Pop
Art Movement :
Pop art
was a visual artistic movement that emerged in the late 1950s
in England and the United States. Characterized by
themes and techniques drawn from mass culture, such as advertising
and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either
a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism
or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to employ
images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art,
emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given
culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and
often claimed to do so. However, much pop art is considered very
academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used
often make it difficult to comprehend.
..............................................................................................................
Origin
of the term "pop art" :
The term
was coined in 1954 by John McHale. A "pop" movement
was widely recognized by the mid-1960s. In the meantime,
the movement was sometimes called Neo-Dada, a name which
reveals some of the thinking behind this type of art, and the
strong influence of dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp on such
seminal pop figures as Hamilton, Jasper Johns, and
Andy Warhol.
Richard
Hamilton's definition of Pop Art - "popular, transient,
expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky,
glamorous, and Big Business" - stressed its everyday, commonplace
values.
..............................................................................................................
Pop
art in Britain :
The Independent
Group who met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from
1952 included key figures in the development of Pop art, John
McHale, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Paolozzi
had begun to make collages using imagery from American magazines
in 1947 but stated that this was more influenced by his interest
in Surrealism than popular culture. Hamilton had begun
to study the work and ideas of Marcel Duchamp and developed
a series of exhibition projects that blurred the boundary between
art and advertising.
Lectures
at the Independent Group by Reyner Banham included American
product and magazine design and Futurism while there were
discussions of science fiction and cybernetics. Alloway
also lectured on his theory of a continuum between the 'high
art' accepted by cultural institutions and the 'low art'
of pop culture.
..............................................................................................................
