Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In Pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.

Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists’ use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Much of pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Post-modern Art themselves.

Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising. Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell’s Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping box containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol’s Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box 1964, (pictured below), or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures.

Famous Pop art artists:
Billy Apple
Evelyne Axell
Sir Peter Blake
Derek Boshier
Pauline Boty
Patrick Caulfield
Allan D’Arcangelo
Jim Dine
Rosalyn Drexler
Robert Dowd
Erró
James Gill
Red Grooms
Richard Hamilton
Keith Haring
Jann Haworth
David Hockney
Dorothy Iannone
Robert Indiana
Jasper Johns
Allen Jones
Alex Katz
Corita Kent
Kiki Kogelnik
Nicholas Krushenick
Yayoi Kusama
Gerald Laing
Roy Lichtenstein
Richard Lindner
John McHale
Marisol
Peter Max
Marta Minujin
Takashi Murakami
Yoshitomo Nara
Claes Oldenburg
Julian Opie
Eduardo Paolozzi
Peter Phillips
Sigmar Polke
Hariton Pushwagner
Mel Ramos
Robert Rauschenberg
Larry Rivers
James Rizzi
James Rosenquist
Ed Ruscha
Niki de Saint Phalle
Peter Saul
George Segal
Colin Self
Marjorie Strider
Aya Takano
Wayne Thiebaud
Andy Warhol
Idelle Weber
John Wesley
Tom Wesselmann