Kings County, Calif Essay, Research Paper

Kings County, Calif. West Hills Community CollegePOP ARTArt Appreciation 52CONTENTSI.POP ART 4II.ANDY WARHOL 5III.DAVID HOCKNEY 7LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS1.Illustration 1 :Roy Lichtenstrin, Whamm!, Cover2.Illustration 2 :Andy Warhol, Cambell Soup Can 63.Illustration 3 David Hockney, A Bigger Splash 7 POP ART Art in which everyday objects and subjects are depicted with theflat naturalism of advertising or comic strips. 1. Pop Art, visual arts movement of the 1950s and 1960s,principally in the United States and Great Britain. The images ofpop art (shortened from popular art ) were taken from massculture. The term Pop Art was first by the critic LawrenceAlloway to describe those paintings that celebrate post-warconsumerism, defy the psychology of Abstract Expressionism, andworship the god of materialism.2 This was an art which hadnatural appeal to American artists, living in the midst of the mostblatant and pervasive industrial and commercial environment. Forthe American artist, once they realized the tremendouspossibilities of their everyday environment in the creation of newsubject matter, the result was generally more bold, aggressive,even overpowering, than in the case of their Europeancounterparts. Some artists duplicated beer bottles, soup cans,comic strips, road signs, and similar objects in paintings, collages,and sculptures. Others incorporated the objects themselves intotheir paintings or sculptures, sometimes in startlingly modifiedform. Materials of modern technology, such as plastic, urethanefoam, and acrylic paint, often figured prominently. As opposed tothe junk sculptors, the assemblage artists who have created theirworks from rubbish, the garbage, the refuge of modern industrialsociety, the pop artists deal principally with the new, the”store-bought,” the idealized vulgarity of advertising, of thesupermarket, and of television commercials. One of the mostimportant artistic movements of the 20th century, pop art not onlyinfluenced the work of subsequent artists but also had an impacton commercial, graphic, and fashion design.3American Pop art was first of all a major reaction againstabstract expressionism which had dominated painting in the UnitedStates during the later 1940s and 1950s. During the later 1950sthere were many indications that American painting would return toa new kind of figuration, a new humanism. Pop art brought art backto the material realities of everyday life, to popular culture in whichordinary people derived most of their visual pleasure fromtelevision, magazines, or comics. The paintings of Lichtenstein, and Warhol, share not onlyan attachment to the everyday, commonplace, or vulgar image ofthe modern industrial America, but also the treatment of this imagein an impersonal, neutral manner. They do not comment on thescene or attack it like social realist, nor do they exalt it like the admen. They seem to be saying simply that this is the world we livein, this is the urban landscape, these are the symbols, theinteriors, the still lifes that make up our own lives.Andy Warhol, (1928-1987)One of the greatest Pop Artist or more well known as adirect representation of pop culture is Andy Warhol. He was bornin 1928 and grew up during the depression and all the politicalshenanigans it had to offer during his life time(WW2, Watergate,Marilyn Monroe, etc.). Unfortunately his life ended in 1987, andno longer can he offer a fundamental yet understandable view onevery day life. He choose objects from daily American life as wellthe faces of entertainers and of others with household names assubjects for his pop art work. It made no difference if his subjectwas of a object or personality, they were an inherent part ofpostwar American culture Warhol s work advertised familiaraspects of post war America, yet according to him it did not intendto hold any hidden meaning, nor was it intended to criticize; thework of Andy Warhol was meant to simply express, in anunpersonal manner, how he perceived the world around him. His technique used to create his images was silkscreening(a mechanical process that allows images to berepeatedly endlessly). This machine-like element of thesilk-screen technique depicted appropriately the industrialized

postwar American culture which he had witnessed. Warhol hadexpressed it as a culture overburdened by disturbance thatseemed to be repeated and recreated. Warhol had choosepopular figures as subjects for an almost mass production ofimages, in a sense, dedicating his work his work to the worldaround him whose identity is comprised not only if these figures,but of technological advancements as well. In spite of his claimthat he is completely detached from his work and that he and hiswork are wholly on the surface, he did create some pieces whichseem to hold some type of deeper social commentary. Forexample, He manipulated his original silk-screen technique tocreate reverse images, to point more closely to the element ofdisturbance in postwar American culture. Essentially theyillustrated what he perceived as the dark side of fame. Similarlyhe seemed to comment on the intrusive nature of pop-cultureicons(i.e. Marilyn Monroe) in pieces such as Gold Marilyn, 1962. Eventually, Warhol began to create self-portraits using bothhis original silk-screening technique as well as his reversetechnique. this was an interesting choice of subject, and he mayhave decided to create this series of self-portraits because he wasrealizing his own role in pop culture. as an important pop artist,Warhol himself became a representation of pop culture, andtherefore an appropriate subject for his own work, Like the othertroubled personalities depicted in his various series of reversals,Warhol too encountered the hard ships of popularity. Hisreversals of himself revealed the dark, troubled aspects of hiscareer as a popular artist.4,5David Hockney, (1937- )English painter, draftsman, photographer, and set designer,known for his satirical paintings, his masterly prints and drawings,and his penetrating portraits of contemporary personalities.Technically, it is true to say that the Pop movement started withRichard Hamilton and David Hockney in England. Hockney’s earlywork made superb use of the popular magazine-style images onwhich much of Pop Art is based. However, when Hockney moved toCalifornia in the 1960s, he responded with such artistic depth to thesea, sun, sky, young men, and luxury that his art took on a whollynew, increasingly naturalistic dimension. His amazing success hasbeen based not only on the flair, wit, and versatility of his work, butalso on his colorful personality, which has made him a recognizablefigure even to people not particularly interested in art: His worksfrom the 1960s such as his series featuring Los Angeles swimmingpools and their denizens are painted in a bright and deliberatelynaive style, and their subject matter is drawn from popular culture. He has spent much of his time in the USA, and the Californianswimming pool has been one of his favorite themes. A BiggerSplash (1967, Tate Gallery, London) is one of his best-knownpaintings. It is simplistic rather than a simplified view of the world, itnevertheless creates a delightful interplay between the impassivepink verticals of a Los Angeles setting and the overflow of spray asthe unseen diver enters the pool. There is no visible humanpresence here, just that lonely, empty chair and a bare, almostfrozen world. Yet that wild white splash can only come from anotherhuman, and a great deal of Hockney’s psyche is involved in the mixof lucidity and confusion of this picture.6 Hockney’s wryness and wittogether with his talent for strong composition and design led him, atthe end of the 1960s, to a more naturalistic manner, particularly inhis portraits. His early paintings, often almost jokey in mood, gainedhim a reputation of leading Pop artist, although he himself rejectedthe label. In the late 1960s he turned to a weightier, moretraditionally representational manner, in which he has painted somestriking portraits (Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, Tate, London,1970-01). Although not fully realistic, these works painted in hispreferred style of flat acrylic paints and profuse finely drawnlines provide sensitive, often heightened, representations of theirsitters. Hockney’s notable designs for operatic productions, for boththe Glyndebourne Opera in England and for New York City’sMetropolitan Opera, have met with critical and popular favor. DavidHockney photographs (1982) is an exploration of the medium and apartial record of his life. Composite Polaroid pictures, called joiners,such as Henry Moore (1982), are another example of Hockney’sphotographic work.7