We explain what Pop Art is, its background, origin and characteristics. Also, its featured artists and main works.
What is Pop Art?
Pop Art (in Spanish: Arte Pop) is a artistic movement that emerged in the mid-to-late 1950s in Great Britain and the United States, as a response to the abstract expressionism that prevailed in the plastic arts of the time.
Inspired by mass culture and the imaginary of capitalist consumption, Pop Art was characterized by its popular and commercial aesthetics, which used advertising, comics, cinema and the most everyday objects. Andy Warhol's famous work Campbell's soup cans (Campbell's soup cans, 1962) summarizes this spirit well: it consists of 32 almost identical paintings, each depicting a different variety of the popular brand of canned soup.
Contrary to what it seems, Pop Art did not seek the easy, the elementary or the “anything goes”. It was a clearly political movement, which intended to be a mirror so that the post-war consumer society could look at itself: referred to what is mass produced, packaged and ready to be consumed in a massive, dizzying, repetitive, standardized and anonymous way.
Pop Art is not a “popular” art, since it is not presented from customs, folklore or the traditional point of view of the people. The term has to do with the American category of “pop”, linked to mass culture and consumer society, fashion and advertising.
Although it is difficult to determine with certainty when Pop Art was first discussed, the name is usually attributed to members of the Independent Groupa British movement founded in 1952 by a group of artists from the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (ICA), whose objective was to overcome the modernist vision and debate the impact of mass culture on art.
Among the members of the ICA were the three people who are recognized as pioneers in the use and circulation of the term: John McHale (artist and art critic), Richard Hamilton (painter) and Lawrence Alloway (art critic and curator).
A major influence on Pop Art was the work of the famous French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). This artist questioned the notions of “high” and “low” culture through the use of everyday objects, appropriation, the ready-made, irony, satire and play.
Pop Art had great international success and important repercussions in Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and other countries to this day. It is considered the first movement of contemporary art.
- See also: Contemporary art
Characteristics of Pop Art
Pop Art was characterized by the following:
He left aside the premises of abstract expressionism
In contrast to the expressiveness of abstract expressionism, which predominated in the art scene of the 1950s, Pop Art sought the reunification of life and art through a cold, direct and rationalist aesthetic, far removed from the emotional aspect of the work. Furthermore, he rejected the search for the unconscious and approached the most everyday and banal reality, which was the main object of his criticism.
It reflected the superficiality and anonymity of mass culture
Instead of delving into the emotional world of the artist, the artistic object in Pop Art functioned as a mirror that criticized the most trivial aspects of its society. Pop Art artists did not intend to express their inner world, but rather the immediate and everyday reality of consumer culture. They achieved this by recreating popular figures, mass producing works of art and copying commercial images recognized by the public.
Its main sources were elements of the cultural industry
The raw material of Pop Art were elements of advertising, comics, magazines, graphic design and cinema, which acquired new meanings when converted into works of art. Pop Art stood out in painting, sculpture, collage, cinema and graphic arts.
Used intense colors and repetitive formats
Contrasting colors, repetition, serialization, and images of famous personalities and popular icons were common techniques in Pop Art. These elements emphasized the idea of mass production and cultural homogenization.
These works are not always congruent with each other, since they use very different techniques and methods, but always starting from the same artistic attitude.
Everyday life and the banal were key concepts
Pop Art stood out for its critical and reflective approach to society, art and culture. The representation of objects and themes from everyday life challenged the idea that art should be transcendent, profound or inaccessible to the general public and questioned the traditional hierarchy between high culture and popular culture.
Background of Pop Art
In 1920, the traditional values of the West began to shake under the weight of the horrors of the First World War and created a cultural shock that gave rise to Dada and its ridicule of pompous Parisian art. Twenty-five years later, something similar happened with World War II and Pop Art.
Among the great precursors of Pop Art are artists of Dada and Surrealism like Marcel Duchamp (famous for his work Fountain (1917), a urinal turned into a work of art for an exhibition), Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), Man Ray (1890-1976), Max Ernst (1891-1976) and Jean Arp (1886-1966).
Also fundamental was the work of Yves Klein, who experimented with monotony and aesthetic uniformity (making, for example, all his works in the same tone of blue).
Another important influence on Pop Art was the collage technique, which had been introduced in the 1910s by Cubism.
But The most direct predecessor of Pop Art in the United Kingdom was Independent Group founded in London in 1952, and which brought together numerous painters, sculptors, writers and art critics who opposed the individualistic and elitist tendencies of modernism prevailing in the British arts at the time.
