Pop Art

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:

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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.

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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.