Pop Art

Intro

Making himself known in the United states, Pop art is an art movement that was just finding his voice in Great Britain, year 1950. It told a story about the post-country War cultural population making an emphases on critical thinking and irony.

The very first definition of Pop Art came to front in 1955, by a British curator named Lawrence Alloway, who gave an actual name to this concept that we today know as Pop Art. Becoming one of the first art movements to lessen the gap between commercial and fine arts, it is characterised by its consumerism heavy look a play on new media and industrial mass reproduction as well as its signature bold and vibrant colors. Many popular pop artisit took inspiration from, advertisement, magazines, television, movies and comics to produce some amazing creations. Attracted by the use of irony and humour, Pop Art can be seen as a celebration of the popular culture of that time but also a critique of it. for their humorous and ironic work.

Source : https://magazine.artland.com/art-movement-pop-art/

Contributors

There are many big contributors to this art period. Here are some of the most influencials of the time.
Andy Warhol
Richard Hamilton
Roy Lichtenstein
David Hockney
Campbell's Soup Cans
Painting of Campbell's Soup Cans
Portrait of Mick Jagger - vivid and garish colors

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is one of the greatest and most known artist of the 1960s art movement. Fresh from college with a Bachelor degre in Fine Arts, he decided to move to New York City in 1945 to start his new career as a commercial artist. Landing himself a job with the Glamour magazine, Warhol is known to be one of the leading artist of Pop Art and became a successful commercial artist in the 1960s.

He is most known for putting his own twist and style on his creations, coming up with a blotted line technique and rubber stamps of his own. He has also dabbled in many different art forms such as filmmaking, performing art and illustration. He constantly pushed the boundaries between fine art and the traditional beauty norms of that time.

"Once you 'got' pop, you could never see a sign the same way again. And once you thought pop, you could never see America the same way again." - Andy Warhol

One of his most known work is the Campbell's Soup Cans. In 1961, Warhol started to focus more on paintings that were big on mass-produced commercial goods. That was the start of the concept that we now know as "Pop Art". He made other famoust hits featuring Coca-cola bottles, vacucum cleaners and hamburgers. It create a shift in the art world and brought Pop Art as well as Andy Warhol himself onto an national scale for the first time. He also painted many celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger and Mao Tse-tung.
Warhol died on February 22, 1987, in New York City, but not without leaving his own unique mark in the art industry.

Source : https://www.biography.com/artists/andy-warhol

Drowning Girl
"Drowning girl"
Whaam!
"Whaam!"

Roy Lichtenstein

Art was first known as a hobby for Roy Lichtenstein, throughout his school years. Being a big jazz fan, he liked to draw portraits of some of his favorite jazz musicians playing their instruments. He took summer classes, in 1939, at the Art Students League of New York where he got the opportunity to be under the supervision of Reginald Marsh. He graduated from Ohio State University and obtained his Master of Fine Arts in 1949.

Lichtenstein first started his career in imitation. Beginning 1960s, he use to take images from comic books and publicities to produce his art and then started to combine everyday life objects into his creations. He often exagerated the dot patterned commonly seen when printing images. Lichtenstein created his own style define by what they called Ben-days dots, introducing a industrialized reproduction look to his creations.Highly influenced by famoust comic books and advertisment style, many considered his art to be "disruptive". Roy Lichtenstein describes this art movement throught the use of mockery and irony. While some of his work might be pushing the limits to some, they demonstrated parody in a cheeky and playful manner, creating a humorous side to his art.

“Although almost anything seemed to be fair subject matter for art,” he recalled, “commercial art and particularly cartooning were not considered to be among those possibilities.” - Roy Lichtenstein

Inspired by an art piece made by Tony Abruzzo, Lichtenstein recreated the "Drowning Girl" with oil paint. It is described as " a masterpiece of melodrama" for its acurate representation of a distress, teary-eye, woman. It showcases Lichtenstein signature of imitating mechanized reproduction. Another one of his most iconic creation is the paiting "Whaam!. It is an image that has been inspired by many different comic books. His primary source being a image from a war comic in 1962 ,he created an interesting connexion between the graphics and the narration. Having served in the army, his war-collection is one of the most successful one out there. The world of comic books just got turned on its head and was greatly impacted by the cultural aspect of Pop Art. There was a new focus put on the use of bold and playful colors as well as the integration of the onomatopoeias.

Sources : https://www.moma.org/artists/3542 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaam! , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_Girl