pop art essay conclusion

Summary of Pop Art

Pop Art's refreshing reintroduction of identifiable imagery, drawn from media and popular culture, was a major shift for the direction of modernism. With roots in Neo-Dada and other movements that questioned the very definition of “art” itself, Pop was birthed in the United Kingdom in the 1950s amidst a postwar socio-political climate where artists turned toward celebrating commonplace objects and elevating the everyday to the level of fine art. American artists Andy Warhol , Roy Lichtenstein , James Rosenquist and others would soon follow suit to become the most famous champions of the movement in their own rejection of traditional historic artistic subject matter in lieu of contemporary society’s ever-present infiltration of mass manufactured products and images that dominated the visual realm. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial images, Pop Art has become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop Art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source has been one of the most influential characteristics of Pop Art.
• It could be argued that the Abstract Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul, while Pop artists searched for traces of the same trauma in the mediated world of advertising, cartoons, and popular imagery at large. But it is perhaps more precise to say that Pop artists were the first to recognize that there is no unmediated access to anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built environment. Pop artists believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make those connections literal in their artwork.
• Although Pop Art encompasses a wide variety of work with very different attitudes and postures, much of it is somewhat emotionally removed. In contrast to the "hot" expression of the gestural abstraction that preceded it, Pop Art is generally "coolly" ambivalent. Whether this suggests an acceptance of the popular world or a shocked withdrawal, has been the subject of much debate.
• Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-World War II manufacturing and media boom. Some critics have cited the Pop Art choice of imagery as an enthusiastic endorsement of the capitalist market and the goods it circulated, while others have noted an element of cultural critique in the Pop artists' elevation of the everyday to high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the status of the art object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at base, a commodity.
• Some of the most famous Pop artists began their careers in commercial art: Andy Warhol was a highly successful magazine illustrator and graphic designer; Ed Ruscha was also a graphic designer, and James Rosenquist started his career as a billboard painter. Their background in the commercial art world trained them in the visual vocabulary of mass culture as well as the techniques to seamlessly merge the realms of high art and popular culture.

Key Artists

Overview of Pop Art

From early innovators in London to later deconstruction of American imagery by the likes of Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist - the Pop Art movement became one of the most thought-after of artistic directions.

Artworks and Artists of Pop Art

I Was a Rich Man's Plaything

Artist: Eduardo Paolozzi

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.

Collage - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?

Artist: Richard Hamilton

Hamilton's collage was a seminal piece for the evolution of Pop Art and is often cited as the very first work of the movement. Created for the exhibition This is Tomorrow at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, Hamilton's image was used both in the catalogue for the exhibition and on posters advertising it. The collage presents viewers with an updated Adam and Eve (a body-builder and a burlesque dancer) surrounded by all the conveniences modern life provided, including a vacuum cleaner, canned ham, and a television. Constructed using a variety of cutouts from magazine advertisements, Hamilton created a domestic interior scene that both lauded consumerism and critiqued the decadence that was emblematic of the American post-war economic boom years.

Collage - Kunsthalle Tubingen, Germany

President Elect

Artist: James Rosenquist

Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his painting President Elect , the artist depicts John F. Kennedy's face amidst an amalgamation of consumer items, including a yellow Chevrolet and a piece of cake. Rosenquist created a collage with the three elements cut from their original mass media context, and then photo-realistically recreated them on a monumental scale. As Rosenquist explains, "The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake." The large-scale work exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of combining discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as well as his skill at including political and social commentary using popular imagery.

Oil on masonite - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Pastry Case, I

Artist: Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg is known as one of the few American Pop Art sculptors, notorious for his playfully absurd creations of food and inanimate objects. The collection of works in Pastry Case, I were originally displayed in the artist's famous 1961 installation titled The Store , located on New York's Lower East Side. For the project, Oldenburg created plaster sculptural objects including a strawberry shortcake and a candied apple. In addition to replicating consumer items, Oldenburg organized his installation like a typical variety shop and sold his items at low prices, commenting on the interrelation between art objects and commodities. Although sold as if they were mass-produced, the sculptures in The Store were carefully hand-built and the lavish, expressive brushstrokes that cover the items in Pastry Case, I seem to mock the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism, a common theme in Pop Art. Oldenburg combines the evocative expressionist gesture with the commodity item in a highly ironic environment.

Painted plaster sculptures on ceramic plates, metal platter and cups in glass-and-metal case - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Drowning Girl

Artist: Roy Lichtenstein

In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein gained renown as a leading Pop artist for paintings sourced from the popular comics. Although artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns had previously integrated popular imagery into their works, no one hitherto had focused on cartoon imagery as exclusively as Lichtenstein. His work, along with that of Andy Warhol, heralded the beginning of the Pop Art movement, and, essentially, the end of Abstract Expressionism as the dominant style. Lichtenstein did not simply copy comic pages directly, he employed a complex technique that involved cropping images to create entirely new, dramatic compositions, as in Drowning Girl , whose source image included the woman's boyfriend standing on a boat above her. Lichtenstein also condensed the text of the comic book panels, locating language as another, crucial visual element; re-appropriating this emblematic aspect of commercial art for his paintings further challenged existing views about definitions of "high" art. As with the rest of Pop Art, it is often 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. But in Drowning Girl , the ridicule of the woman's situation (as is made clear by her ridiculous statement) is evident.

Oil on canvas - Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Campbell's Soup I

Artist: Andy Warhol

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.

Screenprint - Fair Use

Artist: Sigmar Polke

After Polke co-founded Capitalist Realism in 1963 in Düsseldorf, Germany, with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Leug, he began to create paintings of popular culture, evoking both genuine nostalgia for the images and mild cynicism about the state of the German economy. He began simulating the dot patterns of commercial four-color printing (Raster dots) around the same time as Lichtenstein started replicating Ben-Day dots on his canvases. In Bunnies , Polke uses an image from the Playboy Club depicting four of their "bunnies" in costume. By recreating the Raster dot printing technique in this painting, Polke disrupts the mass-marketing of sexual appeal, because the closer the viewer gets to the work, the less they see. Bunnies and the rest of Polke's Raster dot paintings, do not invite a deep, personal identification with the image but rather the images become allegories for the self as it lost amidst the flood of commecial imagery. The dissonance between the inviting sexuality of the appropriated image of the Playboy bunnies and the distancing effect of the Raster dots echoes the interplay of feelings and emotions felt by the artist, both yearning for the mass-culture advertised life and repelled by it at the same time. Polke's vision of popular culture is far more critical than any of the New York artists, and is rooted in the skeptical attitude held by the Capitalist Realists. Rather than the "cool" detachment of New York, Polke cleverly critiques popular culture and how it affects the individual using the same mass-market image-making techniques.

Oil on cavas - Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., USA

Standard Station

Artist: Ed Ruscha

The printmaker, painter, and photographer Ed Ruscha was an important proponent of West Coast Pop Art that blended the imagery of Hollywood with colorful renderings of commercial culture and the landscape of the southwest. The gasoline station is one of Ruscha's most iconic motifs, appearing repeatedly in his book Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), a documentation of deadpan photographs from a road trip through the American Southwestern countryside. In Standard Station , the artist transforms the banal image of the gasoline station into an emblematic symbol of American consumer culture. Here, through the medium of screenprinting, Ruscha flattens the perspective into a single plane to create an image that evokes the aesthetic of commercial advertising. The work also demonstrates Ruscha's early experiments with language and textual interplay, which would be a principal concern in much of his later, more conceptually oriented work.

Screenprint - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

A Bigger Splash

Artist: David Hockney

This large canvas, measuring approximately 94 by 94 inches, was derived from a photograph of a swimming pool Hockney had seen in a pool manual. Hockney was intrigued by the idea that a painting might recapture a fleeting event frozen in a photograph: “I loved the idea of painting this thing that lasts for two seconds: it takes me two weeks to paint this event that lasts for two seconds.” The dynamism of the splash contrasts strongly with the static and rigid geometry of the house, the pool edge, the palm trees and the striking yellow diving board, all carefully arranged in a grid containing the splash. This gives the painting a disjointed effect that is absolutely intentional, one of the hallmarks of Hockney’s style. The effect of stylization and artificiality draws on the aesthetic vocabulary of Pop Art.

