Pop Art - page 5
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: 5 of 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
and sculpture as well as providing inspiration for a generation of artists seeking alternatives to traditional artistic media. In Estate (1963) Robert Rauschenberg combined the emphatic brush strokes of abstract expressionism with photographic imagery from the popular media that is a hallmark of the pop art movement.
By 1962, Rauschenberg's paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but also found images and photographs which were transferred to the canvas using the silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that it implies. In this respect, his work is similar to that of Andy Warhol. Both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art .
However, Pop Art soon became much more brash than the work of Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg. It was defined as “making impersonality a style” by using the imagery of commercial art and other mass media sources. The movement emerged simultaneously but quite independently in Britain and America. For the English, mass media imagery had an exotic glamour about it, while for American artists it was just banal and commonplace. English artist, Richard Hamilton’s “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” is often considered to be the firstpiece of Pop Art. This collage of a stylized 1950s interior is a landmark in post-war art. The artist has combined cut-up photographs and cuttings from a magazines to create a consumer paradise, but one that is critical of consumerism and of a society that lightweight intellectually. The “POP” on the oversized lollipop is crucial as it is probably the first visual reference to the world which heralded a major new movement in art.
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American Pop artist, whose work borrowed heavily from popular advertising and comic book styles. As in his piece of work below, Lichtenstein’s blown-up comic strip creates a powerful impact with bright bold primary colours and direct style. He often used mass-produced imagery, and the materials and products of the industrial environment. By magnifying and over-simplifying these images, like Hamilton, he was making a criticism of society as well as trying to make people more aware of the aesthetics of 1960s America. The processes which Lichtenstein used to produce this, the hand painted dots that mimics the
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