Pop Art
Pop art is a
very well know art style and often people are able to recognise the art form
due to famous paintings and posters. It can be fairly easy to identify the characteristics
of pop art on pictures and paint work.
From my
research I have discovered that pop art was an art movement which first
appeared in the 1950s, it was believed to be the earliest examples of
postmodern Art.
It was formed
in relation to abstract expressionism which was also an art movement which emerged
post-world war in the 1940s. Similar to abstract expressionism, pop arts created
art work which twisted the visual aspects of objects and existing material.
Pop art employs
irony and parody and applies these attitudes to the objects or materials, which
were culturally relevant at that time period. The objects included where from
popular mass culture such as billboards, advertising, comic books, news etc.
Pop art was considered
to mainly try to portray the attitudes and thoughts on the imagery that was created
and not just on the objects themselves.
Pop art images
are often associated with comic books. This because an American artist called
Roy Lichtenstein became a renowned figure in the new pop art movement. He
focused his work on comic strip style imagery and produced influential art work
in the 1960s. The people during that culture favored his ability to incorporate parody into his work.
An example of his art work is below:
In this image Roy Lichtenstein has produced, it shows two
fighter pilots in battle. Normally this image would have expressed a serious
and sombre tone, however due to the comic book style quote and the type “WHAAM!”
it creates a light-hearted humorous tone. Additionally the image uses vivid
colours which helps convey the parody. The typography of the tagline “WHAAM!”
feels playful as the letters are overlapping each other, not to mention the use
of the exclamation mark. Also the text has a yellow fill which is a mellow
colour. Furthermore, the type is a san-seriff font which allows the text to
appear non formal.
These images above are more examples of pop art. The right image is by another famous artist called Andy Warhol who also flourished in the 1960s and the left is a piece of art work inspired by Roy Lichtenstein. They may appear to look different but are both featured as pop art. The first image considers an interest in a super market object of tomato soup. This is because Andy Warhol had a passion to create abstract art on existing isolated objects, he has many more art work similar to this. Whereas, the left image concentrates on a comic book style art which was first inspired by Roy Lichtenstein.
