Pop Art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. The term ‘pop art’ is often immediately associated with the artworks of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, artists who are considered part of American pop art. It is impossible not to be drawn to the colorful, creative works.

Pop art is the portrayal and glorification of consumer society using everyday images and trivial objects. Irony plays a big part. The pop art movement is characterized by subject matter related to mass culture. Think of advertising, popular magazines, close-ups from films, graphic design, comics, and at a later stage the rise of television. Pop art artists responded, among other things, to the deluge of images and information that comes over us thanks to modern electronic techniques. Many critics were not sure what to do with the work of the pop art artists. Some even felt insulted. They labeled the movement as anti-art or non-art. Pop art was especially difficult for critics to assess because the art movement did not explicitly criticize consumptive cultural phenomena. The works often give the impression of being a glorification of consumerism. The visual language used by the artists seems impersonal, banal and superficial in nature.

Pop art partly opposed American abstract expressionism. Since artists of Abstract Expressionism saw the museum as the ideal elite place for their artworks, the logical response was that Pop Art wanted to bring the art to the people. Pop art works are primarily decorative and hardly have a deeper message. Famous pop art artists are Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Hamilton and later on with Neo Pop art Tom Wesselmann