ART: The Pop Art Movement

By Ljupcho Naumov

"Pop art is about liking things."

-Andy Warhol

This simple quote by Andy Warhol captures the essence of pop art. This artistic movement melts the boundaries between the high-art of the elite and the low-art of the masses, and introduces a form of expression that is understandable to everyone. Containing elements from mass culture, the pop movement truly made art universal.

The origins of pop art date back to the 1950s in England, in a time of optimism resulting from the post-war end of rationing. Celebrating the newly established consumer society, pop art regularly featured images known to the general public, including those from advertisements, comic strips, magazines, television and cinema. The pop art movement, like other, was a rebellion against the previously established and accepted style: abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism developed after the Second World War, and is the first American artistic movement to achieve worldwide recognition. It is primarily concerned with communicating the emotions of the artist, and it is famous for being rebellious, anarchistic, and idiosyncratic.

Examples of Abstract Expressionism

One of the first artists to flourish from the British pop art movement was Scottish sculptor and artist Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi investigated how humans can fit into the modern world to resemble our fragmented civilization through imagination and fantasy. His most famous work is the collage I was a Rich Man's Plaything. It is considered to be the first work referred to under the name pop art, and the first to display the word pop.

Paolozzi’s I was a rich man’s plaything

Another noted artist from the British pop art movement is Peter Blake, an artist who made collage based paintings of movie stars and pop musicians using images from magazines, comics and advertisements. His most famous work is the album cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In the States, the Pop art movement arrives in the 1960s. In America, the movement meets a much more zealous audience, an audience mesmerized by consumerism, the ideal of pop art. One of the first and maybe most eminent American pop artists is Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein, surprisingly, started his artistic career as a follower of abstract expressionism but later converted into the new, popular style. He is famous for his comic-book based works, in which he showed scenes of sentimental love or violent action.

Lichtenstein’s Girl with Ribbon, Kiss V, Drowning Girl, and Ride in the Car. The dots reflect the cheap color printing process of newspapers and comics.

The most prominent of the pop artists known to the general public is definitely painter, printmaker, and film producer, Andy Warhol. His name is synonymous with the pop art movement. He started his career as a commercial artist, drawing images for magazine illustrations and advertisements. With this exceptionally well-suited starting point, Warhol was immediately immersed into the pop art movement. The artistic works of Warhol frequently featured famous movie stars, pop singers and other similar icons. His Marilyn diptych soon became the crown of pop art.

Warhol’s Marilyn diptych and Eight Elvises. The Eight Elvises was sold for 100 million dollars.

The pop art movement changed the world of art forever. It replaced the epic with the everyday, the unique with the mass produced. It diffused the high art with the low art. Pop art proved to be likable to everyone, just as Warhol said.