- What is pop art?
'Pop' is short for popular and pop art took items from popular culture and turned it into art. Pop art was known to take everyday objects and take them out of their usual context. When items are seen out of context it gives us the chance to really think about them and observe them without all the usual connotations that surround them.
A tin of soup, for example, (Andy Warhol) is just a tin of soup when we see it in the kitchen but when it is seen as an isolated object with a plain background and with no food connotations surrounding it, we will see it differently. We will see the packaging, the colors of the tin, the shape, the writing and the overall style. The tin stops being our lunch and becomes art.
Other cultural objects are often used in pop art such as adverts, comics, celebrities and everyday objects. The coloring is usually extremely and unnaturally bright, block colors that contrast against each other but really stand out against each other.
- When and how did pop art start?
Pop art began in the early 1950s in Britain and by the end of the decade it had moved to America too. Although it began in Britain, the British artists were painting what they considered to be American culture. It was brighter and more vivid that the post-war British culture of the time and was much more idealistic.
The British artists viewed America from a far and developed a whole new type of popular art from what they believed was an American reality. This was a time after the war where views and opinions were changing and the dramatic new art highlighted this. The British artists are thought to have been challenging art and culture of the time.
A few famous Pop Artists:
Andy Warhol,
Roy Lichtenstein,
Edvardo Paolozzi,
Richard Hamilton,
Jackson Pollock, and
Willem De Kooning
