Pop art is all about liking things.
In 1955, British curator Lawrence Alloway coined 'Pop Art' to define a new art style that featured images of consumerism, new media and mass reproduction, in a single word: popular culture. Pop Art was one of the first art trends to shrink the gap between commercial and fine arts with audacious, basic, commonplace images and dynamic block colors.
Pop Art artists took inspiration from advertising, pulp magazines, billboards, movies, television, comic strips, and shop windows for their humorous, witty and ironic works, which both can be seen as a celebration and a critique of popular culture.
But how did Pop Art come about, who were its main actors, and what were its aesthetic objectives?
Although primarily identified with the US, Pop Art found a critical and ironic reflection in England in the late 1950s on the culture of consumerism after the war.
Pop art started with the New York artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, all of whom drew on popular imagery and were actually part of an international phenomenon. According to Abstract Expressionists' appeal, the return of Pop's recognizable iconography (mass media and folk culture) was a big move towards modernity. The focus was not conventional high art subjects of morals, mythology and classical history. Instead, pop artists praised ordinary things and persons in order to bring popular culture to the fine art level.
The Charm of colors
Reality itself is steadily becoming more colored. Think about the industries at the commencement of industrialization, particularly in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century: drab, brown and smoky. There was no color. Most of it is colored today instead. A steam pipe runs from the ground floor to the 12th storey and is green. The power supply is red, and the water is purple. Plastic hues also flooded our houses, and our taste has revolutionized. Because of this shift in taste, pop art evolved out of it and was feasible.
Pop art, composed of the aesthetic of the banal, reflects mass-production times and fast, bland entertainment, and examines the monetization of the famous. Objects such as the Campbell cans and pop culture personalities such as Marilyn Monroe became art and the movement's symbols.
In artistic media and processes, the elements of multiplication and reproduction – typical of mass-production cultures: whilst acrylic painting enabled the artists to create bright, flat surfaces, the screen printing technology generated daringly colored images as repeated patterns that undermine the idea of paintings as a medium of originality.
For pop artists medium is public opinion and world is there canvas. The items involved - objects or materials concerned - are definitely related. Pop art was devoted to popular pictures and, of course, popular pictures were available and at hand. Pop art frequently takes pictures currently used in advertising. In the imagery selected by pop artists, product labels and logos are prominent. As Andy Warhol said,
“The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second – comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles – all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.”
The colors are merging. Pop art is a trend towards that. We at Ruiz and polo will help you to swim with the flowing currents, with the finest quality guaranteed, allowing you to keep up with the magnificent art world. You will never be deceived since what counts most is your pleasure. So, step up express yourself!
Ruiz&Polo,
Barcelona.