Changes during the “Pop Art” Movement
“Pop art” was a 20th century art movement that utilized consumerism and popular culture.
Andy Warhol, for example, changed the imagery of everyday objects, as well as entertainment figures, through distorted shapes, sizes, and bold colors. As the decades passed, the style of “pop art” slightly changed as well. Later artists, such as Tom Wesselmann and Allen Jones presented their subject matter in a more shocking perspective. Women, and more specifically their bodies, were often the target of graphic manipulation. This sexual presentation was seen as pleasurable entertainment for male viewers, as much past artworks often did. This paper will attempt to explain the changes made during the “pop art” movement, in addition to the specific roles women played in pop art.
First, we must discuss what is “pop art”? “Pop art,” as defined by the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, is a movement that emerged at the end of the 1950s as a reaction against the seriousness of abstract expressionism. (Encyclopedia.com) The term “Pop” stands for “popular art” or even for “pop bottle art, depending on the frequency with which such everyday objects appeared. The movement as a whole originated in England in the fifties and then naturally spread to the United States.
This movement resulted as images were made popular through mass-media advertising and comic strips, and other everyday objects, such as pop bottles, beer cans, and other supermarket products. The images were then presented in bizarre combinations, distortions, or exaggerations in size. The original human-made object is always kept in its true form in some way. (Art Fundamentals, 305)
The introduction of American Pop art resulted in a major reaction against abstract expressionism, which had dominated painting in the United States during the later 1940s and 1950s. During the later 1950s, there were many indications that American painting would return to a new kind of figuration. Pop art brought art back to the material realization of everyday life, to popular culture in which ordinary people derived most of their visual language in what perceived to be the real world of shopping, movie stars, and car advertisements.
The term “pop art” was first used by Lawrence Alloway, a well-known critic of the art period. He used the term to describe th...
... middle of paper ...
...f women was again displayed through Warhol’s artwork. His series of Marilyns became not surprisingly popular after her death in 1962. The Twenty-Five Marilyns is a perfect representation of this new representational style of women.
As “pop art” developed more, so did the types of subject matter that became associated with “pop art.” The mid-1960s introduced artists such as Allen Jones who steered away from everyday objects as his focus of subject matter. He was notorious for outraging feminists, as his subject matter depicted women in scenes of bondage and subjugation. (Packer)
This new representation of women in “pop art” was shocking to the public eye. In past art styles, women’s bodies were often positioned in a way that was pleasing to the male viewer.
Works cited
1. Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Pop art. 1994
http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/10405.html.
2. Ocvirk, Otto G., et al. Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice. Boston:
McGraw Hill, 1998.
3. Packer, William. “Tragi-comic Battle of the Sexes.” London: Financial Times,
September 27, 1999.
4. Perry, Gill. Gender and Art. Yale University Press, 1999. 229-239
Gallery 19 of the Museum of Modern Art features Pop Art trailblazers of the early 1960s, ranging from Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl with Ball” to Andy Warhol’s “Gold Marilyn Monroe.” Alongside these emblematic works of art, there hangs a more simplistic piece: a six foot square canvas with three yellow letters, entitled “OOF.” The work of art, created by Ed Ruscha in 1962, is a painting that leaves little room for subjective interpretation as does the majority of his work. Ruscha represented the culture in the 1960s through his contributions to the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, efforts to redefine what it meant for a painting to be fine art, and interpretation of the Space Race.
Pop Art was a Modern art movement that emerged durring the mid-twentieth century in both England and America. It first began to gain recognition in the early 1950’s, after about twenty years of Abstract, as artists altered their attention and looked to change. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Pop Art became much more popular to the general public and successful for the movement’s artists due to the world growing tired of the repeditive forms of Abstract. Found in the Menil Collection, Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster are two examples of Pop Art. The comparison of these two pieces shows although they differ in medium and subject matter both Seated Woman and Lavender Disaster share common underlying themes possesed by all Pop Art.
The earliest forms of art had made it’s mark in history for being an influential and unique representation of various cultures and religions as well as playing a fundamental role in society. However, with the new era of postmodernism, art slowly deviated away from both the religious context it was originally created in, and apart from serving as a ritual function. Walter Benjamin, a German literary critic and philosopher during the 1900’s, strongly believed that the mass production of pieces has freed art from the boundaries of tradition, “For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependance on ritual” (Benjamin 1992). This particular excerpt has a direct correlation with the work of Andy Warhol, specifically “Silver Liz as Cleopatra.” Andy Warhol’s rendition of Elizabeth Taylor are prime examples of the shift in art history that Benjamin refers to as the value of this particular piece is based upon its mass production, and appropriation of iconic images and people.