Acrylic on canvas - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom

Beginnings of Pop Art

Great britain: the independent group.

In 1952, a gathering of artists in London calling themselves the Independent Group began meeting regularly to discuss topics such as mass culture's place in fine art, the found object, and science and technology. Members included Eduardo Paolozzi , Richard Hamilton , architects Alison and Peter Smithson , and critics Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham. Britain in the early 1950s was still emerging from the austerity of the post-war years, and its citizens were ambivalent about American popular culture. While the group was suspicious of its commercial character, they were enthusiastic about the rich world pop culture seemed to promise for the future. The imagery they discussed at length included that found in Western movies, science fiction, comic books, billboards, automobile design, and rock and roll music.

The actual term "Pop Art" has several possible origins: the first use of the term in writing has been attributed to both Lawrence Alloway and Alison and Peter Smithson, and alternately to Richard Hamilton, who defined Pop in a letter, while the first artwork to incorporate the word "Pop" was produced by Paolozzi. His collage I Was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947) contained cut-up images of a pinup girl, Coca-Cola logo, cherry pie, World War II bomber, and a man's hand holding a pistol, out of which burst the world "POP!" in a puffy white cloud.

New York City: The Emergence of Neo-Dada

By the mid 1950s, the artists working in New York City faced a critical juncture in modern art: follow the Abstract Expressionists or rebel against the strict formalism advocated by many schools of modernism. By this time, Jasper Johns was already troubling conventions with abstract paintings that included references to: "things the mind already knows" - targets, flags, handprints, letters, and numbers. Meanwhile, Robert Rauschenberg's "combines" incorporated found objects and images, with more traditional materials like oil paint. Similarly, Allan Kaprow's "Happenings" and the Fluxus movements chose to incorporate aspects from the surrounding world into their art. These artists, along with others, later became grouped in the movement known as Neo-Dada . The now classic New York Pop Art of Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol emerged in the 1960 in the footsteps of the Neo-Dadaists.

Pop Art: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Once the transition from the found-object constructions of the Neo-Dada artists to the Pop movement was complete, there was widespread interest on the part of artists in the incorporation of popular culture into their work. Although artists in the Independent Group in London initiated the use of "pop" in reference to art, 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 Réalisme movement in France.

Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and the Tabular Image

The Pop Art collages of Paolozzi and Hamilton convey the mixed feelings Europeans maintained toward American popular culture; both exalting the mass-produced objects and images while also criticizing the excess. In his collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956), Hamilton combined images from various mass media sources, carefully selecting each image and composing the disparate elements of popular imagery into one coherent survey of post-war consumer culture. The members of the Independent Group were the first artists to present mass media imagery, acknowledging the challenges to traditional art categories occurring in America and Britain after 1945.

Roy Lichtenstein and Pulp Culture

Lichtenstein proved that he could fulfill demands for a "great" composition even though his subject matter derived from comic books. In addition to using the imagery from these mass-produced picture books, Lichtenstein appropriated the techniques used to create the images in comic books to create his paintings. He not only adopted the same bright colors and clear outlines as popular art, his most innovative contribution was his use of Ben-Day dots: small dots used to render color in mass-manufactured comics. Focusing on a single panel within a comic strip, Lichtenstein's canvases are not an exact facsimile, but are rather the artist's creative re-imaging of the composition in which elements may have been added or eliminated, scale could shift, and text might be edited. By hand-painting the usually machine-generated dots, and recreating comic book scenes, Lichtenstein blurred the distinction between mass reproduction and high art.

James Rosenquist and the Monumental Image

Rosenquist also directly appropriated images from popular culture for his paintings. However, rather than produce rote copies, Rosenquist exerted creative control through his surrealistic juxtapositions of products and celebrities, often inserting political messages. As part of his method, Rosenquist collaged magazine clippings from advertisements and photo spreads, and then used the results as studies for his final painting. Rosenquist's training in billboard painting transitioned perfectly into his realistic renderings of those collages expanded onto a monumental scale. With works often much larger and wider than 20 feet, Rosenquist imbued the mundane with the same status previously reserved for high, sometimes royal, art subjects.

Andy Warhol and Repetition

Andy Warhol is most famous for his vividly colored portraits of celebrities, but his subject matter has varied widely throughout his career. The common theme amidst the different subjects is their inspiration in mass consumer culture. His earliest works depict objects like Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell's soup cans, reproduced ad infinitum, as if the gallery wall were a shelf in a supermarket. Warhol transitioned from hand painting to screenprinting to further facilitate the large-scale replication of pop images. Warhol's insistence on mechanical reproduction rejected notions of artistic authenticity and genius. Instead, he acknowledged the commodification of art, proving that paintings were no different from cans of Campbell's soup; both have material worth and could be bought and sold like consumer goods. He further equated the mass-produced status of consumer goods with that of celebrities in portraits like Marilyn Diptych (1962).

Claes Oldenburg and Pop Sculpture

Renowned for his monumental public sculptures of everyday objects and his "soft" sculptures, Claes Oldenburg began his career on a much smaller scale. In 1961 he rented a storefront in New York City for a month where he installed and sold his wire and plaster sculptures of mundane objects, ranging from pastries to men's and women's undergarments, in an installation he dubbed The Store . Oldenburg charged a nominal fee for each piece, which underscored his commentary on the role of art as a commodity. He began his soft sculptures shortly after The Store , constructing large, everyday objects, like a slice of cake, an ice cream cone, or a mixer, out of fabric and stuffing so the end result collapses in on itself like a deflating balloon. Oldenburg would continue to focus on commonplace objects throughout his career, moving from soft sculptures to grand public art, like the 45-foot-high Clothespin (1974) in downtown Philadelphia. Regardless of the scale, Oldenburg's work always maintains a playful attitude toward re-creating mundane things in an unconventional way in order to upend viewer's expectations.

Los Angeles Pop

As opposed to New York City, the art world of Los Angeles was much less rigid, lacking the established galleries, critics, and hierarchies of the east coast; this openness is reflected in the styles of the artists who lived and worked there. The first museum survey of Pop Art, New Painting of Common Objects , was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962, and showcased Warhol and Lichtenstein as well as many artists living in Los Angeles including Ed Ruscha, Joe Goode, Phillip Hefferton, Wayne Thiebaud, and Robert Dowd. Other Los Angeles artists, like Billy Al Bengston, incorporated a different kind of aesthetic into their version of Pop, utilizing new materials such as automobile paint and referencing surfing and motorcycles in works that make the familiar strange through new and unexpected combinations of images and media. By shifting the focus away from specific consumer goods, these artists allowed Pop Art to move beyond replication to incorporate experience and evoke a particular feeling, attitude, or idea, while also pushing the boundaries between high art and popular culture.

Ed Ruscha and Signage

On the roster at Ferus Gallery, Ed Ruscha was one of the pivotal artists of Los Angeles Pop who worked in a variety of media, with the majority of these typically printed or painted. Emphasizing the omnipresence of signage in Los Angeles, Ruscha used words and phrases as subjects in his earliest Pop Art paintings. His first reference to popular culture was the painting Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962), where he appropriated the 20 th Century Fox logo in a simplified composition with the hard edges and clear palette of a cartoon, echoing the similar billboards. His subsequent paintings of words further blurred the lines between advertising signage, painting, and abstraction, undermining the divisions between the aesthetic world and the commercial realm, some even incorporating three-dimensional objects like pencils and comic books on the canvases. Ruscha's work presages the Conceptual art of the later 1960s, driven by the idea behind the artwork rather than the specific image. Ruscha's exploration of a variety of commonplace images and themes went beyond merely reproducing them, but to examining the interchangeability of image, text, place, and experience.

Capitalist Realism in Germany

In Germany, the counterpart to the American Pop Art movement was Capitalist Realism, a movement that focused on subjects taken from commodity culture and utilized an aesthetic based in the mass media. The group was founded by Sigmar Polke in 1963 and included artists Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg as its central members. The Capitalist Realists sought to expose the consumerism and superficiality of contemporary capitalist society by using the imagery and aesthetic of popular art and advertising within their work. Polke explored the creative possibilities of mechanical reproduction and Lueg examined pop culture imagery, while Richter dissected the photographic medium.

