Things You Should Know about Pop Art Paintings History
Pop art was an artistic movement that represented a strong shift
from the influence of the abstract expressionism. Pop art
paintings brought an original form of making art by introducing
techniques of commercial art and everyday life illustrations.
This movement first occurred in Great Britain in the late 1950s
and it was meant to be a redefinition of the metaphysical
gravity of the abstract expressionism. Pop art paintings were
mainly characterized by the insertion of everyday life images of
soup cans, comic strips, Coke bottles or even stuffed animals
into the artistic expression. The expressed aim of the pop art
paintings was to provide a meeting point for artists and public.
Inserting commercial art symbols in their work, the artists
intended to blur the boundaries between art and common people in
order to make art ideas accessible for everyone.
The birth of this art movement during the 1950s-1960s wasn't a
coincidence. Artists were getting tired of the inwardness and
opacity of the abstract expressionism; the American society (and
the British one, but on a less extent) was enjoying deep changes
in terms of economic revival after the constraints of the Second
World War. Therefore, the artist community mocked the
shallowness and the materialism of the Americans, employing
symbols of mass culture (Coke cans, magazines or comic strips)
in their pop art paintings.
The artists who had embraced this art style used different
symbols: American flags (Jasper Johns), comic strips (Roy
Lichtenstein) and soup cans (Andy Warhol) or stuffed animals
(Robert Rauschenberg).
Pop art paintings also represented icons of the artists'
reaction against the dullness and complexity of the abstract
expressionism. Abstract techniques were replaced with more
accessible ones like humor or surface appearance. The central
idea of this art movement was to express messages to the mass by
transforming the ordinary things into art objects.
Although the pop art stream was very popular among the layman
public, it was highly controversial among the art critics
community. Some considered pop art paintings as cheap, tacky
imitations of everyday life symbols; others regarded them as
icons of the shallow American society at mid-century.
Nevertheless, this art movement represented a breath of vivid,
fresh air in an art characterized until then by opacity and
seriousness.