The ineffective advertisement formulated by the Popchip brand used the music pop icon Katy Perry as a figurehead to degrade the female body image to promote air popped chips. Using a talented widely known artist to exhibit the sexual fascination of breasts to entice a male audience may had been the focus of this advertisement; however, there is a massive problem. The main issue surrounds how a woman is perceived by the general public and what makes a woman truly feminine. The discrepancy that advertisements promote are the unfair and impossible ways an average person may be in the real world. The expectations of an average woman are based upon the idea of perfection, sexuality, and favorable visual concepts of modern design.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
The Art Deco movement had its beginnings in Paris, at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs which was a showcase for new inspiration and was initially meant to advertise the authority of the French in the creation and manufacturing of luxury goods. With a small, yet faithful following from the early 20th century, Art Deco evolved from nationalism, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Classism, and modernism, and flourished after World War 1, achieving global popularity between the two world wars, primarily in the jazz age of the roaring 20's and 30's. As a result of a civilization ravaged by war and the deprivation and poverty that follows war, intertwined with the hopefulness of the machine age and the new women's liberation
I had the opportunity to take the focus group participants responses on expectations of characteristics and types of support offered by a coach or mentor at ECPI in Newport News, Virginia. Both teachers I interviewed had similar expectations of a good mentor and the support that was expected when they started their instructor careers. The two areas I will reflect on are the teaching practices that the college coaches shared with the two teachers and the conceptual framework that guided the teachers throughout the mentoring partnership process. The teaching practice discussed was The Big Four and the Conceptual Framework consisted of the teacher’s experiences with valuing diversity, technology integration, and practicing professional ethics in the classroom.
One of the first sources I examined was a web site on Pop Art. The
The twentieth century has witnessed many transformations in the ways we produce and respond to works of art. It has seen the rise of altogether new media, approaches, and a wealth of new interpretative frameworks. The emergence of manufactured goods, modernism, and a ubiquitous mass culture contribute to the upheaval, in the 1960’s and 70’s, of established art practices and approaches. Pop Art emerges as an important response to, extension of, or parody of what Clement Greenberg called “Ersatz culture” and “kitsch”, which, to paraphrase Greenberg, represent the omnipresent abominations of commercial and replicated art (Greenberg 9). This essay will observe and discuss the interaction of Canadian pop culture, art, and identity in Joyce Wieland’s “O Canada (Animation)”, and will underline how works of Pop Art serve to elevate kitsch into “a new state of aesthetic dignity” (Eco 228).
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, in modern southeast Germany. He grew up in a middle-class family with his parents, Hans and Margarette Luther. His father, who was of peasant lineage and worked as a copper miner, wanted his son to become a lawyer. Thus, Luther enrolled in school at the age of seven and continued his studies through adolescence. In 1501, he entered the University of Erfurt, where he earned a Master of Arts degree and subsequently began law school in 1505. ...
People decided to rebel against the political and social rules of their time and started a new trend of art. It conveyed dramatic subjects perceived with strong feelings and imagination.
Pop art got its name from Lawrence Alloway, who was a British art critic in 1950’s. The name “Pop Art” reflected on the “familiar imagery of the contemporary urban environment” (kleiner, 981). This art form was popular for its bold and simple looks plus its bright and vibrant colors. An example of this type of art is the oil painting done by Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Diptych” (Warhol, Marilyn Diptych) in 1962. The Pop art movement became known in the mid-1950 and continued as main type of art form until the late 1960’s. The Pop art movement, was a movement where medium played a huge part in the society, with it reflecting on advertisements, comic strips and even celebrities, like Marilyn. This movement also has a large background and artist that are deeply connected.
Based on my research and class experience with Mime, the Art of Mime is a way to express the feelings and emotions of a character though movements and facial expressions without the use of speech. Today Mime is an important technique used in acting due to the movements and expressions used to create a specific essence. It is important to learn mime because it shows actors that movements are important and is vital to create a feeling or reaction portrayed by a character.
Cognitive developmental theorists in educational learning, such as Paiget, assist in the understanding of why some gifted students underachieve during adolescence. Such theorists contend that gifted students have faster and more vigorous cognitive movements during this period of growth that involve higher stages of development and are beyond formal operational thought (Cohen L.M, 1993). For example, the gifted student may have the ability to process new learning at faster rates, show deeper emotional sensitivity and understand complex concepts more easily than their peers. Such facto...
During the 19th century, a great number of revolutionary changes altered forever the face of art and those that produced it. Compared to earlier artistic periods, the art produced in the 19th century was a mixture of restlessness, obsession with progress and novelty, and a ceaseless questioning, testing and challenging of all authority. Old certainties about art gave way to new ones and all traditional values, systems and institutions were subjected to relentless critical analysis. At the same time, discovery and invention proceeded at an astonishing rate and made the once-impossible both possible and actual. But most importantly, old ideas rapidly became obsolete which created an entirely new artistic world highlighted by such extraordinary talents as Vincent Van Gogh, Eugene Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Claude Monet. American painting and sculpture came around the age of 19th century. Art originated in Paris and other different European cities. However, it became more popular in United States around 19th century.