Nouveau Réalisme in France

In France, aspects of Pop Art were present in Nouveau Réalisme, a movement launched by the critic Pierre Restany in 1960, with the drafting of the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," that proclaimed, "Nouveau Réalisme - new ways of perceiving the real." The declaration was signed in Yves Klein's workshop by nine artists who were united in their direct appropriation of mass culture, or in Restany's words, "poetic recycling of urban, industrial, and advertising reality." This principle is evident in the work of Villeglé, whose technique of " décollage " involved cutting through layers of posters to create a new image. While the movement echoed the American Pop artists' concerns with commercial culture, many of the Nouveau Réalistes were more concerned with objects than with painting, as is the case with Spoerri , whose "snare-pictures" used food, cutlery, and tabletops as artistic media. Other key proponents of the movement included Yves Klein , Jean Tinguely , Arman , François Dufrêne , Raymond Hains , Niki de Saint Phalle , and Christo and Jean-Claude .

Later Developments - After Pop Art

Pop Art would continue to influence artists in later decades, with artists like Warhol maintaining a larger-than-life presence within the New York art world into the 1980s. Pop fell out of favor during the 1970s as the art world shifted focus from art objects to installations, performances, and other less tangible art forms. However, with the revival of painting at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s, the art object came back into favor once again, and popular culture provided subject matter that was easy for viewers to identify and understand. One of the leading figures of the Neo-Pop movement was Jeff Koons , whose appropriation of pop culture icons such as Michael Jackson and mass-produced objects like Hoover vacuum cleaners further pushed the boundaries of high art. In Japan, the work of Takashi Murakami has been cited as a more recent example of Neo-Pop, due to his use of popular anime imagery in his Superflat style and his successful partnering with fashion labels like Louis Vuitton. Such artists continue to break down the barrier between high and low art forms, while reevaluating the role of art as a commodity in and of itself.

Useful Resources on Pop Art

• Pop Go the Women The Other Story of Pop Art British historian Alistair Sooke tracks down the forgotten women artists of pop, finding their art and their stories ripe for rediscovery. Artists include Pauline Boty, Marisol, Rosalyn Drexler, Idelle Weber, Letty Lou Eisenhauer, and Jann Haworth

• Pop Art: A Critical History Our Pick By Steven Henry Madoff
• Pop Our Pick By Mark Francis, Hal Foster
• Pop Art By Tilman Osterwold
• Pop Art By Honnef Klaus, Uta Grosenick
• Tate Movements in Modern Art: Pop Art By David McCarthy
• Whaam! The Art and Life of Roy Lichtenstein By Susan Goldman Rubin
• Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter By Susan Goldman Rubin
• James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics, and History in the 1960s By Michael Lobel
• Pop Art International: Far Beyond Warhol and Lichtenstein Our Pick A look into the varying international aesthetics of the Pop Art movement / By Holland Cotter / The New York Times / February 25, 2016
• Where Are the Great Women Pop Artists? Our Pick By Kim Levin / ARTnews Magazine / November 1, 2010
• Reconfiguring Pop Our Pick By Saul Ostrow / Art in American Magazine / September 1, 2010
• TOP OF THE POPS - Did Andy Warhol change everything? Our Pick An extensive look (and investigation) into the life of Andy Warhol, through the context of his personal life and art making practices / By Louis Menand / The New Yorker / January 11, 2010
• The Pop Art Era By Deborah Solomon / The New York Times / December 8, 2009
• Top Ten ARTnews Stories: The First Word on Pop ARTnews Magazine / November 1, 2007
• Pop Art Was Part French: Mais Oui! Just Ask Them By Alan Riding / The New York Times / April 15, 2001
• The Arts and the Mass Media Our Pick By Lawrence Alloway / Architectural Design & Construction / February 1958
• James Rosenquist, Pop Art Pioneer, Dies at 83 A snapshot of the life, work and inspiration for a Pop Art pioneer / By Ken Johnson / The New York Times / April 1, 2017
• The Impact of Pop Art on the World of Fashion Our Pick WideWalls.com / A look at the ways in which Pop Art has become a commercialized entity in the Fashion Industry
• Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968 Brooklyn Museum 2010 Exhibition
• Pop Art IPhone App that makes portraits look like Andy Warhol's silkscreens

Similar Art

Cut with a Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (1919)

The Woman Eating (1971)

Related artists.

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

• Essay Editor

Art Comparative Analysis Essay: Exploring the Pop Art Style

Art is a powerful medium of expression that has evolved through centuries, reflecting the changing landscapes of culture, society, and individual creativity. One fascinating aspect of art is the ability to analyze and compare different styles, periods, or movements. In this comparative analysis art essay, we will delve into the vibrant world of Pop Art, examining its key characteristics, artists, and its influence on the art world.

List of Essays

Understanding comparative analysis in art essays, the emergence of pop art, key characteristics of pop art, key artists in pop art, comparative analysis of pop art, influence of pop art on contemporary art.

Before diving into the intricacies of Pop Art, let's briefly discuss what a comparative analysis art essay entails. Such essays require a systematic examination and comparison of two or more artworks or artistic movements. This analysis should uncover similarities, differences, and overarching themes, shedding light on the broader context in which these works or movements exist. Comparative analysis essays are valuable tools for art historians, students, and art enthusiasts, as they offer a deeper understanding of artistic evolution.

Pop Art, short for "popular art," emerged in the mid-20th century as a reaction to the dominant Abstract Expressionism movement. It gained prominence in the 1950s and reached its zenith in the 1960s. This art style was characterized by a celebration of popular culture, consumerism, and everyday objects. Pop Art challenged the traditional notions of high art by incorporating elements from mass media, advertising, and consumer products into its works.

1. Repetition and Multiplicity

One of the defining features of Pop Art is the repetition of familiar images and objects. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein frequently used iconic symbols, like Campbell's Soup cans or comic book panels, in their works. This repetition served to emphasize the ubiquity of consumer culture.

2. Vibrant Colors

Pop Art embraced bold and vibrant colors, often using the primary color palette. The vivid hues in Pop Art pieces, such as Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits, added a sense of immediacy and accessibility, drawing viewers in.

3. Commercial Aesthetics

Artists sought to mimic the slick and polished appearance of commercial art and advertising. This aesthetic challenged the notion that fine art should be separate from popular culture.

4. Irony and Critique

While Pop Art celebrated consumerism, it also carried an underlying critique of society's obsession with consumption and celebrity. This juxtaposition of celebration and critique added depth to the style.

1. Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is arguably the most iconic figure in the Pop Art movement. His "Campbell's Soup Cans" and colorful portraits of Marilyn Monroe are some of the most recognized artworks in the world. Warhol's work blurred the line between fine art and mass production, sparking critical discussions about the nature of art itself.

2. Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein gained fame for his comic book-inspired artworks, using Ben-Day dots and bold outlines to create a visually striking effect. His "Whaam!" and "Drowning Girl" are among his most celebrated pieces, showcasing the fusion of high and low culture.

3. Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg's sculptures of oversized everyday objects, such as typewriters and hamburgers, were a testament to the playful and ironic nature of Pop Art. His work challenged the traditional notion of sculpture and expanded the possibilities of art.

Now that we've explored the fundamentals of Pop Art, let's conduct a comparative analysis of two renowned Pop Art pieces: Andy Warhol's "Marilyn Diptych" and Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl."

Andy Warhol's "Marilyn Diptych"

"Marilyn Diptych" is a prime example of Andy Warhol's fascination with celebrity culture. This artwork features multiple repetitions of Marilyn Monroe's face, creating a mesmerizing pattern. The left side of the diptych shows a vibrant, colorful Marilyn, while the right side gradually fades into grayscale, symbolizing Monroe's tragic demise.

The repetition in "Marilyn Diptych" echoes the mass production of celebrity images in the media. By presenting Marilyn's image in various states, from vibrant to fading, Warhol highlights the ephemeral nature of fame.

Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl"

In contrast, Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl" draws inspiration from comic book panels. The artwork depicts a distressed woman in a stylized, emotionally exaggerated manner. The use of Ben-Day dots and bold outlines mimics the mechanical printing process used in comic books.

