KEY ARTISTS:
Lichtenstein & Warhol (USA)
Oldenburg & Rosenquist (USA)
Frizzell (NZ)
KEY MEANINGS:
Place
Philosophy and spirituality
Identity
The everyday, popular culture & consumerism
Ideas about art
KEY CONTEXTS:
Economic
Social
Political
Mass media
◽ Pop artists share the same contexts as with NeoDada -- the American society was booming economically and increasingly becoming more and more capitalist and consumerist, with political tensions of the Cold War still looming in the background -- but all of these influences seem to take on a heightened effect in their art works.
◽ Pop artists appear to fully celebrate the benefits and enjoyment brought by this economic booming, and the world of "mass" everything (mass production, mass consumption and mass media). After all, the celebration of wealth and prosperity was politically justifiable as America had won the war.
◽ However, in doing so, their art also exposed the flipside effects of these contexts on people living in the modern world: encouraging the humankind to remain shallow, oblivious and driven by desires and instincts.
◽ Soon, the art world would also recognise this new trend that was 'Pop', and what started as being a rebellion against Abstract Expressionism would ironically replace it in the art market - but the Pop artists went in with the full understanding of what their art would be seen as - a commodity, like everything else in the world.
◽ Pop artists appear to fully celebrate the benefits and enjoyment brought by this economic booming, and the world of "mass" everything (mass production, mass consumption and mass media). After all, the celebration of wealth and prosperity was politically justifiable as America had won the war.
◽ However, in doing so, their art also exposed the flipside effects of these contexts on people living in the modern world: encouraging the humankind to remain shallow, oblivious and driven by desires and instincts.
◽ Soon, the art world would also recognise this new trend that was 'Pop', and what started as being a rebellion against Abstract Expressionism would ironically replace it in the art market - but the Pop artists went in with the full understanding of what their art would be seen as - a commodity, like everything else in the world.
1960's History: Entertainment, Movie and TV Stars (1965-1969) |
Hollywood explains consumerism |
What Is Consumer Beauty? | Beauty Standards of the 60's |
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What is POP ART?Emerging in the mid 1950s in Britain and late 1950s in America, pop art reached its peak in the 1960s. It began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be. Young artists felt that what they were taught at art school and what they saw in museums did not have anything to do with their lives or the things they saw around them every day. Instead they turned to sources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books for their imagery.
In 1957 pop artist Richard Hamilton listed the ‘characteristics of pop art’ in a letter to his friends the architects Peter and Alison Smithson: Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business Modernist critics were horrified by the pop artists’ use of such ‘low’ subject matter and by their apparently uncritical treatment of it. In fact pop both took art into new areas of subject matter and developed new ways of presenting it in art and can be seen as one of the first manifestations of postmodernism. In the United States, pop style was a return to representational art (art that depicted the visual world in a recognisable way) and the use of hard edges and distinct forms after the painterly looseness of abstract expressionism. By using impersonal, mundane imagery, pop artists also wanted to move away from the emphasis on personal feelings and personal symbolism that characterised abstract expressionism. www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/pop-art |
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"THE" POP ARTISTAndy Warhol (1928-1987)Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art destined for galleries.
Nevertheless, his screenprinted images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop art. He emerged from the poverty and obscurity of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, to become a charismatic magnet for bohemian New York, and to ultimately find a place in the circles of High Society. For many his ascent echoes one of Pop art's ambitions, to bring popular styles and subjects into the exclusive salons of high art. His crowning achievement was the elevation of his own persona to the level of a popular icon, representing a new kind of fame and celebrity for a fine artist.
www.theartstory.org/artist/warhol-andy/ WARHOL'S 'THE FACTORY'
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WHAT DOES "APPROPRIATION" MEAN?
Appropriation in art and art history refers to the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original. Artists who appropriate often aims to create a new situation, and therefore a new meaning or set of meanings, for a familiar image. Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity and authorship, and belongs to the long modernist tradition of art that questions the nature or definition of art itself. www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation |
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Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962 |
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WHAAM, BAM, IT'S ALL SUPERFICIALRoy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)Roy Lichtenstein was one of the first American Pop artists to achieve widespread renown, and he became a lightning rod for criticism of the movement. His early work ranged widely in style and subject matter, and displayed considerable understanding of modernist painting: Lichtenstein would often maintain that he was as interested in the abstract qualities of his images as he was in their subject matter.
