Pop art was an art movement that developed in the USA and Great Britain in the late 1950’s. Pop art is one of the most exotic forms of expressions in art, ranking high up there with Dadaism with which it shares some similarities. So, what is pop art, how did such a unusual form of representation came to be known art. Furthermore, pop art is considered to be a very important link at the transition between modernism and post-modernism. Andy Warhol, one of the most important representatives of pop art managed to obtain worldwide fame with pictures depicting soup cans or soup boxes, which isn’t a likely subject for art. So let’s see how this is possible and what impact did pop art have on our society.

1.        Pop art employs aspects of mass culture. Pop art is probably the first art movement to take its subject form popular culture, where the term of pop art actually derives from. Comic books, advertising or any other mundane cultural objects could become subjects of pop art paintings. The idea behind pop art was to put these everyday objects inspired from what we see around us in our modern lifestyle, in a new situation, to make us look at them thru a new perspective. Collage was used often by pop art artists, and the strange connections formed between the subjects, conduced towards a different understanding of their nature. Pop art uses popular rather than elitist subjects in its art and emphasizes the kitschy or banal elements of a certain culture, employing irony to its full extent. Pop art is made out of pop culture but it is aimed towards elites.

2.        Pop art is a reaction to Abstract Expressionism.  The understanding of pop art can’t be complete without an appropriate knowledge about the context from which it formed. In the early 1950, Abstract Expressionism was the dominant movement in art. It relied heavily on the personal style of the artist. It was considered elitist because the subject was abstract, it had no meaning on its own, and it only had meaning thru the eyes of the viewer, who gave it his own connotation depending on his own experience. This very abstract incredibly hard to quantify, elitist movement spawned a big response in the form of pop art and Dadaism. Pop art denounced the abstract in the paintings of the abstract expressionists, and went back to representational art, with a big emphasis being placed on composition. The only difference between pop art and other representational art lies in the subjects they chose. Pop art is meant to be satirical and ironical, a response to some excesses that we can see everywhere in our modern society. But pop art didn’t go as far as Dadaism. Dadaism was anarchical, satirical and destructive, while pop art chose a different approach, a detached contemplation of the subjects of mass culture. To understand what is pop art you must take a look on what was going on in the artistic world when the movement originated.

3.        Pop art had different origins in the USA and in Great Britain. In the US it came as a response to the de facto way of life, to the cultural symbols that were invading the consumer. Also it was more virulent when it comes to the attack on expressionists who were actually the first artistic movement that put the USA on the map. The rebellion against the abstract, against the painterly loneliness of the Abstract Expressionists, combined with the aggressive style thru which advertising influenced popular culture, made the pop art movement lash out by using mundane objects in a bid to cast a new light on culture in general thru the use of irony. In Great Britain however, pop art came as a reaction to the perception of the American culture. Pop art in Great Britain was fueled by American cultural symbols viewed from afar, with a subtle sense of irony meant to emphasize how the paradoxical and dynamic imagery of American popular culture was disrupting entire patterns of life. So what is pop art? For Americans it is a rebellion against the fame of the Abstract Expressionists, while in Great Britain it was the reaction towards the American lifestyle.   

Pop art was an artistic movement based on negating its precursor. Having said that, pop art had artistic merit on its own, thru the fact that it made us look at common cultural objects thru a new light. So, what is pop art other than what its name tells us already: popular art? Well it is art made from the most unlikely subjects out there, but with a very academic underling layer, which made it very appealing to the elite.   

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