Pop Art comes from the term “popular art” and refers to an art movement that first appeared in the UK during the 1950s, before spreading across the world. Pop Art has not only influenced the visual arts (collage, sculpture ) but has also had an impact on music and fashion.
Among the many small technical revolutions that have been made throughout the history of painting, one of the most significant is certainly acrylic painting , a paint made with a combination of pigments, resin and turpentine. In comparison with traditional oil paint, acrylic has numerous advantages: it dries incredibly quickly, doesn’t need varnish and is highly durable. Several pop artists preferred using this more modern paint.
The popularisation of silk screening, a stencil printing technique, also contributed to Pop Art’s success. American Pop Art works are often printed in series (using silk screen printing or other techniques) and created using a range of innovative industrial processes. These innovations were initially largely discredited and scorned until the emergence of two key figures in the Pop Art movement whose renown helped to promote these techniques.
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were among the pioneers to openly express their preference for these new methods. By appropriating these techniques which had once been exclusively used in an industrial context, the two key Pop Art personalities revolutionised the art world. Contemporary painting had been desacralised and an artwork’s value was no longer measured by how rare it was or the subject it depicted.
American Pop Art turned its back on a long artistic tradition and paved the away for post-modern contemporary art, taking everyday objects from mass culture as its subjects (Campbell’s soup, Coca-Cola). Subjects were intentionally chosen because they were banal, popular and ordinary.
To reinforce the movement’s drastic break from the subjects traditionally chosen in the Fine Arts, artists worked with a bright colour palette, made up essentially of the primary colours: red, yellow and blue. The use of vivid colours can be found in dozens if not hundreds of kitsch Pop Art paintings.
The movement was critical of consumer society and often ironically used much loved famous figures from popular culture to convey their criticism (Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger, Mickey Mouse, Audrey Hepburn). These illustrations, which are reminiscent of adverts or comic strips, are characterised by their use of very simple lines and minimalist details.
The desire to desacralise art may also remind us of the ideas of Dada or Marcel Duchamp’s avant-gardism. However, for American and British Pop Art, their main goal was to ensure that culture was made accessible to the largest number of people possible. The Pop style made its mark very quickly and simultaneously created a new style of painting. Pop Art philosophy emphasises the power of images, the industrialised consumer society’s new fetish. Nonetheless, from the 1970s onwards, many of the movement’s artists decided to abandon Pop Art for other protest art movements.
On Artsper you can explore a range of Pop Art paintings from both well-known contemporary Pop Art artists as well as emerging artists. Some of the greatest painters of pop art include: James Rosenquist, David Salle, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and David Hockney.