The comparative analysis of these two works reveals the diversity within the Pop Art movement. While Warhol's piece is more contemplative and reflective, Lichtenstein's work is dynamic and emotive. Both, however, employ the signature elements of Pop Art: repetition, vibrant colors, and a nod to popular culture.

Pop Art's impact on contemporary art is profound and enduring. Its bold use of imagery, consumer culture critique, and fusion of high and low culture continue to inspire artists today. Contemporary artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst have drawn from the legacy of Pop Art in their own creations, exploring themes of mass production and consumerism.

In this comparative analysis art essay, we've explored the fascinating world of Pop Art. We've examined its key characteristics, delved into the works of iconic artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and conducted a comparative analysis of "Marilyn Diptych" and "Drowning Girl." Pop Art's influence on contemporary art remains undeniable, serving as a testament to its enduring relevance and impact on the art world.

In conclusion, Pop Art's celebration and critique of consumer culture continue to resonate with audiences today, making it a vital chapter in the ever-evolving story of art. The comparative analysis of artworks within this movement allows us to appreciate the diversity and depth of this influential style, proving that art is indeed a reflection of society and a lens through which we can examine our world.

Related articles

Aithor's new brand identity.

Hello Aithors! We're here to share some exciting news with you. We've given ourselves a makeover, and we're thrilled to unveil our new brand identity! Our brand has always been about making AI-writing a seamless and secure experience. But we wanted our brand to really represent what we're all about: ease of use, speed, innovation, reliability, and a bit of rebelliousness. So, we’ve updated our look! Our new logo is a visual metaphor that uniquely combines the concepts of undetectability and sc ...

More Interface Languages!

Parli Italiano? Parlez-vous Français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? 你会说中文吗? Hello, Aithors! We're thrilled to announce that our interface is now available in four additional languages: Italian, French, German, and Chinese. We're going global and we couldn't be more excited! As part of our commitment to making Aithor accessible to as many people as possible, we've been hard at work expanding our language offerings. Now, whether you're from Rome or Beijing, Paris or Berlin, you can navigate our platform ...

Aithor writes in YOUR style

Aithors, hi! Today, we're going to highlight one of the nifty features on our platform, the Personalize tool. Ever wished you could make the AI write in your style? Well, with Aithor, you can! Our Personalize tool allows you to adjust the AI to your unique writing style. All you have to do is paste an abstract of your work into the tool. The AI then analyzes your writing style and mimics it, adding a personal touch to your essays. We know how important it is to maintain your unique voice in yo ...

Interface is now available in Portuguese and Spanish

Hey aithors! We're excited to share with you that our interface is now available in Portuguese and Spanish. With more than 500 million Spanish and more than 250 million Portuguese speakers, we believe that this new update will enhance the experience on our platform. Our team worked closely with native speakers to make sure the translations considered all the nuances and peculiarities of the languages. For us, it’s a great opportunity to make Aithor as accessible as possible for users across th ...

Definition Essay - Writing Guide, Examples and Tips

If you don’t know how to write a definition essay, but the task has been given already, there’s no sense in making panic. Here you can find a few useful tips and recommendations on how to prepare a proper writing piece. A Definition Essay: what is it? A definition essay refers to a type of academic writing, assigned during high school and college studying. It includes not only a definition of some issue or concept but a complicated analysis of the selected phenomenon. In general, it helps to ...

Essay - What it Is and How to Write it With an AI Aithor

Writing concise and persuasive texts is a skill required in many professional settings. One of the ways we learn this skill is by writing essays. However, essays require lots of preparation and research, so they can be hard to write, especially if you struggle to understand how to make your essay better. In this article, you’ll learn what an essay is and how to use the Aithor AI essay generator for writing essays. What is an essay? In a broad sense, an essay is a genre of writing that allows ...

Artificial Intelligence: Evolution of Essay Writing

We live in the age when each new year brings more innovations than the previous one. One of the most debated topics of recent time is AI writing software. Not only did users get a handy helper for composing emails, but a tireless machine for writing pages of text on a variety of topics. It’s only natural that students who often have to write long essays as homework started using it too. This article will dissect how artificial intelligence will change the future essays and if AI generation tool ...

Comparative Analysis Essay Topics in Education

Delving into comparative analysis essays in education challenges us to dissect and debate pivotal learning themes. Our carefully selected "Top 20 Topics, Prompts, Ideas, and Questions" aim to ignite critical thought, pushing you to evaluate and contrast varied educational frameworks and the efficacy of instructional approaches. In drafting your essay, strive for a cohesive argument that elevates your analysis beyond the obvious. These topics are springboards for broader discussion, offering a l ...

Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe , 1962, silkscreen on canvas, 211.4 x 144.7 cm ( Museum of Modern Art, New York )

Popular culture, “popular” art

At first glance, Pop art might seem to glorify popular culture by elevating soup cans, comic strips and hamburgers to the status of fine art on the walls of museums. But, then again, a second look may suggest a critique of the mass marketing practices and consumer culture that emerged in the United States after World War II. Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe  clearly reflects this inherent irony of Pop. The central image on a gold background evokes a religious tradition of painted icons, transforming the Hollywood starlet into a Byzantine Madonna that reflects our obsession with celebrity. Notably, Warhol’s spiritual reference was especially poignant given Monroe’s suicide a few months earlier. Like religious fanatics, the actress’s fans worshipped their idol; yet, Warhol’s sloppy silkscreening calls attention to the artifice of Marilyn’s glamorous façade and places her alongside other mass-marketed commodities like a can of soup or a box of Brillo pads.

Richard Hamilton, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? , 1956, collage, 26 cm × 24.8 cm (Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen)

Genesis of Pop

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed , 1955, oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet on wood supports, 191.1 x 80 x 20.3 cm ( The Museum of Modern Art, New York )

In this light, it’s not surprising that the term “Pop art” first emerged in Great Britain, which suffered great economic hardship after the war. In the late 1940s, artists of the “Independent Group,” first began to appropriate idealized images of the American lifestyle they found in popular magazines as part of their critique of British society.  Critic Lawrence Alloway and artist Richard Hamilton are usually credited with coining the term, possibly in the context of Hamilton’s famous collage Just what is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing?  Made to announce the Independent Group’s 1956 exhibition “This Is Tomorrow,” in London, the image prominently features a muscular semi-nude man, holding a phallically positioned Tootsie Pop.

Pop art’s origins, however, can be traced back even further.  In 1917, Marcel Duchamp asserted that any object—including his notorious example of a urinal —could be art, as long as the artist intended it as such. Artists of the 1950s built on this notion to challenge boundaries distinguishing art from real life, in disciplines of music and dance, as well as visual art. Robert Rauschenberg’s desire to “work in the gap between art and life,” for example, led him to incorporate such objects as bed pillows , tires, and even a stuffed goat in his “ combine paintings ” that merged features of painting and sculpture. Likewise, Claes Oldenberg created The Store , an installation in a vacant storefront where he sold crudely fashioned sculptures of brand-name consumer goods. These “Proto-pop” artists were, in part, reacting against the rigid critical structure and lofty philosophies surrounding Abstract Expressionism , the dominant art movement of the time; but their work also reflected the numerous social changes taking place around them.

Post-war consumer culture grabs hold (and never lets go)

c. 1950s advertisement for the American Gas Association

The years following World War II saw enormous growth in the American economy, which, combined with innovations in technology and the media, spawned a consumer culture with more leisure time and expendable income than ever before. The manufacturing industry that had expanded during the war now began to mass-produce everything from hairspray and washing machines to shiny new convertibles, which advertisers claimed all would bring ultimate joy to their owners. Significantly, the development of television, as well as changes in print advertising, placed new emphasis on graphic images and recognizable brand logos—something that we now take for granted in our visually saturated world.

It was in this artistic and cultural context that Pop artists developed their distinctive style of the early 1960s. Characterized by clearly rendered images of popular subject matter, it seemed to assault the standards of modern painting, which had embraced abstraction as a reflection of universal truths and individual expression.

Left: Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with a Ball , 1961, oil on canvas, 153 x 91.9 cm ( Museum of Modern Art, New York ); right: Detail of face showing Lichtenstein’s painted Ben-Day dots, Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with a Ball , 1961, oil on canvas, 153 x 91.9 cm ( Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo: Steven Zucker , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Irony and iron-ons

In contrast to the dripping paint and slashing brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism—and even of Proto-Pop art—Pop artists applied their paint to imitate the look of industrial printing techniques. This ironic approach is exemplified by Lichtenstein’s methodically painted Ben-Day dots, a mechanical process used to print pulp comics.

