Pop Art and Ideas
Target Audience
A2 Art Students who are interested in exploring the variety of ways in which Pop artists of the
1950’s and 60’s, dealt with social, economic and cultural themes in their work.
Key Concepts
Mass media, society, consumerism, kitsch, portrait, icon, celebrity, everyday, culture, music,
fashion, Hollywood, class, gender, identity, identification, advertising, brands, metamorphosis,
scale
The Activity
Choose two art works, produced by different Pop artists, and compare how they
represent the same cultural, social or economic theme
Background Knowledge
“Hard-core Pop Art is essentially a product of America’s
long-finned, big-breasted, one-born-every-minute
society, its advantages of being more involved with the
future that with the past"
Lucy R. Lippard, Pop Art, 1970
For this activity you will need to find out about the
development of Pop Art as a critical aspect of late 1950’s
and 1960’s culture, particularly in New York and London.
You will also need to take on board Pop Art’s creative
diversity and its distinct qualities in Britain, America and
Europe – recognising the social and economic
circumstances within which the art was produced. It
would also be useful for you to be aware of how Pop Art
emerged as an interesting reaction to modernist art
produced within and (arguably) for the exclusive art world
and market. The resources provided in this activity will
help you to do this.
Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1968.
Tate Gallery, London
Using this as a contextual background, you can then produce a response, from your own
perspective, that explores how two artworks, by different Pop artists, have approached the same
idea or theme.
Resources
There are a number of very rich and helpful online resources that cover some of the key themes
in this activity. The following list is a starting-point and will inevitably lead to more discoveries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art - Wikipedia entry on Pop Art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism - Wikipedia entry on Modernism
http://popartmachine.com/masters/ - Pop Art Masters
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http://www.independentgroup.org.uk/contributors/index.html - The Independent Group
http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue4/popdaddy.htm - ‘Pop Daddy’, Tate Magazine interview
with Richard Hamilton
http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/frames.htm - Roy Lichtenstein Foundation (contains
articles and images of public sculptures and murals)
http://www.warhol.org/ - The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/peterblake/ - Peter Blake: A retrospective (online
resource for the 2007 exhibition at Tate Liverpool – Includes an excellent hour-long video of
Tracey Emin interviewing Peter Blake)
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/showlist/movement/?search=Pop%20art - Pop Art at the Guggenheim, New York
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/years/60sindex.shtml - I Love the 1960’s (a BBC online resource
exploring various aspects of 1960’s culture – including some great video clips)
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/coldwar/ - National Archives, Cold War education resource
Outcomes
This activity can be used either for individual or group study. As a group activity, you could split
into two teams each looking at one art work, then come together to discuss and debate the
similarities and differences between your chosen images. Art historians and critics have often
been challenged by the lack of commonality between artists defined under the heading of ‘Pop’.
This exercise will certainly help you to explore these challenges, as well as possibly find ways to
make connections between artists. Your final response could be in the form of a presentation or
short essay. You might want to create a montage that allows you to illustrate how an artist has
drawn on artistic and visual precedents (eg art from prior movements or magazines). The goal
is to help your reader or listener, to understand how Pop Art engaged with contemporary life (as
well as other forms of art), in differing but also similar ways.
Helpful hints
It is important to remember that Pop Art was a product of its time – an aspect of a youthful and
optimistic culture and lifestyle that was antithetical to the sombre austerity of the immediate postwar years. As such ‘Pop’ served as an important mechanism for mass engagement with art and
culture. Here are a few further ideas for consideration:
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What impact do you think the cold war had on Pop Art and culture?
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What relationship did Pop Art have with other developing styles/ideas such as Op Art,
Kinetic Art and ‘Happenings’?
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Could Pop Art be seen as a critique or a celebration of the culture and society that it
drew its imagery and inspiration from?
What role does humour play in our interpretation or experience of Pop Art?
How did fashion, film and music influence Pop Art?
How did Pop artists utilise everyday objects in their work, and what impact did this have
on notions of the ‘unique’?
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Going further
In a paper entitled The Creative Act, delivered at the
Convention of the American Federation of the Arts (Houston
Texas) in 1957, Marcel Duchamp noted that:
“Art may be bad, good or indifferent, but whatever adjective
is used, we must still call it art… In the creative act the artist
goes from intention to realisation through a chain of totally
subjective reactions. His struggle towards the realisation is a
series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusal, decisions,
which also cannot and must not be fully self conscious – at
least on the aesthetic plane…” (Listen here:
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/audio5E.html )
Duchamp advocated that anything produced by an artist
should be considered art – an aesthetic and intellectual
challenge, which materialised in his famous ‘ready-mades’,
produced from 1915.
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917.
Photographed by Alfred Stieglitz
Duchamp’s ideology offers a way in which to approach an
understanding of Pop Art. ‘Pop’ eroded the boundaries between high and low art, and between
life and art. A Coke bottle had a place in the everyday, yet it could also be used, represented
and sold as art.
Duchamp noted of Pop Art that:
“Pop Art is a return to "conceptual" painting, virtually abandoned, except by the
Surrealists, since Courbet, in favour of retinal painting... If you take a Campbell soup can
and repeat it 50 times, you are not interested in the retinal image. What interests you is
the concept that wants to put 50 Campbell soup cans on a canvas.”
Would you agree?
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