Pop Art
Pop Art
Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in
the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late
1950s in the United States.[1] 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.[1] [2] The
concept of pop art refers not as much to the
art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.[2]
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.[4]
Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising.[5] 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, (pictured below), or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures.
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Origins
The origins of pop art in North America and
Great Britain developed differently.[2] In
America, it marked a return to hard-edged
composition and representational art as a
response by artists using impersonal,
mundane reality, irony and parody to defuse
the personal symbolism and "painterly
looseness" of Abstract Expressionism.[3] [6]
By contrast, the origin in post-War Britain,
while employing irony and parody, was
more academic with a focus on the dynamic
and paradoxical imagery of American Andy Warhol, Campbell's Tomato Juice Box, 1964, Synthetic polymer paint and
popular culture as powerful, manipulative silkscreen ink on wood, 10 inches × 19 inches × 9½ inches (25.4 × 48.3 × 24.1
cm), Museum of Modern Art, New York City
symbolic devices that were affecting whole
patterns of life, while improving prosperity
of a society.[6] Early pop art in Britain was a matter of ideas fueled by American popular culture viewed from afar,
while the American artists were inspired by the experiences, of living within that culture.[3] Similarly, pop art was
both an extension and a repudiation of Dadaism.[3] While pop art and Dadaism explored some of the same subjects,
pop art replaced the destructive, satirical, and anarchic impulses of the Dada movement with detached affirmation of
the artifacts of mass culture.[3] Among those artists seen by some as producing work leading up to Pop art are Pablo
Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, and Man Ray.
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Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichtenstein. His work probably defines the basic premise of pop
art better than any other through parody.[7] Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein
produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while it parodies in a soft manner.
The paintings of Lichtenstein, like those of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and others, share a direct attachment to
the commonplace image of American popular culture, but also treat the subject in an impersonal manner clearly
illustrating the idealization of mass production.[7] Andy Warhol is probably the most famous figure in Pop Art.
Warhol attempted to take Pop beyond an artistic style to a life style, and his work often displays a lack of human
affectation that dispenses with the irony and parody of many of his peers.[14] [15]
Early exhibitions
Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Tom Wesselmann had their first shows in the Judson Gallery in 1959/60. In 1960
Martha Jackson showed installations and assemblages, New Media - New Forms featured Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters,
Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine and May Wilson. In 1961 Oldenburg created a store
for Martha Jackson's spring show Environments, Situations, Spaces. In December he showed The Store at his
studio.[16] [17]
In London, the annual RBA exhibition of young talent in 1960 first showed American Pop influences. In January
1961, the most famous RBA-Young Contemporaries of all put David Hockney, the American R B Kitaj, Allen Jones,
Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Peter Phillips and Peter Blake on the map. Hockney, Kitaj and Blake went on to
win prizes at the John-Moores-Exhibition in Liverpool in the same year.
Opening October 31, 1962, Willem de Kooning's New York art dealer, the Sidney Janis Gallery, organized the
groundbreaking International Exhibition of the New Realists, a survey of new to the scene American Pop, French,
Swiss, Italian New Realism, and British Pop art. The fifty-four artists shown included Richard Lindner, Wayne
Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Tom
Wesselmann, George Segal, Peter Phillips and Peter Blake (his large The Love Wall from 1961) and Yves Klein,
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Arman, Daniel Spoerri, Christo, Mimmo Rotella. Martial Raysse, Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely saw the
show in New York and were stunned by the size and the look of the American work. Also shown were Marisol,
Mario Schifano, Enrico Baj and Öyvind Fahlström. Janis lost some of his abstract expressionist artists, but gained
Dine,Oldenburg, Segal and Wesselmann.[18]
A bit earlier, on the West-coast, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine and Andy Warhol from NYC, Phillip Hefferton and
