What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase Pop Art? If the first thing you think of is Andy
Warhol and cans of Campbell’s Soup, you aren't alone. The 1962 series depicting different
flavors of that popular meal is one of the most iconic works of not just Pop Art but modern art
in general. What makes Pop Art so special? How did a single picture of a $1.48 can of soup end
up costing $11.8 million at auction in 2006? To know this, we need to understand a wider context.
In our new episode, we will give you an overview of everything Pop Art:
how it emerged, who was involved, what role it played in history,
and what the deal was with all those soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles.
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Pop Art was an artistic movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Great Britain and the United
States. In Britain, a group of young artists and critics who called themselves the Independent
Group started having meetings in the Institute of Contemporary Art in London around 1952 to 1953.
With members like Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, The Independent Group got together to
discuss some of the pressing issues they saw in contemporary art. The gallery-based idea
of art was elitist for them, as it didn’t reflect the real lives and needs of people,
nor was it available to them. In 1955, the Independent Group discussed mass culture: film,
advertisements, comic books, sci-fi, celebrities, and pop music. They started making collages using
elements from everyday life like found objects, magazine cut-outs, comic book characters,
ads, and product labels. Of course, this didn’t go over too well with critics.
Mass culture was not only considered kitsch and consumerist - it was also very American.
Unsurprisingly, the most dynamic developments in the Pop Art movement came from the United States.
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were among the first artists to oppose the dominant trends of
abstract expressionism. Rauschenberg drew inspiration from the Dadaism movement,
and he believed that art needed to be closely tied to real life.
Rauschenberg used discarded ready-made objects in his works
before silkscreen printing made it easier to transfer photographs onto his paintings.
Jasper Johns was most notable for his depictions of the American flag.
In the 1950s, both Johns and Rauschenberg were called Neo-Dadaists. In 1962, however,
the term Pop Art was coined to describe the use of bold colors, repetitions, and mass media
references from comics and magazines to Hollywood stars and popular food and beverage commercials.
Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most notable figures in 1960s American Pop Art.
His work owes the most to popular American comic books like Batman and Spider-Man, using thick
black outlines, primary colors, Ben Day dots and ironic speech bubbles and onomatopoeia.
Although they represented mass-printed media, most of Lichtenstein’s best known
works were in fact meticulously painted oils on canvas. Seems hard, doesn’t it?
We can only assume Andy Warhol thought so too, because around 1962 he started using screen
printing in his works. The printmaking technique allowed Warhol to craft numerous iterations of
the same photographic image on paper or on canvas. This brought us some of the most
iconic images of the Pop Art movement. Warhol was obsessed with the celebrity world. For him,
images of popular actors, singers, and even politicians were an essential part
of American life just like the household brands Coca-Cola and Campbell's Soup.
Although works of Pop Art were heavily criticized for their admiration of banality and consumerism,
the movement quickly became popular and raised some of the most essential questions of art that
eventually led to postmodernism. Questions such as what can be art? Are some subjects more important
than others? Who gets to enjoy art? The fact that everything and anything could become a subject of
art undermined the elitism and hierarchy that had been upheld in the world of art for centuries.
Some of these questions had already been posed by Dadaist artists in the first two
decades of the 20th century, but Pop Art pushed things even further and into the mainstream.
Respected philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto went as far as declaring ‘the
end of art’ after having seen Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes” in New York in 1964.
Warhol’s new works were screenprinted doubles of original wooden “Brillo” soap pad boxes,
indiscernible in size, shape or form from the product itself. Unlike Duchamp’s Fountain,
this series wasn't even signed. The fact that they could now be understood as art brought Danto to
the conclusion that art history had entered an entirely new chapter. This didn’t mean people
would stop producing art, it just meant the idea of a linear progression of art history was over.
Let's recap. Pop Art was a revolutionary movement that developed in the 1950s
in Britain and the U.S., peaking during the 1960s with artists like Andy Warhol,
Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. If you are looking at a work that features celebrities,
flat colorful surfaces, speech bubbles, or brand logos, it’s probably Pop Art.
The movement marked the end of Modernism and kickstarted the rapid transition into
Postmodernism. It challenged society to take a closer, better look at their daily lives,
but the glamorous and party-like atmosphere of Pop Art didn’t last long. The social and
political circumstances of the 1970s called for a more critical standpoint and conceptual art,
performance art, feminist art, and land art emerged.
What do you think of Pop Art and its figures? Let us know in the comments section, and don’t forget
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