However, the mature Pop style he arrived at in 1961, which was inspired by comic strips, was greeted by accusations of banality, lack of originality, and, later, even copying. His high-impact, iconic images have since become synonymous with Pop art, and his method of creating images, which blended aspects of mechanical reproduction and drawing by hand, has become central to critics' understanding of the significance of the movement.
www.theartstory.org/artist/lichtenstein-roy/ |
BEN DAY DOTS
An inexpensive mechanical printing method developed in the late 19th century and named after its inventor, illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr. The method relies upon small colored dots (typically cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that are variously spaced and combined to create shading and colors in images. https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/145 |
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BIG STATEMENTS ON CULTUREJames Rosenquist (1933-2017)Rosenquist was an American artist and one of the proponents of the Pop art movement.
Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advertising and consumer culture in art and society, utilizing techniques he learned making commercial art to depict popular cultural icons and mundane everyday objects. While his works have often been compared to those from other key figures of the Pop art movement, such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Rosenquist's pieces were unique in the way that they often employed elements of surrealism using fragments of advertisements and cultural imagery to emphasize the overwhelming nature of ads.
www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/james-rosenquist-1866 |
Rosenquist's "F-111", 1964-5
Soft Sculptures
Blown-Up Public Sculptures
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ENLARGING THE BOUNDARIES OF ARTClaes Oldenburg (1929- )With his saggy hamburgers, colossal clothespins and giant three-way plugs, Claes Oldenburg has been the reigning king of Pop sculpture since the early 1960s, back when New York was still truly gritty.
In 1961 he rented a storefront, called it The Store, and stocked it with stuffed, crudely-painted forms resembling diner food, cheap clothing, and other mass-manufactured items that stupefied an audience accustomed to the austere, non-representational forms in Abstract Expressionist sculpture. These so-called "soft-sculptures" are now hailed as the first sculptural expressions in Pop art.
While his work has continued to grow in scale and ambition, his focus has remained steadfast: everyday items are presented on a magnified scale that reverses the traditional relationship between viewer and object. Oldenburg shrinks the spectator into a bite-sized morsel that might be devoured along with a giant piece of cake, or crushed by an enormous ice pack. His work shows us just how small we are, and serves as a vehicle for his smart, witty, critical, and often wickedly funny insights on American culture over the past half-century.
www.theartstory.org/artist/oldenburg-claes/ |
Mickey to Tiki Tu Meke
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NZ: KIWIANA AS POP ARTDick Frizzell (1943- )Dick Frizzell, born Auckland, New Zealand is one of New Zealand's most loved, sought after and recognized, senior artists. Frizzell’s work has always been characterised by a highly skilled handling of paint and an endlessly inventive range of subject matter and styles: faux-naive New Zealand landscapes, figurative still-life, comic book characters and witty parodies of modernist abstraction. His artworks have become some of New Zealand’s most well known images; from his 4 Square local grocer, to the controversial but also best loved work, “Mickey to Tiki, Tu Meke”.
He ingeniously takes the Disney image of Mickey Mouse and over a line of painted heads, morphs them into to an image of a Maori tiki. These and many of his other well known images have shown Frizzell mixing ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, cultural icons and comic characters; all the while challenging the viewer to question these labels and ideas and provoke discussion, piqué interest as well as pleasing the aesthetic palette. Frizzell dislikes the opacity of high art saying, “in my experience being transparent has always worked for me…it’s easy to fall prey to those notions of purity and the rest of it”. Known to work prolifically, Frizzell’s medium, style and subject matter changes with each art piece and it is only those that know his work closely, that can quickly identify his eclectic and stylish aptitude within each style. Mainly known as a painter, Frizzell also uses screen-printing and lithography to create his artworks. From his large New Zealand landscapes, (where the landscape is subtly altered by Frizzell to satisfy his design framework), to his beloved comic like prints, to the large paintings of roadside Kiwi handwritten signs or to the large paintings of poems by Sam Hunt, or even in his still life’s, Frizzell covers so many cultural signifiers with humour and aplomb. His taste is conveniently broad and he has a penchant for fondly remembered and well-worn clichés. His work also portrays a sense of exuberance, ironic humour and baby-boomer nostalgia. An anti-traditionalist, Frizzell often makes a deliberate effort to mix up the categories of high and low art - poking fun at the intellectualisation of 'high art' and the existential angst of much New Zealand painting in the art culture of his youth. thecentral.co.nz/artists/dick-frizzell/overview/ www.gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/artists/dick-frizzell |