Robert Dowd from Detroit; Edward Ruscha and Joe Goode from Oklahoma City, and Wayne Thiebaud from
California were included in the New Painting of Common Objects show. This first Pop Art museum exhibition in
America was curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum [19]. Pop Art now was a success and was going
to change the art world forever. New York followed Pasadena in 1963 when the Guggenheim Museum exhibited Six
Painters and the Object, curated by Lawrence Alloway. The artists were Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein,
Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol.[20]
By 1962, the Pop artists began to exhibit in commercial galleries in New York and Los Angeles, for some it was
their first commercial one-man show. The Ferus Gallery presented Andy Warhol in Los Angeles and Ed Ruscha in
1963. In New York, the Green Gallery showed Rosenquist, Segal, Oldenburg, and Wesselmann, the Stable Gallery
R. Indiana and Warhol (his first New York show), the Leo Castelli Gallery presented Rauschenberg, Johns, and
Lichtenstein, Martha Jackson showed Jim Dine, and Allen Stone showed Wayne Thiebaud. By 1965–1966 after the
Green Gallery and the Ferus Gallery closed the Leo Castelli Gallery represented Rosenquist, Warhol, Rauschenberg,
Johns, Lichtenstein and Ruscha, The Sidney Janis Gallery represented Oldenburg, Segal, Wesselmann and Marisol,
while Allen Stone continued to represent Thiebaud, and Martha Jackson continued representing Robert Indiana.[21]
Proto-pop
It should also be noted that while the British pop art movement predated the American pop art movement, there were
some earlier American proto-Pop origins which utilized 'as found' cultural objects.[3] During the 1920s American
artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis created paintings prefiguring the pop art movement that
contained pop culture imagery such as mundane objects culled from American commercial products and advertising
design.[22] [23] [24]
In Spain
In Spain, the study of pop art is associated with the "new figurative", which arose from the roots of the crisis of
informalism. Eduardo Arroyo could be said to fit within the pop art trend, on account of his interest in the
environment, his critique of our media culture which incorporates icons of both mass media communication and the
history of painting, and his scorn for nearly all established artistic styles. However, the Spaniard who could be
considered the most authentically “pop” artist is Alfredo Alcaín, because of the use he makes of popular images and
empty spaces in his compositions.
Also in the category of Spanish pop art is the “Chronicle Team” (El Equipo Crónica), which existed in Valencia
between 1964 and 1981, formed by the artists Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes. Their movement can be
characterized as Pop because of its use of comics and publicity images and its simplification of images and
photographic compositions. Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar emerged from Madrid's "La Movida" subculture (1970s)
making low budget super 8 pop art movies and was subsequently called the Andy Warhol of Spain by the media at
the time. In the book "Almodovar on Almodovar" he is quoted saying that the 1950s film "Funny Face" is a central
inspiration for his work. One Pop trademark in Almodovar's films is that he always produces a fake commercial to
be inserted into a scene.
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In Japan
Pop art in Japan is unique and identifiable as Japanese because of the regular subjects and styles. Many Japanese pop
artists take inspiration largely from anime, and sometimes ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art. The best-known pop
artist currently in Japan is Takashi Murakami, whose group of artists, Kaikai Kiki, is world-renowned for their own
mass-produced but highly abstract and unique superflat art movement, a surrealist, post-modern movement whose
inspiration comes mainly from anime and Japanese street culture, is mostly aimed at youth in Japan, and has made a
large cultural impact. Some artists in Japan, like Yoshitomo Nara, are famous for their graffiti-inspired art, and
some, such as Murakami, are famous for mass-produced plastic or polymer figurines. Many pop artists in Japan use
surreal or obscene, shocking images in their art, taken from Japanese hentai. This element of the art catches the eye
of viewers young and old, and is extremely thought-provoking, but is not taken as offensive in Japan. A common
metaphor used in Japanese pop art is the innocence and vulnerability of children and youth. Artists like Nara and
Aya Takano use children as a subject in almost all of their art. While Nara creates scenes of anger or rebellion
through children, Takano communicates the innocence of children by portraying nude girls.
In Italy
In Italy, Pop Art was known from 1964, and took place in different forms, such as the "Scuola di Piazza del Popolo"
in Rome, with artists such as Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Giosetta Fioroni, Tano Festa and also some artworks
by Piero Manzoni and Mimmo Rotella.
