Among many other art movements, a new genre of art named pop art emerged in the United States and Great Britain during the mid-1950s. It is still remembered by art critics as one of the most prominent post-modernist art movements after Surrealism, and later Cubism. This is still in existence and has not been obscure, but the techniques have been reformed to a great extent. The movement has the agenda of propagating art that is relevant to the core, commercial in nature, and popular in form. Some critics argue that the pop art movement, through its dejection towards traditional art forms, managed to take art from the shell of the intellectuals and give it to common people. While some to the extent claim that “it is a populist view of art in the consumerist world, and in fact, it is not art at all.”
The Very First Step: Getting the Word ‘Pop’
In 1947, an Italian-born American artist named Eduardo Paolozzi, created an artwork named “I Was A Rich Man’s Plaything’, made just by using cuttings from American magazines and newspapers. It had the word “Pop!” written in red in it. This is from where the movement gained its name.
The Argument of the Pop Artists to Uphold the Movement
American and British artists in the 1950s believed that the true picture of society cannot be portrait by the means of traditional forms of art. They argued that literature and paintings taught in colleges and schools has lost their relevance and students study them only for art’s sake. For this reason, they began to propagate the contemporary culture which could be pertinent to the masses. As we go further, we will learn about the impact of the movement.
The Prominent Characteristics of Pop Art
When we talk about the main characteristics of pop art, three points come to mind quickly. Let us dive right in.
- Extracting Ideas and Images from Mass Media – When we learn about the motive of pop art culture, we learn the ‘now’. That is, it immensely focuses on the new things that are happening in the contemporary world. That is why images and cuttings from mass media magazines and newspapers played a huge role in this movement. For example, we remember Andy Warhol’s work where she used magazine cuttings of American celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.
- Enhancing the Ordinary – Earlier, art was something only for great minds. Even to this date, it is true to some extent. Pop artists still do not get as much recognition as traditional artists get in the literary world. But the great thing about pop artists was that they taught the world how to create fine artworks, literally from rags. A used Coca-Cola bottle can also be a subject of a painting for a pop artist.
- Repetitive Subjects – Pop artists tend to repeat or reproduce the same subject of their art in multiple forms. The serial series of this form of repetitive art was later considered as the celebration of mass production and unbound marketing by the critics. All the famous pop artists of that era and even later rejoiced this technique of repetitive the same idea but in different forms. They thought that whatever attracts someone is linked to their understanding of art to a certain point.
Brief Notes on the Greatest Pop Artists You Should Know
Now, it is time for us to introduce you to some of the gems of the pop art movements.
Andy Warhol
When the word ‘pop art’ comes to our mind, we automatically think of Andy Warhol, because of his great prominence both in the ideas of the genre and its new-age execution. He is remembered for his euphoric artist persona and his prolific artworks. There are so many great works that we can discuss but to mention his most famous one, that is his image series of celebrities, especially Marilyn Monroe. He was the one who made the artistic pictures of Marilyn Monroe to reach almost every household of America.
Roy Lichtenstein
Here is another great pop artist. His paintings were deeply inspired by comic and cartoon books. He introduced a completely new type of drawing with Ben-day dotes. One of his notable works is ‘Girl With a Ball.’
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist acted as a great political propagandist maintaining an easy-to-understand technique in his paintings. He used to paint many cultural and political figures with the ‘pop’ tinge. By saying that he was very political as an artist, we could remember his very famous painting named President-Elect, where we can see J.F. Kennedy in a campaign.
Claes Oldenburg
We talked a lot about painters in the pop-art movement. Do you know the one who held the button of pop culture sculptors during this period? Here, where we remember Claes Oldenberg’s name. He was a stalwart sculptor during the pop art movement. His sculptors were nowhere close to the traditional ones in any shape or form. By rejecting old ideas, he used to make huge sculptures of lipsticks, shuttlecocks, clothespins, slices of cake, etc. By the examples, you know that he bought our daily used objects in the art form of sculptures, a pioneer in this.
Ed Ruscha
Typography paintings also became very relevant in this period. Without using any images, only letters were used to make meaningful paintings. Ed Ruscha is considered to be the innovator of this idea of paintings. Interesting materials like blood, red wine, gunpowder, juice, etc were used for making these paintings. One of his famous works was the “Fruit Metrecal Hollywood”.
Conclusion
This was the general idea of the pop art movement. Pop artists have created a form or genre of art that is still largely popular in the 21st century. It is the art form of ultimate relevance which goes by the saying “Life is art. Art is life.” As digital painting is taking over art in this era, new techniques are getting introduced in pop art at the same time.
