Pop Art refers to an art movement that was initiated in the mid 50s in Britain as well as the late 50s in the US ( Whiting, 1997) . It showcased a challenge to the norms of fine art through inclusion of imagery from renowned mass and popular cultures, for example, books, comic, advertising, and ordinary cultural objects. The main objective of pop art was to apply images of renowned culture in art, focusing on the kitschy or banal elements of all cultures, often by the use of irony ( Whiting, 1997) . Furthermore, it is connected with the artist’s use of mechanical rendering or production techniques. Materials are sometimes visually detached from their known settings, isolated, or joined with unrelated element and/or material.
There are meaningful messages relayed by pop art. For example, the origins of Britain’s pop art employed parody and irony, and were more scholarly in nature. Britain emphasized the paradoxical and dynamic imagery of American pop tradition as manipulative and powerful symbolic devices that were impacting entire life patterns, while simultaneously enhancing societal improvement ( Whiting, 1997) . Britain’s early pop art defined a matter of concepts driven by the American pop culture. Pop art can also be described as a repudiation and extension of Dadaism. While Dadaism and Pop Art explored some of the similar subjects, the latter replaced the anarchic, satirical, and destructive impulses of the movement expressed through Dadaism.
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Through the creation of sculptures and paintings of mass media stars and mass culture objects, pop art movement has aimed to expel the boundaries between low culture and high art. The idea that there is no hierarchy of tradition and that art can borrow from any source marks one of the most significant influences of pop art ( Whiting, 1997) . Arguably, abstract expression artists sought trauma emanating from the soul, while artists of the pop art movement sought for traces of similar trauma in the arbitrated world of cartoons, advertising, and popular images as a whole. However, it would be more accurate to contend that pop artists were the first lot to acknowledge that there is the absence of unarbitrated access to anything – the construction environment, the natural world, and the soul. The artists perceive everything as interconnected, thus, they seek to make such associations literal through their work.
Although pop art has encompassed a broad range of works with varying postures and attitudes, much of it is kind of emotionally detached. Compared to the hot rendition of the gestural expressionism that preceded it, pop is basically serenely ambivalent. As a result, the subject of debate has been on whether this form of ambivalence is an acceptance of the world or a surprising withdrawal for the popular culture ( Whiting, 1997) . Pop art has seemingly accepted the form of post-WWI media and manufacturing development. Certain critics have quoted the art’s style of imagery as a sure endorsement of capitalism as well as the merchandise it circulated. On the other hand, other critics identified an element of the critique in its elevation of the daily routines to high-end art through connecting the item status of the merchandise represented with the status of the art object. This has helped to emphasize the place of art as a commodity.
Several of the pop artists started their vocations in commercial art. For example, James Rosenquist began his profession as a billboard painter; Ed Ruscha was a graphic designer, and Andy Warhol was a graphic designer and magazine illustrator. The background of these artists in the commercial art industry allowed them to acquire skills in the visual terminology of popular culture along with the techniques to flawlessly connect the realms of popular culture and high art.
One of the most noteworthy art in pop culture is Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962)”. The artist’s chain of Campbell’s Soup Cans was never intended to be celebrated for their compositional style or shape, like that of artists connected to abstract art. What made Campbell’s Soup Cans significant was the artist’s co-opting of globally acknowledged imagery. The artwork is presented below.
Source: MoMa Learning (nd)
Overall, Pop Art started with artists such as Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, all of whom borrowed from renowned imagery. With the popularity of abstract expressionism, reintroduction of identifiable imagery by pop was a major change for modernism. Pop art’s subject matter changed far from high-end themes of classic history, mythology, and morality. Artists involved in pop art celebrated the general or commonplace people and objects of everyday life. In this manner, they were seeking to raise popular culture to the level already reached by fine art. Maybe, owing to the application of commercial images, pop has emerged one of the most celebrated styles of contemporary art.
References
MoMa Learning. (nd). Campbell’s Soup Cans: Any Warhol (1962). Retrieved July 31, 2017, from https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962
Whiting, C. (1997). A taste for pop: pop art, gender, and consumer culture . Cambridge University Press.
