Pop Art Movement Research

Pop Art

Characteristics and key influences of the movement:

Pop art is typically designed for a mass audience and aimed towards the younger generation. It usually consists of bright. The common parts of pop art are that the pieces are that they are all of similar subject matter, all include common objects or popular imagery and culture. Pop Art ranges from comics, to sculptures, to paintings, to collages. For example, young artists felt as though the art that was taught and saw in museums didn’t have anything to do with their lives. I would describe Pop Art as witty, sexy and gimmicky.

 In 1957 pop artist Richard Hamilton listed the ‘characteristics of pop art’ in a letter:

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business

Pop art originated in Britain in the mid 1950’s and in the late 1950’s in America, it began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be. It allowed young artists to express themselves in ways other than how they’re taught and the work includes sources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books as the imagery. By using impersonal, mundane imagery, pop artists also wanted to move away from the emphasis on personal feelings and personal symbolism that characterised abstract expressionism. These artists were inspired by popular imagery and drew from previous movements, such as Abstract Expressionists. The most significant artists were, Andy Warhol – Pennsylvania, United States: Roy Lichtenstein – New York, United States: James Rosenquist – North Dakota, United States and Claes Oldenburg – Stockholm, Sweden.

Cultural contexts of the movement:

Pop Art was made in and around the 1950’s and flourished in the 1960s in America and Britain, drawing inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture. 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. In the United States, pop style was a return to representational art (art that depicted the visual world in a recognisable way) and the use of hard edges and distinct forms after the painterly looseness of abstract expressionism. In Britain, the movement was more academically approached. While employing irony and parody, it focused more on what American popular imagery represented, and its power in manipulating people’s lifestyles. In and around Britain and America at this time, people were recovering from the war, so the pieces of Pop Art were used to build up morale and bring joy to art that could relate to people.