As the decade progressed, artists shifted away from painting towards the use of industrial techniques. Warhol began making silkscreens, before removing himself further from the process by having others do the actual printing in his studio, aptly named “The Factory.”  Similarly, Oldenburg abandoned his early installations and performances, to produce the large-scale sculptures of cake slices , lipsticks , and clothespins that he is best known for today.

Additional resources

Read a chapter in our textbook,  Reframing Art History —” Popular, Transient, Expendable: Print Culture and Propaganda in the 20th century .”

Pop art on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”PopIntro,”]

More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page

Your donations help make art history free and accessible to everyone!

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF POP ART MOVEMENT AND ITS ARTISTIC LEGACY

2019, IJCIRAS

'The artistic movements of pop art were defined as popular, young, witty, sexy, and glamorous. (a quote from the website of original style , an online tile shop)' The appearance of pop art in Britain and the United States in the mid 1950 and early 1960 respectively. Taking up the ideas of dada an early 20 th century art movement, that used irony and found objects in the service of cultural critique-the pop artists expanded the definition of the art object by exploring the image world of popular culture and the concomitant growth of mass reproduction. A number of the artists who emerged , or more appropriately burst upon the art world. Particularly in new York and los angels in the 1 st years of the 1960's were responding to society's new commercialism. indeed those who came to be identified as pop artists embraced consumerism as a fitting subject of their art. expression and gesture hallmarks of abstract expressionism which preceded pop in the late 1940's and early 1950's were replaced with cool, detached, mechanical illustrations of common objects. Often based on appropriated advertising images. Pop art was preparing a new kind of subjectivity and art language. pop artists turned outward for aesthetic stimuli. Pop art was a significant sociological phenomenon. In turn, the consumer industry itself adopted it as an antidote to the rigidity of high art. Pop came to encompass the field of music, consumer design, and fashion , correspondent to an entire way of life among young people in the 1960's.

Related Papers

Science Park Research Organization & Counselling

One of the biggest art movements of the 20th Century, Pop Art has been shaped by the demands of consumer society. In contrast to the elitist conception of art, postmodernism used popular images and became the art of consumer society. Employing images from the popular culture, it sought to elevate its objects to highbrow clientele. In this context, some saw Pop Art as a field whereby popular culture, which essentially belonged to common people, was utilised by the dominant classes to penetrate into the emotions and thoughts of people, eventually aiming to fortify their hegemony. Pop Art was defined as kitsch, decadent or banal for using the popular images from mass culture. Debates over popular culture versus high culture have started to set the tune in art theory.

Justyna Stępień

Ayşe Sönmez

If we want to talk about pop art, we can say that pop art is related to popular culture. It starts post war (WWII) and it is affected by consumerism of 1950s and 1960s. During that time, globalization is the most important thing among consumer societies. All of people listen Elvis Presley and watch Marilyn Monroe. Also, they drink Coca-Cola. For example; both Elizabeth Taylor drinks Coca-Cola and ordinary person drinks it. Moreover, they eat same soup brand which is called ' Cambell's Chicken Noodle Soup' when their lunch time. At that time, pop art movement increases and lots of artists occur among various countries. They are using different styles and various techniques while they are producing art pieces. However, all of them are affected by one thing which is called 'popular culture'. Popular culture is produced by mass-media, mass-production and mass-culture. Pop art does not appear anywhere. It is based on political backround where it starts. Also, experimental European artists affect pop art artists in the way of their inspirations and styles. What are the political and artistic backround of pop art movement? The serious American artists face difficult situations during post war period. America enters cold war with Soviet Russia. At that time, psycoanalysis offers new world insight of people but Marxism is lost favour and Stalin has a lot of crimes. Because of these conditions, new art movement begins which name is 'Abstract Expressionism'. The artists of abstract expressionism represent their insight on art pieces. However, they are not interested in social virtue or social condition of America. Since, American policy supports and uses force for drawing these kinds of paintings. This policy argues that abstract expressionism is the proof of the living 'Free World' in America. Also, it is related to seem bigger than Soviet bureaucracy. When we look at the 1950s, consumerism spreads among citizens of America. American policy encourages for people to express their individuality with buying goods. This process triggers for rise of the modern capitalism and further developments in cultural industry. Regarding this issue, in 1955, the economist Victor Lebow states " Our enourmously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego

John A Walker

Reflections on my own responses to pop art since the 1950s and those of various other art critics and theorists. A contribution to reception history.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Sally Markowitz

Erdem Selvin

In this paper, I propose to discuss the reasons of emergence of Pop Art, its influences upon other artists and reflections on today’s art, what the impacts of it on people are and its importance in today’s life. Where it comes from, what the forces are behind it, is there any stylistic change in history of Pop, or, any different examples of form, what the main subjects are and the meanings of their contents are the main questions in my mind while I was writing this paper. Before I state the strict definitions of Pop art, I want to give place to its critiques. In this way, I intend to explain what the Pop art is not.

Journal for Art Market Studies

Titia Hulst

The emergence of American Pop art as a major avant-garde movement had a significant impact on the market for contemporary art and, with it, the perception of America’s newly achieved cultural superiority. A detailed examination of sales records of avant-garde galleries in New York reveals Pop’s appeal to collectors (especially businessmen), despite significant critical disdain, and links the formal qualities and subjects of Pop art to widely-held assumptions about modes of viewing and social class.

Paco Barragán , Max Ryynanen , Alistair Brown

This is an Artpulse Magazine Special Number dedicated to the High Art versus Pop Culture debate for which I have acted as Guest Editor. It contains the result of an International Survey among 130 art and culture professionals like Nicolas Bourriaud, Charles Esche, James Elkins, et al that I carried out and special articles and interviews commissioned by Domenico Quaranta, Max Ryynänen, Michele Robecchi, Javier Panera, Alistair Brown, Stephen Knudsen, Mieke Bal, Jozef Kovalcik and Jamie Hamilton Faris.

Robert Slifkin

RELATED PAPERS

IOSR Journals

Mammalian Species

Christian Chimimba

Robert Shapiro

Yunita Pratiwi

yunita Pratiwi (C1C019001)

Jose M Lopez Sancho

Communications in Algebra

Mei-chu Chang

Sella Arzyta AS

Telemedicine and e-Health

Yuriko Araki

Thomas Benesch

Saiful Manan

2019 IEEE Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval (MIPR)

rodney vaughan

Pabrik Bio Septic Tank Cimarga Kabupaten Lebak

Clinical Research in Cardiology

Branislav Liska

Proceedings of the 43rdAnnual Seminar

Sergei Cherniakov

RSC Advances

Journal of Economic Entomology

Thomas Meade

Social Science Quarterly

Markie McBrayer

Psychology and Developing Societies

Purnima Awasthi Saxena

University of Oregon School of Law

Christopher Mark MacNeill

Journal of Molecular Structure

Eleonora Freire Espeleta

Nucleic Acids Research

MARY JOY MAY

Maja Struczyńska

Journal of Food and Nutrition Research

Veronica Mujica

Microwave and Optical Technology Letters

20-433 Sreeja reddy

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview

Introduction.

Pop art is an artistic movement that began in the 1950s and reached its peak in the sixties. It started in London and New York as a wave of rebellion against the dominant forms of art and was characterized by its widespread usage of images of popular culture and consumerism. The movement aspired to narrow the existing boundaries between the fine and commercial arts by utilizing vibrant block color schemes and bold, simple, visually descriptive, and figurative language.

Pop art was the earliest postmodernist movement, which conferred equal prominence to the medium and message, which amplified the power of television and film through which most of its renowned images obtained extensive public recognition. Some of the pop culture movement’s notable and most influential artists are Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, whose globally acclaimed artworks include Blam, Crack is Wack, and Marilyn Diptych. Although the pop art movement, which broke through the art community in the 1950s, began as a reaction against the status quo, its highly intellectual and expressive styles limited its appeal to mainstream artistry lovers.

