A short background ...

At the end of the 2nd world war in 1945, the US experienced not only a post-war economic boom but also ″The Baby Boom″. Nearly 76 million babies were born in America between 1945 and 1957.

Pop Art comes from and is inspired by the people, places, things and events happening in popular culture. As such, it can be found in the different forms of mass media: packaging, television, advertisements, comic books, etc. The purpose of Pop Art was to challenge tradition. It attempted to break down the barriers between high art and contemporary culture. It believes in the concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source.

Pop Art′s colors don′t reflect the artists′ inner sensation of the world. Instead, there colors refer to the popular culture.

CHARACTERISTICS OF POP ART

The predominant colors used in Pop Art are yellow, red and blue. The colors used were vivid. It employed images of popular culture, emphasizing ordinary elements of any culture, usually through the use of irony.

Utilizing commercial art techniques made it easy for pop artists to mass-produce.

Material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated or combined with unrelated material.

SOME INFLUENTIAL DESIGNERS

Wes Wilson

He was one of the best-known designers of psychedelic posters. He is known for inventing and popularizing a psychedelic font around 1966 that made the letters lkook like they were moving or melting.

Roy Lichtenstein

He developed a style using bold colors, black outlines, and tones rendered by ben-day dots. These were the methods of printing tones in comic books during the 1950′s and the 1960′ss.

Andy Warhol

He became the most famous American pop artist when he used silkscreen to paint commercial objects such as Campbell′ss soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles and for portraying major celebrities like Marilyn Monroe.

POP ART VS. TRADITIONAL ART

Pop Art critics, mostly art authorities of the 60′ss and 70′ss, think that Andy Warhol′ss works were boringly “unoriginal″s and ″scommercial″s. Their greatest objection is coming from pop artists′s lack of pedigree and training. That doesn′st seem to be stopping the popularity of Pop Art though.

Today, Pop Art is everywhere, in all forms of mass media and now even in the social media. Logos, banners, posters, graphic icons, you name it. Pop Art is widely used not just because it can be mass produced and reproduced digitally and in print, but also because it is easily ″sconsumed″s by the public.