Italian Pop Art originated in ‘50s culture, to be precise in the works of two artists: Enrico Baj and Mimmo Rotella,
who have every right to be considered the forerunners of this scene. In fact, it was around 1958-59 that Baj and
Rotella abandoned their previous careers – which might be generically defined as a non-representational genre
despite being run through with post-Dadaism – to catapult themselves into a new world of images and the reflections
on them which was springing up all around them. Mimmo Rotella’s torn posters gained an ever more figurative taste,
often explicitly and deliberately referring to the great icons of the times. Enrico Baj’s compositions were steeped in
contemporary kitsch, which was to turn out to be a gold mine of images and stimuli for an entire generation of
artists.
The novelty lies in the new visual panorama, both inside the four domestic walls and out: cars, road signs, television,
all the "new world." Everything can belong to the world of art, which itself is new. In this respect, Italian Pop Art
takes the same ideological path as that of the International scene; the only thing that changes is the iconography and,
in some cases, the presence of a more critical attitude to it. Even in this case, the prototypes can be traced back to the
works of Rotella and Baj, both far from neutral in their relationship with society. Yet this is not an exclusive
element; there is a long line of artists, from Gianni Ruffi to Roberto Barni, from Silvio Pasotti to Umberto Bignardi
and Claudio Cintoli who take on reality as a toy, as a great pool of imagery from which to draw material with
disenchantment and frivolity, questioning the traditional linguistic role models with a renewed spirit of “let me have
fun” à la Aldo Palazzeschi.[25]
In The Netherlands
While in the Netherlands there was no formal Pop Art movement, there was a group of artists who spent time in New
York during the early years of Pop Art and drew inspiration from the international Pop Art movement. Key
representatives of Dutch Pop Art are Gustave Asselbergs, Woody van Aamen, Daan van Golden, Rik Bentley, Jan
Cremer, Wim T. Schippers and Jacques Frenken. They had in common that they opposed the Dutch petit bourgeois
mentality by creating humorous works with a serious undertone. Examples include Sex O'Clock by Woody van
Amen and Crucifix / Target by Jacques Frenken.[26]
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Jasper Johns, 1954–1955 Andy Warhol, 1962 Campbell's Tom Wesselmann, Wayne Thiebaud,
Flag Soup Cans 1962 Still Life 1963 Three Machines
Claes Oldenburg, 1966 David Hockney, 1967 A Bigger Alex Katz, 1970 Vincent Jim Dine, 1984–1985 The Robe
Soft Bathtub Splash with Open Mouth Following Her
Notable artists
• Billy Apple • Jann Haworth • John McHale • Larry Rivers
• Evelyne Axell • David Hockney • Marisol • James Rosenquist
• Sir Peter Blake • Dorothy Iannone • Peter Max • Ed Ruscha
• Derek Boshier • Robert Indiana • Takashi Murakami • Niki de Saint Phalle
• Pauline Boty • Jasper Johns • Yoshitomo Nara • Peter Saul
• Patrick Caulfield • Allen Jones • Claes Oldenburg • George Segal
• Allan D'Arcangelo • Alex Katz • Julian Opie • Colin Self
• Jim Dine • Corita Kent • Eduardo Paolozzi • Marjorie Strider
• Rosalyn Drexler • Kiki Kogelnik • Peter Phillips • Aya Takano
• Robert Dowd • Nicholas Krushenick • Sigmar Polke • Wayne Thiebaud
• Erró • Yayoi Kusama • Hariton Pushwagner • Andy Warhol
• Red Grooms • Roy Lichtenstein • Mel Ramos • Idelle Weber
• Richard Hamilton • Richard Lindner • Robert Rauschenberg • John Wesley
• Keith Haring • Tom Wesselmann
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Further reading
• Lucy R. Lippard, Pop Art, with contributions by Lawrence Alloway, Nancy Marmer, Nicolas Calas, Frederick A.
Praeger, New York, 1966.
External links
• Brooklyn Museum Exhibitions: Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968, Oct. 2010-Jan. 2011
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/seductive_subversion/)
• Brooklyn Museum, Wiki/Pop (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/seductive_subversion/wiki/)
Article Sources and Contributors 9
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