Name of Art Movement, Relevant Dates, and Geographic Locations

The popular art movement, commonly known as pop art, was an artistic wave that emerged and grew in the postwar environment of the 1950s and lasted until the 1apse of the subsequent decade. It started in the United States and Britain as the public in the two countries began appreciating materialism, consumerism, and the prevailing optimism (Sichel 85). The refreshing introduction of identifiable imagery drawn from popular culture and media was the most defining feature of the movement. Artists started to celebrate commonplace objects and elevated experiences to the level of fine art.

Origins and Historical Overview of Pop Art Movement

Pop art is an artistic movement that arose in Britain and United States in the 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s. It was inspired by the commercial and popular culture in the western world and commenced as a revolt against the conventional and elitist forms of artistry (Shanes 9). Pop art was the first postmodernist wave characterized by imageries of popular culture and consumerism in a ‘decade which saw recovery from war and a growing sense of materialistic well-being’ (Shanes 9).

In Britain, the Independent Group, an informal club of artists, spotted the window of opportunity presented by the cultural struggles in England and sought to exploit the incidental openings. Emerging currents pushed some artists to start assimilating the realities of the moment into their artwork while progressively departing from the rigidity and norms of mainstream art. For instance, de Silva contends that despite the booming mass entertainment and consumerism, the prevailing art, Abstract Expressionism, denied its reality and retreated to its elitist and intellectual sphere (180). Pop art emerged in Britain and United States in the 1950s and reached its highest point in the 1960s.

Revolt Against Dominant Art

Similar to almost all significant art styles, pop art started as a rebellion against the status quo. At the time, the dominant artistic movement was Abstract Expressionism, a painterly non-figurative version of art criticized for its inability to connect with the general public or many artists. Hajali contends that this form of art valued freedom and personal expression, and increasingly became abstract and expressive, which effectively created an opportunity for more figurative and socially connective artistry (311). Additionally, pop art sought to obscure the divide between the fine and commercial arts by using vibrant block color schemes and sarcastic and satirical elements (Wicaksono and Juwariya 56).

In this regard, pop art was inspired by the growing dominance of mass culture and capitalist consumerism in postwar society (Harrison 6). Moreover, the popular movement artwork integrated bold, simple, visually descriptive, and highly figurative language to emphasize specific elements of contemporary culture. In this regard, the pop wave was a departure from the styles of art that were taught in schools and exhibited in museums since they did not represent the real world.

Coincidence with Post-War Consumerism

Pop artists defied conventional artistic standards and believed that art could borrow from any source. According to Ohrner, Abstract Expressionism ‘did not provide models for understanding the nature of local situations’ due to its highly intellectual and elitist form (12). Consequently, the pop art style was viewed as a remarkable return to the representational artistic era, which depicted the visual world using imageries drawn from commonplace and recognizable objects in mass media, production, and culture. Getlein notes that the pop art movement entailed the creation of visually meaningful artwork that ‘allows us to experience them as art (51).

For instance, Cork describes Roy Lichtenstein’s art as disruptive since it elevated the status of comics into an art form (41). In this regard, the utilization of the daily experiences and objects of art enhanced people’s connection to artistic works and evoked a desire to adopt the mass consumption lifestyle.

As the post-war world was characterized by industrialization, growing optimism of materialistic well-being and prosperity fueled a new lifestyle that promoted leisure and consumption. The emerging art viewed the visual language of advertising and famous brands as an inspiration for the creation of artwork that could not be found in museums and galleries. This was perfectly represented by people’s everyday lives and experiences. For instance, Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans comprised 32 canvasses of visually similar but different variations of the product, illustrated the mass-produced commodity now on walls as fine art. Therefore, pop art coincided with such other dominant forces as consumerism, which was figuratively displayed as the vision of good life.

Cultural and Societal Factors Influential to the Development of Pop Art Movement

Pop art’s rapid growth and development are partly attributable to its integration of the spirit of the time through the adoption of the prevailing cultural and societal factors. For instance, in the 1950s, societies embraced consumerism, and the conventional cultural patterns started facing rebellion, paving the way for a new artistic movement. This is illustrated by the opposition to Abstract Expressionism, a phenomenon which sought to make art representational of the real world. According to Trowell, the pop art wave cannot be disentangled from the cultural dynamics which prevailed in the United States and Britain at the time, including drawing inspiration from everyday experiences (331). In this regard, the new wave integrated imageries from popular culture, which was also a strategy to dimmish the distinction between the high and low culture in arts.

Visual and Thematic Overview

Pop art was characterized by its extensive usage of identifiable and recognizable imageries from icons and images of popular media and products. It also integrated vibrant, bold, and bright colors and applied such innovative techniques as printmaking processes, which enabled quick reproduction of artwork in large quantities. For instance, Roy Lichtenstein’s Blam combines such brilliant colors as red, yellow, and blue. The choice of colors was inspired by the pursuit of ‘popularity and popular interests, emphasizing novelty and uniqueness’ (Qian and Zheng 1). Pop art is also depicted by relying on satire and irony to make expressive statements about current events, challenge the status quo, and deride fads. The dominant themes include materialism, optimism, rebellion, affluence, leisure, and consumerism, which were widespread in postwar society.

Influential Artists in the Pop Culture Movement

Some of the most influential artists of the Pop Art movement include Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Roy Lichtenstein. Marilyn Diptych, an artistic impression of the movie star, is one of the most acclaimed and monumental works of Warhol and is evocative of the relationship between the actor’s life and death. Lichtenstein’s Blam was an artistic impression of war imagery depicting a pilot ejecting from an exploding plane. Keith Haring’s Crack is Wack is a fanciful activistic mural through which he expressed frustration with the government’s ineffectiveness in addressing drugs and addiction in New York City.

The pop art movement started in Britain and the United States in the 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s. It grew with postwar consumerism and represented a departure from the dominant Abstract Expressionism art style. The pop culture wave rapidly gained traction by introducing identifiable and recognizable imageries from commonplace objects and everyday experiences. It emerged as a rebellion against the prevailing artistic styles, which were deemed abstract, intellectual, and highly elitist. The movement was characterized by the extensive use of recognizable imagery, vibrant color schemes, and irony and satire, as seen through the works of such influential artists as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Keith Haring. The dominant themes of the artistic era include consumerism, leisure, affluence, materialism, optimism, and rebellion.

Works Cited

Cork, Richard. “Comic Appeal.” New Statesman, vol. 133, no. 4678, 2004, pp. 41−43.

de Silva, Nushelle. “The Long Front of Culture: The Independent Group and Exhibition Design.” Journal of Design History, vol. 34, no. 2, 2021, pp. 180−181.

Getlein, Mark. Living with Art. 11th. Ed., McGraw Hill, 2015.

Hajali, Sahar. “Abstract Expressionism: A Case Study on Jackson Pollock’s Works.” Journal of History Culture and Art Research, vol. 5, no. 4, 2017, pp. 311−320.

Harrison, Sylvia. Pop Art and the Origins of Post Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ohrner, Annika. Art in Transfer in the Era of Pop: Curatorial Practices and Transnational Strategies. Sodertorn University, 2017.

Qian, Ji., and Jiayu Zheng. “The Color Application of the Representative Pop Art in Modern Design – Illustrated by the Case of MAOS Design.” MATEC Web of Conferences, vol. 176, 2018, pp. 1−5.

Shanes, Eric. The Pop Art Tradition. Parkstone Press, 2006.

Sichel, Jennifer. “What is Pop Art?’ A Revised Transcript of Gene Swenson’s 1963 Interview with Andy Warhol.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 2018, pp. 85−100.

Trowell, Ian. “Collision, Collusion, and Coincidence: Pop Art’s Fairground Parallel.” Visual Culture in Britain, vol. 17, no. 3, 2016, pp. 329−350.

Wicaksono, Singgih Prio and Anik Juwariyah. “The Visual Language of Consumerism in Contemporary Artworks.” Journal of Urban Society’s Arts, vol. 6, no. 1, 2019, pp. 56−62.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2022, December 5). Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview. https://studycorgi.com/pop-art-movement-origins-history-cultural-and-thematic-overview/

"Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview." StudyCorgi , 5 Dec. 2022, studycorgi.com/pop-art-movement-origins-history-cultural-and-thematic-overview/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) 'Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview'. 5 December.

