Pop Art originated in New York in the late 1950’s/early ‘60s, and intentionally subverted critical ideas of what constituted ‘art.’ Household objects and celebrities faces were the subjects:Suddenly, T.V. dinners and canned spaghetti, department store dresses and blue suede shoes, tailfins and tires were the subject of paintings and sculptures gracing the window fronts of art galleries.
Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and, most famously Andy Warhol were among the leading names of Pop Art. Most of the Pop Artists had previously worked in commercial advertising and printing. Printing presses were used to quickly produce hundreds of standardised images which could then be mass-distributed. Andy Warhol was one of the first to do this; instead of selling unique pieces of work for a high price, he preferred to produce multiple silk-screened copies which were sold for a low price but which together made up large profits. The ideas of mass and standardisation would be seen therefore both in the fact that one piece of art work contained dozens of cola bottles, and also that that piece was itself reproduced again and again.Therefore art became visible to greater sections of the population and to lower classes, because of its positioning images were seen in conjunction with advertising and printed on clothing and accessories, instead of hidden away in galleries and its content where as traditional fine or ‘high’ art requires some academic learning for the viewer to know the correct ways of appreciating it, tins of baked beans were recognisable to all and needed little interpretation.
Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and, most famously Andy Warhol were among the leading names of Pop Art. Most of the Pop Artists had previously worked in commercial advertising and printing. Printing presses were used to quickly produce hundreds of standardised images which could then be mass-distributed. Andy Warhol was one of the first to do this; instead of selling unique pieces of work for a high price, he preferred to produce multiple silk-screened copies which were sold for a low price but which together made up large profits. The ideas of mass and standardisation would be seen therefore both in the fact that one piece of art work contained dozens of cola bottles, and also that that piece was itself reproduced again and again.Therefore art became visible to greater sections of the population and to lower classes, because of its positioning images were seen in conjunction with advertising and printed on clothing and accessories, instead of hidden away in galleries and its content where as traditional fine or ‘high’ art requires some academic learning for the viewer to know the correct ways of appreciating it, tins of baked beans were recognisable to all and needed little interpretation.
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