Post 3: Pop Art Myths
Collage advertising comicsPop Art has inherited, the tradition of collage from the Cubism and Dadaism but they add's a subsersive and allegorical component to it. When can say that the first Pop image is the Richard Hamilton's print Just what is that made yesterday's homes so different, so appealing ? made in 1992. Andy Warhol who worked as a designer and adman ,at the beginning of his career, contribuated to the birth of this new tendency. Warhol also helps ,with Roy Lichtenstein, to introducing comics on large-format paintings, like the famous Look Mickey that for some represent the myth of Narcissus.
Emblems
In the 1950', the american society is inundated, thanks to the mass media, by advertising and so by slogans, logos and brand names for consumer products. Eventually, this provided a cascad of visual ideas for Pop artists who saw in this a great way to criticize the immersing society by showing objects, trademarks or logos on painting without other adjustment. The most famous of them are of course Warhol's Campbell's soup that shows everyday objects repeatedly.
Myths
In his golden era, Hollywood was seen as a dreams factory and idol or moviestar like Marlon Brando, Marylin Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor became myths for the general public. Pop artists inspired by those american idols decided to illustrate them in their works. Alex Katz was the first one to explore this new path, followed by Andy Warhol and his Marlon or the transifiguration of Elizabeth Taylor as Queen of the Nile by Mimmo Rotella. But this is truly the British Pop artists who succeed to combine great american idols with their own popular culture and by this they created their own myths like Blake's Beatles or Hamilton's Rolling Stones.
Swingeing London (1972) by Richard HamiltonPortraits
Pop Art by basic their work on preexisting images reinvented the genre of portraits and opens the door to postmodernism in which the representation no longer follows reality but rather precedes it. With this new perspective, there is no longer an implicit subject behind images, the portrait becomes a simulacrum. By his series of self-portrait in 1978 Warhol once again surprised everybody with a new kind of portrait where he fades away and becomes a virtual image. David Hockney was also the pioneer of this new technic by putting a polaroid image as basis of his portrait.
Nicolas Wilder studying picasso (1982) by David Hockney
Landscapes Interiors Still Lives
With the rise of consumer society, objects are reduce to their arbitrary meanings, against this Pop Art had to come back to a traditional genre of painting like Landscapes, Interiors and Still lives. The originality of Pop Art was to make a private space a public and commercial one. The contemporary urban milieu became for many pop artists a source of inspiration from Lichtenstein to Tom Wesselman.
Urban Eroticism
The sexual revolution of the 1960' affected Pop Art by a new definition of the woman as a sexual symbol. This change of norm was directly brought by mass media that spread nudity and hedonism in pictural ads or TV advertising. Some artists such as Roy Lichsteiner, Allen Jones or Richard Lindner had found a new subject, the woman and her erotic symbol.
History Painting
Pop art has always claims to be representative of their time by their new form of art but also by their ability to put contemporary figure in their paintings. It was the case with Warhol as we all know but also for Rotella, Richter or Rauschenberg who look forward to reinterpret modern and past history with a new kind of iconography.
Art about Art
Pretty well done but your expression is spoiled by too many mistakes.
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