1. StudyCorgi . "Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview." December 5, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/pop-art-movement-origins-history-cultural-and-thematic-overview/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview." December 5, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/pop-art-movement-origins-history-cultural-and-thematic-overview/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview." December 5, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/pop-art-movement-origins-history-cultural-and-thematic-overview/.

This paper, “Pop Art Movement: Origins, History, Cultural, and Thematic Overview”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: December 5, 2022 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

Home Essay Examples Art Pop Art

Contemporary Art And Pop Art: Differences And Interconnectedness

• Category Art
• Subcategory Art Movement
• Topic Contemporary Art , Pop Art

Pop Art was a new art movement of the late 1950s and 1960s in England and US which followed Abstract Expressionism. This era used mass-produced items and images which had a powerful impact on modern life. The specific popular commodities were used to show that it is possible to create high art from objects that surround people in everyday life. Artists wanted to blur the limits between high and low culture to eliminate the hierarchy because art can be created from everything (The Art Story, n.d.). Moreover, they wanted to shift the understanding of art back to reality after Abstract Expressionism who depicted their feelings rather than true objects (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019).

Since this movement started in the period after World War II and blossom of capitalism, artists were influenced by this and in their works, they were trying to join the notion of the goods to the notion of art. By this, they acknowledged art as a commodity. Pop artists believed that everything is interconnected ranging from what we feel to what we see and tried to show those connections in their works (The Art Story, n.d.).

Our writers can write you a new plagiarism-free essay on any topic

Eduardo Paolozzi was one of the earliest representatives of Pop Art who was influenced with his personal experience growing up with love to technology and airplanes as well as by working in ice-cream and confectionery shops where he developed love to colourful designs. His works were impacted by Dada and Surrealism and particularly Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp (Gompertz, 2013).

I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything is a collage of cut-out images from different magazines with pictures, logos and phrases. This work is rough and not the most beautiful one, but it provides an important message to people. The military postcard is used to associate political life with a commercial one since it is put onto the magazines. Moreover, the slice of a pie means female genitalia and the gun is pointed at the word “pop” as well as a woman. The comic-type of the font and the use of popular magazines shows the appeal to mass culture while at the same time it is supposed to be destroyed by those who do not support it. This was one of the first times when the word “pop” was which led to naming the whole movement as Pop Art. The distinctiveness from other movements lays in the idea of showing what is consumerism which constitutes new values in the modern world. A great example in this collage is the Coca-Cola bottle which means that people value mass-market. He believed that low art that he showed in his collage has the same value as high art of previous times and desired to vanish the difference between them (Gompertz, 2013).

Richard Hamilton was a representative of Pop Art and showed his own ideas in his work Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? He made a collage from lifestyle magazines to show how he sees modern homes. There is a bodybuilder representing a husband, a naked woman, a wife, sitting at the couch, TV, a vacuum, luxurious carpet, posters of the movies etc. He had also placed the word “pop” into his artwork to show what it represents. The artist compared his characters with Adam and Eve but believed that we are not supposed to be afraid of the temptation, indeed follow it. Moreover, he said that Pop Art is a separate movement with its political message. Popular art is designed to make the audience enjoy the new style of life with changing technologies, leisure and entertainment (Gompertz, 2013).

Another way of looking at Pop Art was introduced by two American artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg who were also called Neo-Dadaists. They worked together and believed that Abstract Expressionists had lost connection with reality showing only their emotions. Artists wanted to show a real modern life that was surrounding them (Gompertz, 2013).

In one of John’s works Flag, he used a difficult technique and mix of materials and paints to draw the American flag. He had also painted the whole canvas leaving no space for the frame and questioning whether it is a real flag or piece of art. By this, he adds a new feature to Pop Art when the art becomes a commodity and vice versa. Moreover, the motifs for his works are everyday stuff which he shows from a new perspective. The artist aims at making people pay attention to what surrounds them (Gompertz, 2013).

Rauschenberg’s approach to Pop Art was a little bit different as he thought that art was made for consumerists. He used mass-produced things in order to merge life and art. In his sculpture Monogram he combined a stuffed goat with a tire, shirtsleeve, a heel, a tennis ball which are argued to hold symbols from his past. Moreover, he borrowed some elements from Abstract Expressionism by painting the goats face with some brushstrokes. It reflects the idea of hiding the truth because we are not shown a real image. In another artwork White Paintings, he showed that even though the painting is a simple canvas covered in white paint, everything can happen to it and it would be “activated by incident and chance” (Gompertz, 2013). This gave a push to new art movements such as Minimalism in art, silence compositions etc.

Andy Warhol is probably one of the most known representatives of Pop Art who was influenced by John and Rauschenberg. He was working in advertising as a commercial artist but wanted to create something that would support the message of Pop Art. During a long time, he was trying to come up with his own style and after trials and errors formulated what art is. Warhol realized that the popular things of consumerism can be interpreted in two ways: either as a cliché or as classicism. He has drawn Campbell’s Soup Cans at thirty-two canvases each showing a different taste of soup. This art eliminates any personal reflections pointing out at art being original and with no changes. Even though from the distance the cans look the same, the technique and brushwork differ from each other saying that even without personal motifs there is an artist behind the canvas. Also, it is a parody of advertising since people are exposed to the same product all the time. He wanted the audience to understand what this experience of seeing the same thing is doing to us and how we should question the consumerism. Warhol was interested in why the brands become so familiar that they turn into a desire as well as grab people’s attention more than important issues (Gompertz, 2013).

Pop Art has some features that contradict Modernism and that is why cannot be considered a part of it. Firstly, Pop Art uses the objects of everyday life and shows reality rather than feelings. The artists desired to eliminate themselves from the art piece and do not show how they feel about, indeed show that mass-produced items can be appreciated as well. In Modernism, artists were creating to express themselves and projecting their own attitude toward the subject matter. The features and methods of every Modernism movements were new and unique, so the author was able to escape previous art forms. The main source for Pop Art is consumerism and the main goal was to shift people’s attitude towards mass production. They aimed at either making people appreciate the objects and see their beauty or think about how blindly they are spending money on commodities that are highly advertised. Moreover, pop artists wanted to merge high and low culture and make it possible for everyone to enjoy art, not only high class. Art for them was a commodity. On the other hand, Modernism set its goal as depicting the feelings on a particular topic on any medium of art. Each movement was different but all of them wanted to challenge false logic and sequence in which they believed. The artists rejected previous traditions while Pop Art is often based on past movements. Last but not least, Pop Art is a commercial art and wants to highlight the importance of commercialism in a good and bad way. When Modernism tried to stand against mass culture since they thought it was a wrong ideal.

Contemporary Art

After Postmodernism from the 1980s until now, there has been a new wave of art pieces created, yet there is no one name for it. Gompertz believes that there is “a common denominator that unites much of the work that has been produced by the avant-garde of late”. Moreover, he thinks there are some trends for this period.

Firstly, one of the trends is called “Experiential” art and was created since the monumental sculptures have spread out in public space in recent years. They grabbed people’s attention and are shown in museums which lost their primary meaning. Nowadays, the art displayed in the museums is seen as a way of entertainment but still has its political meaning. Moreover, these artworks show that the difference between high culture of modern art and mainstream entertainment has blurred. For example, Carsten Holler created spiralling slides and revolving beds in one of the museums to help the audience have some interactions with each other. He argues that in the modern world of technology, humans forgot about socializing. This approach to art was called “relational aesthetics”. The question that Gompertz asks is whether the audience understands this shift and message or only visits it to have fun in the museum.

Secondly, art was deeply influenced by sex and violence, deformation of bodies and horror. The works of Jeff Koons included explicit sexual acts when Chapman Brothers were showing wounded bodies and blood.

Gompertz identifies a new era between 1988 and 2008 which is associated with artist Damien Hirst. In 1988 he organized an exhibition in one of the warehouses in London called Freeze. He included works of sixteen fellow students and himself with Spot Paintings. These were rows of coloured circles on a white background meaning “to pin down the joy of colour” (Gompertz, 2013). All of the artists gave a push to the contemporary art movement. A provocative and risky move was made by Damien Hirst in 2008 when he decided to sell his paintings on his own on the auction omitting the dealers as it was accepted. During this time, the financial crisis was taking place in the US and despite this, collectors were spending an enormous amount of money on Hirst’s lots. The art world did not pay attention to the collapse and the auction brought a fortune to the artist. This is thought to bring an end of capitalism and modern art while starting the era of Entrepreneurialism.

