Pop Arts Movement
Pop Art movement is one of the movements I like as an artist because It is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising,comic books and mundane cultural objects, it is also widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of Abstract Expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.
The Pop Art movement first began in England in mid 1950s in paralles in the late 1950s in United States. Their roots began with an interest in Cubism and Dadaism. They admired the singular artworks of Pablo Picasso's Plate with Wafers and Stuart Davis' Lucky Strike. They ... appreciated the work of Marcel Duchamp whose ready-mades, as he called them, added a new sense of completion for the Pop artists. In America, Pop Art is often considered as a counter-attack against Abstract Expressionism because it used more figurative aspects in its works. It was also related closely to Dada, an earlier movement that poked fun at the highbrow and serious nature of the art world and also used everyday objects and mundane subjects. Warhol's rows of Campbell's tins of tomato soup are equivalent to Marcel Duchamp’s bicycles and urinals placed in galleries.
Pop Art challenged tradition by emphasizing that an artist's use of the mass produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of Fine Art since Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of Pop Art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.
One of Pop artist I admire is Andy Warhol. Throughout the 1950s, Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial artist. He was a very central figure of the pop art movement. Warhol was very successful as an artist but he was also talented at writing and producing records and films, however it was Warhol’s paintings that made him so famous worldwide. His painting of Campbell’s soup tin which was used for a commercial has become extremely well known and praised along with his screen-print of Marilyn Monroe which reflects Warhol’s own insight on American fame and stardom.
I like pop art, because it’s something different. I love how the colors look and how the artist takes simple everyday objects and turns its into a work of art. To me pop art is not for everybody, I think you have to be willing to see the object in a different light. From one of Warhol’s painting of Campbell’s soup can represent simplicity.
Roy Fox Lichtenstein is another Pop artist that I like. He was a prominent American pop artist, whose work borrowed heavily from popular advertising and comic book styles, which he himself described as being "as artificial as possible".
Lichtenstein worked a lot with stencils, thus producing rows of oversized dots that should make his paintings or prints look like a huge mass publication product. Although he prepared and executed his works painstakingly like the old masters, he wanted his works of art look like machine made. One of his peculiarities was, that he did not want his brush strokes to be seen. Other than paintings and sculptures, the artist produced a number of prints for which he used different techniques: lithographs, screenprints, etchings and woodcuts. Often he combined these techniques in one print.
Lichtenstein is usually characterized as ironic, humorous and witty. He openly commented on his own works. What I like most about Lichtenstein is how he uses dots to produce art. Most of his art pieces has the comic looks behind it which is I love, being a comic lover myself. One of his art pieces I love is the Temple of Apollo and Go for Baroque, because of his dot technique. I like to think of pop art as being fun, colorful and playful. As much as it can be associated with a child-like playfulness and simplicity, it has quite a bit of art theory to it.
