Pop Art Research Paper

“Modern art can be seen as a reaction to what came before it in culture, as well as a tool for creating new ideas.” Everyone has different perspective of how they view the world and every artists illustrate their work through connection in everyday life, to show certain feeling or emotion. One of Modern Art movements that I have been very supportive throughout my life is the Pop Arts culture. Pop Art is very unique in a way that is based on modern popular culture and mass media, it is critical criticism on fine art values. Pop Art started around early 1960s, mostly associated with New York artists such as Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein. Pop Art’s reestablishment was a huge transformation for the direction of modernism. They
focused mainly on commonplace objects and depict everyday lifestyle of people. Pop artists began to search for inspirations around them, personifying and producing artwork from everyday items such as consumer goods. Some of the methods or technique they used was silkscreening or large range abstract works. Pop arts highly favored realism where they tried to connect fine art culture with pop culture, component from advertisements, films, or even on televisions. Pop artists believed that everything is associated with one another. Though their work challenge the boundaries between the media, photography and printmaking, combining objects to make new meaning of the artwork.
One of my favorite Pop artist is Andy Warhol.
Ever since I was a little child, I have always admired Warhol’s artwork. Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a very successful illustrator who also lead the artist of the Pop art movements in 1960s. His artwork performed variety of art forms such as filmmaking, video installations, and even including performance art. In late 1950s, Warhol began to devote himself more towards painting and appear the concept of pop art paintings and focused on mass-produced goods. One of his well known mass-produced artwork is the paintings of Campbell’s soup cans also referred as thirty two Campbell’s Soup Cans. Warhol was inspired by the renditions of ads and comic books when he saw one of the comic paintings of Roy Lichtenstein’s artwork. One of his contemporaries, Roy Lichtenstein was once asked, What does Pop Art mean to you? and he replied, “ We were looking for subject matter that was so despicable, that was so low, that nobody could possibly believe that it was really
art.”
Pop art is one of the art movement that rise in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the United States. Pop art challenged to fine art by imagery context from popular culture such as newspaper or advertisements. Most of the Pop art is visually detached from its origin known context and relativity combined with other materials as well. Most Pop Art artists would use images of popular culture or rendering techniques through the use of irony to recreate an art piece. Pop art is understood as reception to dominant ideas of abstract expressionism. Because Pop art artists works with original images or found objects, it can be similar to Dada, how it mocks the art world by devoting images from streets, and grocery markets. It is considered to be one of art movements that foreshadow postmodern art. Some characteristics Pop art uses are images and icons from modern world which includes celebrities, important people, comic books, commercial items like soup cans, drinks, and other popular items in the world. Pop artists would use these items to design an artwork by repeating the images, and changing the color or texture; almost like collage art.
The Campbell’s Soup Cans was produced in 1962, consists of thirty-two canvases, each canvas measured to be twenty inches by sixteen. When Warhol displayed his first Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962, they were presented on shelves, they were arranged in chronological order in which the soups were introduced. Warhol did not trace the cans repeatedly, as he used the method of screen printing, where hundreds of identical prints. Screen printing was used for reproducing wallpaper such as the Detail of Pimpernel wallpaper, or even on clothings. In a sense this Thirty-two Campbell’s can can be a repetition of the Campbell’s Soup can itself but as Warhol quoted, “Everybody paints the same picture over and over again.” If we look at a lot of the paintings from previous period of time, there are lots of replicas or similar paintings around the world. He presented the cans in the range of soups that are less about uniformity than about uniqueness. The central ideas of modern art is that you can take something that’s not based in technical skills.
Warhol’s artwork introduced and sparked an exciting news of artistic expression that hasn’t been witness before.
What made his work significant was Warhol’s technique of alternating recognizable imagery;what we see on everyday basis and illustrating it as mass-produced item. His intention was to provide observation on how people distinguish these imagery in modern times, as it is being sold or bought. The selection of the color of the Campbell’s Soup can is red and white, dated from the late nineteenth century, and more familiarized in the twentieth century. The colors that Pop artists uses are predominant colors such as yellow, red and blue. As Warhol once said “Pop art is about liking things,” in which for him, he ate Campbell’s soup every day for almost twenty years. That’s what brought the debate between if Andy Warhol should be sued for not having copyright from the Campbell soup company. However, the Campbell Soup company did not sue Andy Warhol for not having copyright because Warhol wasn’t attempting to advertise or sell the Campbell’s Soup but the company saw his usage as freedom of
expression.
Even after his death, Andy Warhol still remains one of the most influential and inspiring figures in present-day art and culture. His work inspires and motivates alternative artists throughout worldwide, to pursue what they believe in. Andy Warhol’s Soup cans are adroitly momentous for strengthening Pop art movement, one that can combine images from consumer and media without commercial intent in product marketing. Pop Art culture has been very favored, inspired by Andy Warhol, people have been experimenting with technique of silkscreen printing, which became very popular technique for mass production. Needless to say that art has been an expression of society and how they view the world. Back in nineteen-sixties, art was chaos of consumptions, advertising, commercials but now, art has revived itself because of pop art movement, which is highly appreciated by people. Till this day, Pop Art is very popular and has been inspiring many other artists to express their artistic mind.