The artists were enthusiastic, wanted to “take control over their destinies” and show themselves in the artworks while self-promoting. The idea of being in the center of own life and being defined by himself or herself was reflected in art. Contemporary art is not about aesthetics or money, but about attitude namely enterprising one. They used people from advertising to help them show and sell their works. Contemporary artists take the ideas of the past and remake them in their own way. Hirst has mentioned that there is no shame in stealing other people’s ideas.

Hirst himself created a lot of outstanding sculptures one of which is For the Love of God. This is a cast of a human skull covered in diamonds and with a set of human teeth. When he presented it, he put the sculpture in a dark room on a black background, so the audience would be able to admire the diamonds. The message of this artwork is that wealth and money have taken over our lives and is what kills people.

Another representative of this era is Sarah Lucas who has been showing her attitude towards the representation of women and sex in society. In her sculpture Au Naturel, she showed a woman, who was portrayed by two melons for breasts and a bucket for vagina, and a man, who was portrayed by the cucumber and two oranges from each side. The couple was laying at the old mattress that has been bent double. Her message was that men could do everything that wanted while women were restricted from that. Yet, the new wave of feminism and girl power was launched, and artists were depicting this in their works. Because of the specific motifs that were rather provocative and up-to-date, her works are easily recognized, and she made herself a name.

An example of the symbiosis of an artist and a dealer who worked together to gain fame for both is Tracey Emin and Jay Jopling. Emin was an unknown artist who was laughing-off museum exhibitions and magnificence of a painter in the past. Jopling has made an exhibition of Emin’s autobiographical work and called it Tracey Emin: My Major Retrospective 1963-1993. This set of works showed her attitude towards art and herself as the major subject of it. For example, Everyone I have Ever Slept With is a tent where all names of the artist’s past lovers were put. She has put her identity as a focus of the sculpture and has also connected to the public through the essence of art. The dealer saw talent and showed it to everyone. The artist used the help of a dealer to become famous. This is a clear example of Entrepreneurialism.

Takashi Murakami made a big influence on contemporary art by making his art a commodity. He was a real artist-entrepreneur who used commercial opportunities to sell his works. Murakami used anime and manga as an inspiration for his sculptures and paintings. Yet, they were of sexual nature. In this way, he was pointing out on the popularity of anime among young people but he believed that men played with them in the imagination. Nevertheless, Murakami’s works were sold for a good portion of money. For example, My Lonesome Cowboy, a statue of a masturbating anime character who was a sexed-up satire on Andy Warhol’s movie, was sold for $13.5 million. Furthermore, he aimed at bringing back the appreciation of Japanese culture which was now set aside in the world if compared to past eras. This shows that contemporary art does not only reveals past in a new manner but also treats it as a way of making money.

The last thing to be mentioned about contemporary art is the street and unknown artists. With the spread of technologies and the Internet, everyone can become an artist and show his disrespect to the dominant culture in a unique way. For example, Banksy is an unknown artist who creates satirical paintings and posters. He does not reveal his name since all of his works are placed illegally on the streets. However, he reproduced his works with the help of stencil pieces even over existing masterpieces in the museums which made him even more popular. Thus, anonymity is a key concept of a new are with political messages.

In my opinion, contemporary art, or as Gompertz defines “art now”, is closer in its values to Pop Art rather than Modernism. I would even suggest that contemporary art contradicts Modernism in various ways. Firstly, the art that was produced within the last 20 years does not have one specific idea of what and how it is supposed to be shown. The techniques and messages are diverse because they are influenced by technology, diversity, feminism movements, consumerism etc. Pop Art had different approaches to it as well as the first artists were showing popular commodities in a good light, then next representatives talked about how mass-production lost the value and is not seen as art while others used it to question our blind consumerism.

Secondly, Pop Art used mass-produced commodities as a driving object of art and Andy Warhol once said that good business is the best art. They were creating art from what businessmen are making money. Contemporary artists use this idea but look at it in a little bit different way. Because this era is defined to be Entrepreneurism, artists think that every art can be a good business. I do not think that this is what drives them to create but they realize that there is nothing wrong in making money from good art. Yet, you need alliances to create your name and be recognizable. I feel that this is related to Pop Art in a way that they were closely related to advertising. Moreover, a lot of the artists from both movements have the advertising background.

Thirdly, contemporary art is not afraid of taking past ideas and creating their original works. They do not want to come up with new methods but to take the best from the past as well as reject themselves in the artworks but self-promote. The roots of Pop Art are lying in Dada and photomontages. They do not “steel past ideas” as contemporary artists do, but do not reject history. Furthermore, Pop Art eliminated personal view of the object. They were trying to question people’s opinion on a particular topic by showing the commodity from a different perspective.

Last but not least, art now combines a lot of objects that are thought to be oddly unpaired. In this way, they want to challenge the audience understanding of real life and what surrounds us. Why we perceive the world around us in this way is often based on common ideas, so this is to be changed. Meanwhile, Pop Art was often represented in a medium of collages where different footages were combined. Then this work has a specific meaning which is connected to consumerism. It has to challenge people’s attitude towards the world we leave in and how we under- or overestimate commodities.

And the most important idea that is common for Pop and contemporary art is that both movements wanted art to become available for everyone. Pop artists started this notion of art becoming a commodity and desired to eliminate the difference between high and low culture. Contemporary artists support this idea and come up with different means of expressing their ideas such as street art which is available to everyone. They even changed the experience of museums and made it possible for the general audience to admire and appreciate art.

We have 98 writers available online to start working on your essay just NOW!

Related Topics

Related essays.

By clicking "Send essay" you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

By clicking "Receive essay" you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

We can edit this one and make it plagiarism-free in no time

We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Home / Essay Samples / Art / Art Movements / Pop Art

Pop Art Essay Examples

The influence of pop art on contemporary art practise: analysis of andy warhol and roy lichtenstein.

Pop Art was an influential movement in the 20th century. There was an idea within the modern movement, that one had to respond to one’s own time. Pop Art was a reaction to the post-war period of mass production and advertisement imagery. The movement of...

Music Today: Noise Versus Art

With the evolution of technology and the advent of digital platforms, the music landscape has undergone significant transformations. As a result, there has been an ongoing debate about the quality and artistic value of modern music. Some critics argue that music today is nothing but...

Music Today is All Noise

In recent times, the landscape of music has undergone a significant transformation. The digital age has brought about unprecedented access to music, allowing artists to reach global audiences with ease. However, this surge in availability has sparked a debate about the quality and essence of...

Investigation of the Relationship Between Pop Art and Postmodern Architecture

Art movements and architecture have throughout history always been ingrained with the time in which they existed, influenced by it and/or challenging the norms of their society. They affect the world around them as much as they are a mirror of it. Perhaps no art...

The Role of Andy Warhol in Shaping What Pop Art Truly is

Pop art was one of the most important art movements in history. The art movement was believed to project optimism during the post-war periods. It was a movement that connected fine art with masses such as mass-production, mass-media, and mass-culture and included imagery that society...

The Use of Appropriation in Andy Warhol's Artwork the Last Supper

Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid-to late-20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism that marked a departure from modernism. Appropriation is a Postmodern characteristic, and is fundamentally the act of taking something from somewhere else and placing it into...

Andy Warhol's Art of Reproduction

Pop Art is one of the most influential arts of the 20th century. It appeared in the mid-1950s. After World War II, with the rapid development of the American economy, new merchandises and shopping ways emerged. At the same time, new kind of media were...

New York’s Underground Art: the Velvets

“New York has never been a utopian place. It’s grittier, more crowded, less pleasant. People who come here don’t come to be comfortable. They come to be excited.” -Robert Christgau. It was the early 1960s when New York’s underground art scene sprouted from the ground....

Trying to find an excellent essay sample but no results?

Don’t waste your time and get a professional writer to help!

• Modernism Essays
• Impressionism Essays
• Symbolism Essays
• Selfie Essays
• Creativity Essays
• Photography Essays
• Art History Essays
• Frida Kahlo Essays

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->