This is Andy Warhol and this is a can of soup
these are screen prints of cans of soup by Andy Warhol
This is pop art
Pop art began in the mid 1950s when artists started making art
inspired by Hollywood movies, advertising, pop music and comic books
There were two types of pop art
Pop art made in America about America, pop art made in Britain
about America.
Pop artists in America made art about what it was like to live the
American dream.
Andy Warhol began his career in advertising before realising
that he could screen print pictures of soup cans and Coca-Cola onto canvases
and sell them in the same way advertisers sell real soup cans and real
Coca-Cola
He wore a silver wig, lived in a silver factory in New York and hung out with groovy kids
like Gerard Malanga, Nico, Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick. She also had silver hair.
He said in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes
He liked fame, he liked money, and he made art about both
Other pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein painted the world as a comic strip
This painting is called 'Whaam!'
Lichtenstein was imitating the industrial techniques of
mass production in the same way as mechanical reproduction
had imitated the techniques of artists
It was called 'parody'. This is a sculpture
by Klaus Oldenburg. He blew up everyday objects to monumental proportions in an
attempt to question what constitutes an iconic image in a modern society which
embraces disposable, mass-produced items
Now let's look at British pop art
This is Great Britain after the Second World War.
It looks as drab as a post-war Russian book
This is America after the Second World War
It looks like Disneyland.
Artists in Britain began making art about America's
vibrant and aspirational can do culture
It was witty, whimsical and sometimes ironic
This is a collage by Richard Hamilton
It confronts the mass advertising coming to Britain from America
Here's Peter Blake, he painted pin-up girls and wrestlers
Here he is wearing American jeans and holding a magazine all about Elvis Presley
Ensuring the influence American culture is having on Britain
Love the badges Peter
David Hockney, who is from Bradford, moved Los Angeles for the American lifestyle
Here is his swimming pool
and here is his palm tree
It's much sunnier in LA than it is in Bradford
Not everyone liked pop art. The art historian Canon Greenberg said it was superficial
Andy Warhol agreed, and responded by saying he was a deeply
superficial person
In fact, pop had found new subject matter in mass production
and had developed new ways of presenting it, like comic strips and screen prints
As Andy Warhol explained, once you've got pop, you could never see a sign the same way again
And once you thought pop you could never see America the same way again