The work I was a rich man's toy (I was a rich man's plaything,1947) by Eduardo Paolozzi, co-founder of the Independent Groupis considered the first work of Pop Art.
Notable Pop Art artists
Among the main names associated with Pop Art are:
- Andy Warhol (1928-1987). He was an American visual artist and actor, probably the most representative of the authors of Pop Art. His world-renowned works serve as an emblem of the movement, especially his serigraphs and serial reproductions of objects, photographs of celebrities and politicians (Marilyn Monroe, Mao Tse Tung, Elizabeth Taylor, Che Guevara, etc.).
Warhol is credited with the famous phrase: “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”, which in some way sums up the spirit of Pop Art and the era. His work consists of paintings, films, literary writings and musical pieces.
- Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). He was an American artist who very successfully ventured into painting and sculpture. His most famous works incorporate the language of comics and the aesthetics of the cartoons of the moment, with industrial colors (generally primary) and Ben-Day dots.
- Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004). He was an American painter and one of the last great masters of Pop Art. He produced striking works, among which his female nudes stand out. He experimented with lithography, silkscreen and aquatint, as well as sculpture.
- Pauline Boty (1938-1966). She was a British artist recognized for her important presence in London Pop Art of the 1960s and for her feminist activism. Her work was characterized by the representation of sexually free and confident women, as well as by her feminist messages and her social criticism of the man's world.
- Evelyne Axell (1935-1972). She was a Belgian artist who explored female identity and voyeurism in her pop erotic and psychedelic paintings. His works combine techniques such as painting on plexiglass (a type of transparent rigid plastic, better known as acrylic), screen printing and collage.
- Keith Haring (1958-1990). He was an American street artist and social activist. His work is iconic of the 1980s generation. He ventured into both music and painting as well as sculpture, with the aim of breaking the barriers between these three genres. His images were simple, accessible to the general public and above all synthetic, serialized, typical of industrial design or logo design.
Popular works of Pop Art
Some representative works of Pop Art are the following:
1. Campbell's Soup Cans
The series of paintings Campbell's soup cans It has become one of the most recognizable images in pop art. It was started by Andy Warhol in 1962 and is made up of 32 silkscreens, each with the image of a can, corresponding to a different variety of soup. The images were made with a silkscreen process that allowed Warhol to produce multiple copies.
2. Marilyn's diptych
He Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol is an iconic work of Pop Art that represents the face of actress Marilyn Monroe, taken from the publicity photo of the film “Niagara.” It was created in 1962 and is made up of two canvases of equal size, one of them with the image of Monroe in bright colors and the other in black and white.
3. Blam!
Blam! is an iconic work of Pop Art created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1962. It depicts a comic strip with a dramatic action scene showing a fighter plane that has been hit, with the word “BLAM!” in a yellow cloud. It is based on the art of Russ Heath in the comic All-American Men of War, issue #89 from January-February 1962, published by National Periodical Publications.
3. Color her gone
Color Her Gonefrom 1962, is one of Pauline Boty's best-known works and is considered an emblem of British Pop Art. The work is done in oil on canvas and represents a woman looking directly at the viewer.
Boty was one of the few female Pop Art artists, a feminist activist and an important figure in the London art scene of the time.
4. Great American Nude #75
Great American Nude #75 is a work by Tom Wesselman from 1965 made of molded plastic, painted and mounted on an illuminated support, with defined lines and flat, vibrant colors. It shows a naked and reclining woman that occupies the entire surface.
The work is part of the series Great American Nudesfrom 1961. In 1964, Wesselman began experimenting with bas-relief surfaces inspired by gas station signs that are illuminated by artificial light from the inside.
5. Radiant baby
The work radiant baby is an iconic image depicting a baby with a radiant halo around its head. It was created by Keith Haring in 1991, when the AIDS epidemic devastated the LGBTQ+ community. Many of Haring's works from this period explore death, loss, and hope.
radiant baby has become one of Haring's most popular images, having been reproduced in a variety of media and used by LGBTQ+ rights activists as a symbol of resistance. It also inspired a musical of the same name that premiered in 2003.
- Cubism
- Fauvism
- Expressionism
References
- Guasch, A. M. (2016). The latest art of the 20th century: from post-minimalism to multiculturalism. Alliance.
- Rippner, S. (2004, October). The Postwar Print Renaissance in America. Metmuseum.org. https://www.metmuseum.org/
- Tate. (2017). Pop Art. https://www.tate.org.uk/