Overview

Before Pop Art, “High Art” (Abstract Expressionism) was serious, emotional, and elitist. It was about the artist’s soul. Pop Art said: “Forget the soul. Look at the supermarket.” It embraced the shiny, plastic, disposable world of post-war capitalism. It painted soup cans, movie stars, and hamburgers.

Core Idea

The core idea is the collapse of High and Low. Why is a painting of a bowl of fruit “art,” but a painting of a Coke bottle “advertising”? Pop Art argued that in a consumer society, brands and celebrities are our mythology. They are the icons we worship.

Formal Definition

An art movement that employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books, and mundane cultural objects. It is characterized by hard edges, bright colors, and the use of commercial printing techniques (like silkscreen).

Intuition

Walk through a grocery store. The repetition of the labels, the bright colors, the promise of happiness in every box. Andy Warhol looked at this and saw beauty. He said, “I want to be a machine.” He didn’t want to paint with a brush (which shows the artist’s hand); he wanted to print images like a factory.

Examples

  • Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962): 32 canvases, one for each flavor. It mimics the grocery shelf. Is it a critique of consumerism? Or a celebration of it? Warhol never said. The ambiguity is the point.
  • Roy Lichtenstein: Took panels from cheap romance and war comic books and painted them on a massive scale, including the “Ben-Day dots” (printing dots). He elevated “trashy” teen culture to the level of the museum.
  • Claes Oldenburg: Made giant soft sculptures of everyday objects—a giant soft hamburger, a giant lipstick. He made the familiar look strange and funny.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s shallow: “It’s just a picture of Marilyn Monroe.” Yes, but it’s a picture of the image of Marilyn, not the person. It’s about how fame turns people into commodities. It is a deep comment on superficiality.
  • It’s American: It actually started in London (Richard Hamilton) as a fascination with American culture from afar.
  • Kitsch: Pop Art embraces kitsch (tacky, sentimental art) but frames it with irony.
  • Capitalist Realism: A term sometimes used to describe Pop Art (a play on “Socialist Realism”), suggesting it is the propaganda of capitalism.
  • Postmodernism: Pop Art is the beginning of Postmodernism—the mixing of styles, the irony, and the focus on media.

Applications

  • Graphic Design: Pop Art revolutionized design. The bright colors and bold outlines are still the standard for “cool” branding.
  • Music: The Velvet Underground (managed by Warhol) brought the Pop Art aesthetic to rock music.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Complicity: Did Pop Art critique capitalism, or did it just sell out? Warhol became a rich celebrity who did commercials. The line between the art and the ad disappeared.
  • Sexism: The movement was dominated by men who often used images of women as sex objects (though artists like Pauline Boty and Marisol offered a female perspective).

Further Reading

  • Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. 1975.
  • Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art. 1997. (Discusses Warhol’s Brillo Boxes as the end of art history).
  • Lippard, Lucy. Pop Art. 1966.