depicting it as a mass-produced item, but within a fine art context. In that
sense, Warhol wasn't just emphasizing popular imagery, but rather providing commentary
on how people have come to perceive these things in modern times: as commodities to be
bought and sold, identifiable as such with one glance. This early series was hand-painted,
but Warhol switched to screenprinting shortly afterwards, favoring the mechanical
technique for his mass culture imagery. 100 canvases of Campbell's soup cans made up his
first solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, and put Warhol on the art world
map almost immediately, forever changing the face and content of modern art.
I Was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947)
Artist: Eduardo Paolozzi

MEDIUM: Printed Papers On Card

DIMENSIONS Support: 359 X 238 Mm
COLLECTION: Tate
ACQUISITION: Presented By The Artist 1971
 I Was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947)
Artist: Eduardo Paolozzi
Artwork description & Analysis: Paolozzi, a Scottish sculptor and artist, was a
key member of the British post-war avant-garde. His collage I Was a Rich Man's
Plaything proved an important foundational work for the Pop art movement,
combining pop culture documents like a pulp fiction novel cover, a Coca-Cola
advertisement, and a military recruitment advertisement. The work
exemplifies the slightly darker tone of British Pop art, which reflected more
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 barrage of mass media images experienced in
everyday life.
REFERENCES
BOOKS
1) Klaus, H. (2004). Pop Art (Basic Art). Taschen Publisher.

WEB
1)Encyclopdia Britannica (2017). Art Movement: Pop Art. Retrieved from:
https://www.britannica.com/art/Pop-art
2) Ranker. (2017). The Best Pop Artists. Retrieved from http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-pop-
art-artists/reference
3) Tate Gallery (2017). Art Term: Pop Art. Retrieved from
http://www.tate.org.uk/search?q=pop%20art&type=artwork&page=2
4) The Art Story (2017). Movement, Style, and Tendencies: Pop Art. Retrieved from:
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-pop-art.htm#resources_header