Pop Art is a genre of art that challenges people’s ways of seeing and understanding the world around them. Pop Art emerged in the 1950s and challenged assumptions about consumerism, which had been widely accepted by many artists at the time. Pop Art was often characterized by its use of bright colors and flat representations of objects, such as images copied from popular advertising and cultural icons. Pop Art aimed to expose the artificiality of consumer culture by making it look ridiculous. Pop Art was also characterized by its content, which often dealt with serious social and political issues in a playful and lighthearted way
One example of Pop Art is Roy Lichtenstein’s painting “Whaam! ” (1963). The work features two large images of soldiers who are firing on one another through Pop Art speech bubbles, which contain black lettering that reads “I pressed the fire control… and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky. ” This represents how Cold War propaganda depicted war as an exciting action film instead of a horrible reality. Pop Art challenged consumers’ view of war as being glamorous or fun because it used bright colors and the Pop Art speech bubble to show how absurd Cold War propaganda was.
Pop Art also helped to expose the way people were being manipulated by the media by transforming images from popular advertisements into works of high art, which challenged viewers’ understanding of what should be considered “art” versus “entertainment. ” Another example Pop Art is Andy Warhol’s painting “Campbell’s Soup I” (1962). The work features thirty-two soup can labels arranged according to their colors in a grid. This playful representation of something that has become so familiar challenges consumers’ assumptions about what they think they know about Campbell’s Soup cans.
Warhol transforms these objects, which are associated with comfort and warmth, into Pop Art images whose bright colors and flatness make them look ridiculous. Pop Art allows Warhol to transform something so ordinary and recognizable into something that looks new and different, which is a comment on consumerism itself. The Pop Art movement challenged previous beliefs about what art should be and who should create it. Pop Artists believed that their work could reach the general public by using images from popular culture instead of limiting themselves to more traditional methods or subjects for fine art.
Pop Art was often playful and humorous in order to draw attention to political and social issues that were relevant during its time period. Pop Art has influenced generations of artists because it provides an example of how anyone can produce high-quality art if they use familiar objects as materials instead of only depicting the world as it is. Pop Art still influences artists today by showing how ordinary or trivial objects can be used to tell complicated stories about consumerism and society.
Pop art was not just about producing bright colours and simplistic images, it was about challenging the beliefs held by the American public. Pop art presented an image of consumerism to challenge the belief that everyone in America had equal opportunity for success through hard work. Pop art set out to bring down the posh elite high society world that many were living in at this time. Pop art created a sense of identity crisis in many people, they questioned what it really meant to be an American, something I believe is still very much relevant today both here in Europe and back across the Atlantic.
Lichtenstein’s use of industrial imagery challenged ideas about how artists were educated at this time, he didn’t go to college or have any other formal education but rather he picked up his knowledge through observation and experience. Pop art questioned the way in which Americans defined culture, with Pop Art being produced by people outside of the accepted circles it wasn’t seen as high calibre work.
Pop art challenged the elitist nature of modern arts by bringing down high society to a more accessible level. Pop art came about at a time when abstract expressionism was struggling following death of its figureheads Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, with pop artists portraying an aspect of American lifestyle through images including everyday things like soup cans or hamburgers that many were familiar with in their daily lives.
Lichtenstein’s paintings are bright in colour not only because he wanted them to be aesthetically pleasing but also because they represent the Pop Art movement as a whole, Pop art is bright and fun. Pop artists used media images from American commercialism to create work to challenge consumer society, Lichtenstein’s paintings were mainly of characters that he had found in comic books or advertisements which were printed on a flat surface.
Lichtenstein took everyday objects and transformed them into something else by removing them from their original context, this was similar to what Warhol was doing with his screenprints of celebrities but differed because each artwork was signed by Roy Lichtenstein whereas Warhol never put his name to any of his work. Warhol produced works like “Marilyn Diptych” (1962) consisting of two different silkscreens based on an image taken from a publicity still of Marilyn Monroe in the film “Niagara” (1953) which he had printed onto sixty-three canvases to make one work.
Pop art is about challenging our view of culture and identity, Pop artists wanted us to question what we believed was real by questioning these images we had become accustomed with; Pop Art created a sense of unease through its bright colours and imagery. Pop art helped America challenge its belief that hard work would lead you to success and challenged consumerism by representing commercial products as high art which made it accessible for everyone, Pop Art changed the definition of an artist.
