pop art
...an in the late 1950s and continued to flourish in the 1960s and 1970s. The artists of this movement took common goods such as celebrities, media images and icons and transformed them into works of art. Pop Art developed primarily in the United States and Britain. In the U.S. the art of this movement was linked to the wealth and prosperity of the post World War II era. ... This paper is the property of FindFreeEssays.com Copyright © 2002-2005 Pop Art emerged at a time when society was changing its perception of the world and the scale of time and space. Along with postwar peace, comfort and leisure came consumerism, mass media and mass production. Artists were also looking for a new direction after Abstract Expressionism. In response to the inward looking abstract expressionists, Pop Art looked out into the world. Pop Art focussed on things that were previously considered unworthy of notice. It was a merging of high culture and low culture. A focus on the ordinary, the tasteless and kitsch. Not only did pop artists source their subject matter from the mundane or mass-produced, but they frequently employed commercial techniques such as airbrush, silkscreen and industrial manufacturing. There were differing aspects to Pop Art, but what most art of the genre had in common was a sense of detachment or lack of expressiveness. Artists tended to be at least one step removed from their art, either through process or style. The removal of the artist’s hand echoed the depersonalised process of mass production. Claus Oldenberg said “... this process of humbling [art] is just to test it, to reduce everything to the same level and then see what you get.” Although the subject matter of most Pop Art was similar, the messages were not. Pop Art was a scale that, at one end, had Artists who wanted to celebrate the new era of progress and excess. Those who felt the optimism of the period and were excited by advances in technology. At the other end of the scale were those artists who, in response to the same phenomena, saw the gullibility of a society which believed its own media machine. These artists were cynical about the “freedom” associated with a new commercialised and technologised society. They were concerned about a “throwaway” culture that would not be sustainable in the longer term. Somewhere in between were the artists who, through their work, merely held up, to the viewer, a reflection of the status quo. Many artists came to Pop Art from commercial art backgrounds which enabled them to approach their art with new techniques. Because of its challenges to society and the art world, Pop Art was, understandably, considered by some as co...