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Pop Art

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The concept and term pop art first emerged in England in the 1950s when a group of artists who began meeting at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and called themselves The Independent Group. Instead of derogating and rejecting what was then regarded as the vulgar and commonplace, they set out to celebrate it. They were interested in the mass-produced, urban culture, films, advertising, science fiction, and pop music among others as the reflection of culture. They began treating it with the seriousness usually reserved for highbrow art.

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The two artists who are usually regarded as the fathers of Britain’s pop art are Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton. Paolozzo had already begun working with collages made up from comic strips and other trivia as early as 1947. In 1952 Paolozzi delivered a lecture to The Independent Group entitled Bunk, which means “rubbish”. In the talk he projected collage images made up of pictures taken mainly from American illustrated magazines, comics and science fiction literature and from advertising.

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I Was a Rich Man’s Play Thing by Eduardo Paolozzi (1947) collage on paper

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Bo Diddley by Peter Blake (1963) acrylic and Scotch tape on hardboard

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Art-o-matic Riding High by Peter Phillips (1973)

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By the 1960s, a pop art movement was already underway in America. In America, and especially in New York, which came to be regarded as the centre of pop art, the style developed out of its own roots. Later pop art groups emerged in California and a few other places, but we shall focus on the New York Pop art scene, which was undoubtedly the liveliest.

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American artists had already found their own visual language – abstract expressionism – one that was totally independent of Europe. And the subject matter that provided the initial impulse for pop art there was Americanism, Progress, the media industry, the star cult, all of which were enjoying a huge boom in the 1950s. By this stage a new generation of artists were emerging who had outgrown Abstract Expressionism and were beginning to replace it with art of contemporary relevance.

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13Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854

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Peach Halves by Andy Warhol (1962) oil on canvas

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Explosion No. 1 by Roy Lichtenstein (1965) enamel on steel

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Living Sculpture by Claes Oldenberg (n.d)

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Claes Oldenberg, Floor burger , 1962Clothespin (1976)

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Win a New Home for Christmas (1963) approx 150 x 150 cm; by

James Rosenquist Hey! Let's Go For A Ride, oil on canvas, 90 x 85 cm, 1961,by James

Rosenquist

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Pop art has had an enormous impact on the way that we perceive the world around us. Today we look at ordinary things – gift wrapping, perfume bottles, handbags and shoes among many others and see in them things of aesthetic beauty, things that we want to have for the sake of their beauty, or quirkiness, or whatever. Objects that have become branded have become works of art, and like works of art they have become important aspects of out lives.

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