Pop Art - page 1
Keywords: The History of the Pop Art movement 1950s-60s
By s19 on 07/11/2006 18:13:55
Level: A Level (Year 12) / AS Level
Page Number: 1 of 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Pop Art is a 20th century art movement that utilized the imagery and techniques of consumerism and popular culture. It does not describe a style; it is rather a collective term for the artistic phenomena in which the sense of being in a particular era found its concrete expression. When we apply the word “Pop” to art, we tend to associate with it various superficial aspects of society. The increasing commercialization which permeates our social reality has reduced notions of value such as “the good, the true and the beautiful”. The rules of civilization mould our images of people and things, and of nature and technology. Pop is cheerful, ironic and critical, quick to respond to the slogans of the mass media, whose stories make history, and whose clichéd models determine our behaviour.
Pop is entirely a Western cultural phenomenon, born under capitalist, technological conditions in an industrial society. The centre of this was America, so as a result the cultures of the entire Western world have become Americanized. Pop Art analyses this and provides a visual response of our societies achievements in industry and fashion, but also of their absurdities; it traces the limits of a mass media society bursting out at the seams. Pop culture and lifestyle became closely intertwined in the sixties. The subject matter, forms and media of Pop Art reveal the essential characteristics of a cultural atmosphere and way of life we tend to associate with the sixties.
The subject matter of Pop Art is rooted in everyday life. Everyday life is endless resource for the Pop Art. It makes use of the objects, materials and technologies from mass culture to bring out the yields of the industrial society. It is often borrowed from advertising, photography, comic strips and other mass media sources. Pop Art stresses frontal presentation and flat unmixed colour bound by hard edges. They suggest the depersonalised processes of mass production. Pop Art investigates in areas of popular taste and kitsch previously considered outside the limits of fine art. It was rejecting the attributes associated with art as an expression of personality.
Pop Art developed primarily in the United States and Britain. In America, it was linked to the wealth and prosperity of the post World War II era, and artists of the movement responded to the nation's consumer society. Pop Art in Britain was less brash,
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