Images Of Pop Art example essay topic

Kings County, Calif. West Hills Community College POP ART Art Appreciation 52 CONTENTS. POP ART 4 II. ANDY WARHOL 5 .

DAVID HOCKNEY 7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Illustration 1: Roy Lichtenstein, Wham m! , Cover 2. Illustration 2: Andy Warhol, Campbell Soup Can 63.

Illustration 3 David Hockney, A Bigger Splash 7 POP ART Art in which everyday objects and subjects are depicted with the flat naturalism of advertising or comic strips. 1. Pop Art, visual arts movement of the 1950's and 1960's, principally in the United States and Great Britain. The images of pop art (shortened from popular art) were taken from mass culture. The term Pop Art was first by the critic Lawrence Alloway to describe those paintings that celebrate post-war consumerism, defy the psychology of Abstract Expressionism, and worship the god of materialism.

2 This was an art which had natural appeal to American artists, living in the midst of the most blatant and pervasive industrial and commercial environment. Forthe American artist, once they realized the tremendous possibilities of their everyday environment in the creation of new subject matter, the result was generally more bold, aggressive, even overpowering, than in the case of their European counterparts. Some artists duplicated beer bottles, soup cans, comic strips, road signs, and similar objects in paintings, collages, and sculptures. Others incorporated the objects themselves into their paintings or sculptures, sometimes in startlingly modified form.

Materials of modern technology, such as plastic, urethane foam, and acrylic paint, often figured prominently. As opposed tothe junk sculptors, the assemblage artists who have created their works from rubbish, the garbage, the refuge of modern industrial society, the pop artists deal principally with the new, the " store-bought", the idealized vulgarity of advertising, of the supermarket, and of television commercials. One of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century pop art not only influenced the work of subsequent artists but also had an impact on commercial, graphic, and fashion design. 3 American Pop art was first of all a major reaction against abstract expressionism which had dominated painting in the United States during the later 1940's and 1950's. During the later 1950's there were many indications that American painting would return toa new kind of figuration, a new humanism. Pop art brought art back to the material realities of everyday life, to popular culture in which ordinary people derived most of their visual pleasure from television, magazines, or comics.

The paintings of Lichtenstein, and Warhol, share not only an attachment to the everyday, commonplace, or vulgar image ofthe modern industrial America, but also the treatment of this image in an impersonal, neutral manner. They do not comment on the scene or attack it like social realist, nor do they exalt it like the admen. They seem to be saying simply that this is the world we live in, this is the urban landscape, these are the symbols, the interiors, the still lifes that make up our own lives. Andy Warhol, (1928-1987) One of the greatest Pop Artist or more well known as a direct representation of pop culture is Andy Warhol. He was born in 1928 and grew up during the depression and all the political shenanigans it had to offer during his life time (WWII, Watergate, Marilyn Monroe, etc.

). Unfortunately his life ended in 1987, and no longer can he offer a fundamental yet understandable view on every day life. He choose objects from daily American life as well the faces of entertainers and of others with household names as subjects for his pop art work. It made no difference if his subject was of a object or personality, they were an inherent part of postwar American culture Warhol's work advertised familiar aspects of post war America, yet according to him it did not intend to hold any hidden meaning, nor was it intended to criticize; the work of Andy Warhol was meant to simply express, in an unpersonal manner, how he perceived the world around him. His technique used to create his images was silk screening (a mechanical process that allows images to be repeatedly endlessly). This machine-like element of the silk-screen technique depicted appropriately the industrialized postwar American culture which he had witnessed.

Warhol had expressed it as a culture overburdened by disturbance that seemed to be repeated and recreated. Warhol had choose popular figures as subjects for an almost mass production of images, in a sense, dedicating his work his work to the world around him whose identity is comprised not only if these figures, but of technological advancements as well. In spite of his claim that he is completely detached from his work and that he and his work are wholly on the surface, he did create some pieces which seem to hold some type of deeper social commentary. For example, He manipulated his original silk-screen technique t ocreate reverse images, to point more closely to the element of disturbance in postwar American culture. Essentially they illustrated what he perceived as the dark side of fame. Similarly he seemed to comment on the intrusive nature of pop-culture icons (i.e. Marilyn Monroe) in pieces such as Gold Marilyn, 1962.

Eventually, Warhol began to create self-portraits using both his original silk-screening technique as well as his reverse technique. this was an interesting choice of subject, and he may have decided to create this series of self-portraits because he was realizing his own role in pop culture. as an important pop artist, Warhol himself became a representation of pop culture, and therefore an appropriate subject for his own work, Like the other troubled personalities depicted in his various series of reversals, Warhol too encountered the hard ships of popularity. His reversals of himself revealed the dark, troubled aspects of his career as a popular artist. 4, 5 David Hockney, (1937-) English painter, draftsman, photographer, and set designer, known for his satirical paintings, his masterly prints and drawings, and his penetrating portraits of contemporary personalities. Technically, it is true to say that the Pop movement started with Richard Hamilton and David Hockney in England.

Hockney's early work made superb use of the popular magazine-style images on which much of Pop Art is based. However, when Hockney moved to California in the 1960's, he responded with such artistic depth to these, sun, sky, young men, and luxury that his art took on a wholly new, increasingly naturalistic dimension. His amazing success has been based not only on the flair, wit, and versatility of his work, but also on his colorful personality, which has made him a recognizable figure even to people not particularly interested in art: His works from the 1960's such as his series featuring Los Angeles swimming pools and their denizens are painted in a bright and deliberately naive style, and their subject matter is drawn from popular culture. He has spent much of his time in the USA, and the Californian swimming pool has been one of his favorite themes. A Bigger Splash (1967, Tate Gallery, London) is one of his best-known paintings. It is simplistic rather than a simplified view of the world, it nevertheless creates a delightful interplay between the impassive pink verticals of a Los Angeles setting and the overflow of spray ast he unseen diver enters the pool.

There is no visible human presence here, just that lonely, empty chair and a bare, almost frozen world. Yet that wild white splash can only come from another human, and a great deal of Hockney's psyche is involved in the mix of lucidity and confusion of this picture. 6 Hockney's wryness and wit together with his talent for strong composition and design led him, atthe end of the 1960's, to a more naturalistic manner, particularly inh is portraits. His early paintings, often almost jokey in mood, gained him a reputation of leading Pop artist, although he himself rejected the label. In the late 1960's he turned to a weightier, more traditionally representational manner, in which he has painted some striking portraits (Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, Tate, London, 1970-01).

Although not fully realistic, these works painted in his preferred style of flat acrylic paints and profuse finely drawn lines provide sensitive, often heightened, representations of their sitters. Hockney's notable designs for operatic productions, for both the Glyndebourne Opera in England and for New York City " 's Metropolitan Opera, have met with critical and popular favor. David Hockney photographs (1982) is an exploration of the medium and a partial record of his life. Composite Polaroid pictures, called joiners, such as Henry Moore (1982), are another example of Hockney " 's photographic work. 7.