pop art canvas

The Pop Art is a visual art movement that began in the 1950s in England and reached its full expression in the late 1950's in the United States. The term ``Pop Art'' (pop, from popular) was coined by an English critic Lawrence Alloway in a 1958 issue of the Architectural Digest in an article describing paintings that defied the psychology of Abstract Expressionism, celebrated post-World War II consumerism, and worshiped the god of materialism.

Pop Art as a Movement

As an art movement Pot Art rivals Cubism in its extraordinary influence on modern art as we know it today. Both movements were born out of rebellion against prevailing accepted styles: Cubism found Post-Impressionist art tame and limited and Pop Art thought Abstract Expressionism pretentious and overly intense.

Pop Art not only gave art back to the average public but glorified the material realities of everyday life and popular culture. Ordinary people weren't spending their leisure time in museums and art galleries, but derived most of their visual pleasure from television, magazines, or comics. Pop Art did much to involve younger people and people of all classes in the previously rarified world of art by simply making the art about what was of most interest to them.

The emergency of Pop Art coincided with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and '60s, and became very much a part of the image of fashionable New York and London.Pop artists, writers and musicians in England and the US shared common interests in the urban, consumer, modern experience. Pop artists created works that commented on modern life - often humorously, critically, or ironically.

Pop Art as a Style

Pop Art helped to close the gap between the uptown "high art" and the downtown "low art" and eliminate the distinction between fine art and commercial art methods. Photography, film, silk print, offset printing, cartoon drawing, and other commercial printing methods were used.

Subjects portrayed were popular images and icons taken from newspaper and magazine advertising and product packaging or from celebrities and comic book heroes. A distinctive example of this is Andy Warhol's "production line" images of Marilyn Monroe using a silk screen process.