Pop art
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House I, created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1996, is designed to be an optical illusion. The house is inverted; the point that seems to be the nearest corner is actually the farthest from the viewer. |
Pop art was a visual
artistic movement that emerged in the late 1950s in
England and the
United States. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from
mass culture, such as
advertising and
comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of
abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like
pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or
kitschy elements of any given culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so. However, much pop art is considered very
academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult to comprehend.
The term was coined in 1954 by John McHale. A "pop" movement was widely recognized by the mid-
1960s. In the meantime, the movement was sometimes called
Neo-Dada, a name which reveals some of the thinking behind this type of art, and the strong influence of dada pioneer
Marcel Duchamp on such seminal pop figures as
Hamilton,
Jasper Johns, and
Andy Warhol. Richard Hamilton's definition of Pop Art - "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressed its everyday, commonplace values.
The
Independent Group who met at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts from
1952 included key figures in the development of Pop art, John McHale,
Richard Hamilton and
Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi had begun to make collages using imagery from American magazines in
1947 but stated that this was more influenced by his interest in
Surrealism than popular culture. Hamilton had begun to study the work and ideas of
Marcel Duchamp and developed a series of exhibition projects that blurred the boundary between art and advertising. Lectures at the Independent Group by
Reyner Banham included American product and magazine design and
Futurism while there were discussions of
science fiction and
cybernetics.
Alloway also lectured on his theory of a continuum between the 'high art' accepted by cultural institutions and the 'low art' of pop culture.
In
1956, members of the Independent Group participated in the exhibition
This is Tomorrow at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery for which John McHale designed and provided the Pop art visual material and the Hamiltons did the mechanical cut out and paste up of the collage
Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?. The work's content provides a manifesto for the preoccupations of early Pop art in Britain as well, as the first appearance of the word Pop in this context.
Following
This is Tomorrow Hamilton continued to develop the Pop art idiom exhibiting paintings and collages featuring American cars, consumer goods and Pin-Ups as part of an anthropological study that introduced the element of
fetishism that became a major feature of Pop art. Hamilton had also become a lecturer at the
Royal College of Art where he met
David Hockney and other younger artists who would develop Pop art in Britain. Hockney with
Peter Blake and
R. B. Kitaj exhibited together in 1961 announcing the arrival of British Pop art. The only British woman on the pop art scene was Pauline Boty, also an RCA graduate, whose significance has only later been recognised. Boty appeared with Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips in
Pop goes the easel, a film by Ken Russell for the BBC's
Monitor series in 1962.
In Spain, the study of Pop art is associated with the "new figurative," which arose from the roots of the crisis of
informalism.
Eduardo Arroyo could be said to fit within the Pop art trend, on account of his interest in the environment, his critique of our media culture which incorporates icons of both mass media communication and the history of painting, and his scorn for nearly all established artistic styles. However, the Spaniard who could be considered the most authentically "Pop" artist is
Alfredo Alcaín, because of the use he makes of popular images and empty spaces in his compositions.
Also in the category of Spanish Pop art is the "Chronicle Team" (el Equipo Crónica), which existed in
Valencia between 1964-1981, formed by artists
Manolo Valdés and
Rafael Solbes. Their movement can be characterized as Pop because of its use of comics and publicity images and its simplification of images and photographic compositions.
The most famous Spanish Pop artist of recent years is
Antonio de Felipe.
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From the video The world after 800,000,000 years, by Aya Takano in 2004. |
Pop art in Japan is unique and identifiable as Japanese because of the regular subjects and styles. Many Japanese pop artists take inspiration largely from
Anime, and sometimes
Ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art. The most well known pop artist currently in Japan is
Takashi Murakami, whose group of artists,
Kaikai Kiki is world renowned for their own mass produced but highly abstract and unique
Superflat art movement, a surrealist, post modern movement whose inspiration comes mainly from
Anime and Japanese street culture, and is mostly aimed at youth in Japan, and has made large cultural impact. Some artists in Japan, like
Yoshitomo Nara are famous for their
Graffiti inspired art, and some, such as
Takashi Murakami, are famous for mass produced plastic or polymer figurines. Many pop artists in Japan use surreal or obscene, shocking images in their art, which is clearly taken from Japanese
Hentai. This element of the art catches the eye of viewers young and old, and is extremely thought provoking, but not taken as offensive in Japan. A common metaphor used in Japanese Pop Art is the innocence and vulnerability of children and youth. Artists like
Aya Takano and
Yoshitomo Nara use children as a subject in almost all of their art. While Yoshitomo Nara creates scenes of anger or rebellion through children, Aya Takano communicates the innocence of children by portraying nude girls.
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Christian Ludwig Attersee*
Sir Peter Blake*
Derek Boshier*
Patrick Caulfield*
Dimitrios*
Jim Dine*
Marisol Escobar*
Alfred Gockel*
Red Grooms*
Philip Guston*
Keith Haring*
Richard Hamilton*
Robert Indiana*
Jasper Johns*
Allen Jones*
Yayoi Kusama*
Roy Lichtenstein*
Peter Max*
Julian Opie*
Claes Oldenburg*
Eduardo Paolozzi*
Sigmar Polke*
Hariton Pushwagner*
Mel Ramos*
Robert Rauschenberg*
James Rosenquist*
Ed Ruscha *
Wayne Thiebaud *
Andy Warhol*
Tom Wesselmann*
Takashi Murakami*
Aya Takano*
Op art*
lowbrow (art movement)*[
1] Interview with John McHale jr by Gary Comenas
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Pop Art on Web Museum Paris site*
Index of Pop Artists*
Neo-dada page at the Guggenheim collection website
