The pop art movement began during the 1950s and 1960s in Britain and the United States, evolving around media products. Artwork derived from popular culture became one of America’s leading art movements of the 20th century.
The artwork, based on packaging, television, advertising, movies, and even comic books, has long helped break down the barriers between high art and mass culture. Shortly after World War II, America was rapidly becoming a culture of commercial manipulation, exhibitionism, and instant success. These traits made him a perfect target for artists looking to poke fun at the serious nature of the art world while simultaneously mirroring society as they saw it.
While in Britain pop artists took a more romantic approach, in America the results were often more blatant; like Claes Oldenburg’s giant binoculars and steering wheels. Originally considered a counterattack to Abstract Expressionism, the Pop Art movement usurped the France-based Dada movement, which considers its battle against intellectual art and never looked back.
Like Dada before, the pop art movement used common elements as its theme and artists preferred commercial methods of production, thus allowing unlimited reproductions of the art. As the era of commercial uniformity approached, pop art spread creating superstars like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein, to name just a few.
Pop art combines its bright, expendable, mass-produced, low-cost nature to encourage big bucks and bright lights to call. Some question whether pop art is a serious comment on the contemporary condition or simply a “humorless joke.” Traditional art critics may try to tell you what is and what is not folk art, but in the end the decision is entirely up to you.
The accessibility of pop art makes almost everyone want to create a pop artist. And while pop art has long spawned many different subcategories and new and unusual media; everything returns to art for, of and by the masses. With each generation, America seems to become more youth-oriented, almost certainly guaranteeing the future of pop art and its witty, young, sexy, and sophisticated works. The big business that is pop art is strengthened by the ongoing homogenization of America and the blurring of the lines between art, popular culture, and commercialism.
Although many pop artists still display their works in galleries, it can be said that pop art can be found within their McDonalds Happy Meal. Popular culture and the art that represents it grows at an exponential rate each year, as do most aspects of life on this earth. So what is pop art and where is it headed? well, in the words of an art critic, “I don’t know art, but I know what I like and I like this.”