Introduction
Pop Art or Popular Art originated in the Great Britain around 1950s. The word pop was first used to define popular culture existing but as the artist started using popular culture in their artwork the Pop art was created. Although the Pop art movement started in Britain, it achieved its full expression in U.S. American soil nurtured the movement providing a solid base for Pop art. It flourished so much in America that it became an integral part of American everyday life. The art found its way into things like newspaper photographs, Advertisements, Coco cola bottles, used car parts and many other things (What is Pop Art 2013). As a cultural movement Pop art movement stressed on the point that the art can be borrowed and mixed taking different sources defying the existence of any hierarchy of culture
Pop Art represents all things visible to the eye, unlike the creations of abstract expressionists, which only focused on the trauma within the humans. Even the purpose of creating pop art was to produce something with instant meaning, easy to comprehend. This was in sharp contrast to the intellectual paintings of the Expressionists. The main idea behind Pop art was that art can be made or constructed from anything ranging from consumer goods, magazines, television, books, cartoons and comic books. This whole concept was developed on the base which was established by Dada initially and maintained later by the pop artist (What is Pop Art 2013). Although it used mundane objects and similar kind of images represented in highly contrasting colors, Compositions were simple and visually appealing. Pop Art blurred the boundaries of ordinary objects of life and fine arts, questioning the purpose and place of art in today’s world. It should be noted, however, that mainstream pop was concerned and inclined towards creating new methods and images than to degrade the tradition of art. If in one line the meaning and message contained in the pop art need to be understood. It can be said that pop art was “the” post war expression of the world obsessed with the idea of chasing behind materialism.
Pop Art in a way challenged the conventional ideas about originality because the subject taken to make pop art were things of daily life, artist were picking up anything and everything to paint; there was no demarcation between high art and low art (What is Pop-Art? - Characteristics, 2016). Clearly, the Pop artists and their work were making social or political statements, knowingly or unknowingly. According to the critic Hal Foster, Pop Art images can be categorized into five main types. The first “tabular” images of Richard Hamilton in which he applied lush quality paint on loosely arranged motifs on canvas to represent similarities which were typical of contemporary advertising. The second category belongs to the screened images of Roy Lichtenstein, which were expressive and abstract yet powerfully united. The third type is represented by the artist Andy Warhol, whose images displayed trauma, death, and disaster. His picture “White Burning Car” showed images of the smoking car wreck, which points to Warhol’s interest in depicting disturbing facts of contemporary life (Pop Art, n.d.). Some also believed that the way the subject has been repeated shows artists’ inability to process emotions. Fourth category image type is that of Gerhard Richter’s photography with was an amalgamation of photography and painting emphasizing the importance of the photographic image. His images also had shades of trauma as Warhol; a unique thing was a cover of paint and smudge that he used to give it a look of painting. Lastly, imagery developed by Ed Ruscha responding to the landscape of Los Angeles.
Taking an example, Roy Lichtenstein during 1950s used American History, mythology, and folklore for his subjects; he painted these subjects in a style inspired by modernism. It was during the early 1960s that Lichtenstein started experimenting regarding adopting new methods and subjects (Roy Lichtenstein Biography, 2016). His imagery was now a commentary on the American popular culture directly out of the comic books and advertising. The process that he followed was of mimicking the borrowed sources imitating the process of impersonal and mechanical printing.
Lichtenstein’s painting “Explosion” 1962 was an example wherein the painter through his creation tried to suggest the most treacherous threat of absolute destruction by the nuclear explosion. It was the same time when the Cuban Missile crisis happened. The painting is a solid example that pop artist also depicted things which were relevant socially and politically. Lichtenstein used schematic drawing with flat colors in his paintings; his characteristic mark was the use of benday dots and outlines (Roy Lichtenstein, 2013).
Andy Warhol was a popular name in Pop art; he was perhaps the most celebrated Pop artist. At the outset of his career, he painted using his distinguished style called “faux naïf” which gave his paintings folk art quality. Warhol also painted male nudes and less controversial subjects depicting homoerotic tones, besides his commercial art which not accepted well by the art critics. The Initial work of Warhol included personal grooming projects as he was very conscious of his appearance. He would take up a subject to make it more ordinary. His work “200 Campbell’s Soup Cans” represented mass produced images of a product produced in masses (What is Pop Art, 2013). He painted the Campbell soup cans in different sizes and colors further which, according to him was just way used for smart marketing. Warhol’s fascination of consumer goods reached its peak when in 1964 he exhibited wood carvings which were exact replicas of original packaging of products like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Heinz Tomato Ketchep and Campbell Soups. It would not be wrong to that say that Pop Art was a tool to highlight the consumerism, luring the American citizens to buy mass produced things.
References
Kreider, R. (2010). Guidelines. University, 1(1), 1–2. From. (2013). From, Smithsonian Retrieved from http
Pop Art (n.d.). The Art Story Foundation, 1(1), 1–7.
Roy Lichtenstein Biography. (2016). biography Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/roy-lichtenstein-9381678
Roy Lichtenstein. (2013). tracybby.aisites Retrieved from http://tracybby.aisites.com/gwd131/processbook.pdf
What is Pop Art? (2013). rudar.ruc/Retrieved from http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/11678/1/What%20is%20Pop%20Art,%20Group%2010.pdfWhat is Pop-Art? - Characteristics? (2016). visual-arts-cork. Retrieved from http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm
