Pop Art Research Paper

Pop Art is defined as art based on modern popular culture and the mass media, especially as a critical or ironic comment on traditional fine art values. “To Americans, Pop Art was an artistic manifestation which reflected their own culture.” (Elmaleh 1) Many artists or writers will take normal, everyday things in nature, and will turn them into brighter things. This was considered to be a new movement because it was right after the war, so it was a darker time period. Throughout the text, Joe Hill tried to convey many things with his short story about Art using his own culture and what he knew, but I think the most obvious message that he tried to convey is emotion.

The use of assemblage and the found object in Pop Art practice became an artistic trend and is exemplified by Robert Rauschenberg where he combines installations with the assemblage of large physical objects and commercial photography to form ‘Combine’ in 1963. Rauschenberg

Impactful across the globe, both Dada and Surrealism were artistic movements created in the early 20th century that were significant in redefining modern art today. The Dada movement came about in 1916 through the performance of Hugo Ball’s sound poem “Karawane” at the Cabaret Voltaire that he opened with his partner, nightclub singer Emmy Hennings, in Zurich, Switzerland. The poem made absolutely no sense, purposely, and it didn’t have to. Ball would also dress in wild costumes for his performances as seen below:

Post-war Japanese society is a world where High and Low art is blurred together by otaku, such as anime, and social class. However, Takashi Murakami straddles the line. Murakami spills a mix of Nihanga and Otaku into the canvases, plastic toys, handbags, shoes, etc; endorsing his own theory/style named “Superflat”. Using strategical subject matter such as popular Japanese comic figures combined with ukiyo-e(traditional Japanese block prints), and addressing these contrasting qualities to outside cultures; Murakami intensifies what Pop Art accomplished, art versus material. On other feelings, one could argue that “Superflat” isn’t a unique, Japan-identified style, that “Superflat” is a humiliation to the Contemporary Art world because of its commercialism. Lastly, that is a continuation of the already well developed Pop Art. On the supporting side, Murakami’s “Superflat” is a high-energy, cross-culture style that serves as a new way to represent the high and low of art that is considerably unique to Japan. To support this, Murakami’s past and present artwork will have to be established chronologically to illustrate how the timeline affects his work.

The Pop art movement was a movement that begun in Britain and the United States amid the mid-to late 1950s. The movement threw fine art out the window and ushered a new era of art by including symbolism from popular cultures like advertising, comic books and cultural objects. Its principle point is to utilize ideas from well-known art cultures underlining one primary message regularly by the utilization of incongruity. This art movement is considered a reaction to the ideas of abstract expressionism.

Eduardo Paolozzi played an immeasurable role in the artistic development of the Independent Group (IG) in England in the 1950s and 1960s. Through his collages, prints, and sculptures, Paolozzi shaped the proto-pop movement in England by reacting to mass consumer culture and modernity as it was perceived to be advancing in the United States. As Lawrence Alloway argues, “Since 1953, Paolozzi has pursued the human in art,” connecting dissimilar objects, themes, and image sources to form new and evocative relationships between images (Alloway 1956, p. 29). My research focused in particular on his collage pieces, a fundamental medium and philosophy that stimulated both his own development as an artist, the ideas of the Independent Group, and the

Dada was an artistic and literary movement, this arose as a reaction to World War one. Many citizens believed that Dada was actually the cause of World War one, this movement likes to take the form of ‘anti-art’. Therefore, how you can claim everything is art but in reality, nothing is art. For example, take the painting ‘Fountain’ by a Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp it is a readymade painting of an unused urinal. Which is basically implying that he rejected art and thought that we should focus on the artist 's idea more rather than it being crafted. Therefore, using a urinal and labelling it as ‘art’, get’s Duchamp’s point across that a work of art should be the artists idea instead of it being crafted. When looking at Dadaism by Tristan Tzara, there were some interesting quotes. For example, “Like everything in life, Dada is useless. Dada is without pretension, as life should be.” (Tzara, 1918). This quote intrigues me, as Tzara is stating that all art is useless and that Dada is pretension and that is how life should be. This can be used as an example of how Dadaism was inspired by

Although the dominance of Pop Art was evident throughout the 1960’s to the 1980’s, its roots took hold in the late 1940’s. Eduardo Paolozzi, a British artist, may have inadvertently fathered the Pop Art culture. Paolozzi’s collage, “I was a Rich Man’s Plaything (1947)” was merely a composition of American magazine advertisements that he received from former servicemen, however, it resulted in providing new insight and inspiration to generations of future artists. Incidentally, Paolozzi’s piece was interestingly dubbed “POP” by British art critic Lawrence Alloway in 1954. His series of “Bunk Art” (short for bunkum or slang for nonsense) captured an ironic satire of the all-American lifestyle, and undoubtedly opened the door for “Pop Art” to evolve as a style.

Dada was a ‘crusade in order to win back the promise land of creativity’ (Berghaus, 2005). Dada, as a movement, did not only take form of inspiring art, but it was a protest, to test the bourgeois society. Dada, as movement has a rampant and wild allure about it. The way in which it was approached and is approached today is similar in a sense of strength and power. In his manifesto Tzara is clear that ‘dada was born of a need of independence’ (Tzara, 1918), this does not only imply that there was no independence in terms of art, but also that Constructivism needed to be moved forward. In Tristen Tzara’s Dadaist Manifesto he does not only have a fighting attitude toward Dada, but also has resilient opinion on the

Dada. It is a non-art movement that is perhaps one of the hardest to explain. In this exhibition we will look at dada – from its beginnings, through to artists that are now obviously influenced by dada. What does non-art mean? Dada’s central thesis seems to be a rebellian against cultural norms, surprising and intriguing audiences while creating experiences that are utterly absurd and nonsensical. It has evolved into familiar forms of visual art, literature, poetry and graphic design seen today. Dada was born by rejecting the standard for art at the time (Arty Factory).

In the late 1960’s, Pop art and Minimalism began to displace Abstract Expressionism. Almost immediately, however, artists started to question the rigidity of Minimalism and the

Dada was a creative movement that emerged as a responsive protest to the barbarity of World War I. A reaction to the horrors of humanity that were on display at war, followers of the movement strongly believed in a form of ‘anti-art’ that ridiculed the established art institutions. Two established artists of this time were Marcel Duchamp and Erik Satie, who are often looked at as heavy influences on this style. Their works “L.H.O.O.Q” and “Parade” are strong examples of the disruptive nature of this movement, and how Dada was an extreme rejection of traditional forms of art, often somewhat insulting to traditional arts.

Dada was a radical art movement started in 1914 and ended in the mid 1920’s mainly in the North Atlantic. It was created as a form of protest against World War 1 by immigrants who wanted to express a new kind of mentality in the world of art and politics at the time. Dada was the reaction and rejection of traditional society and the atrocities of World War 1 by artist of that era. It reflected their desire to oppose convention and boundaries and establish art in a new light, breaking down stereotypes and forcing people’s perception of art to be broadened.

The yBa movement is said to establish new ideas of Britishness in a postmodern world. Yet, Mercer goes so far as to say that the movement is in part a reaction to the attempt to globalize the British art world: "At this stage it is precisely the discrepancy between parochial yBa inwardness and the art world internatialism that obliges us to interrogate the ideology of New British Art as a defensive, and, above all, regressive response to the bewildering effects of globalization" The 'important art' (as seen by Saatchi and The Tate) returns to a concern with British identity that fails to comment on how diversity has changed that identity. By turning inward as a reaction to globalization, British art regresses and fuels a return to 'white dominance.' As a result, multicultural art lacking Western referents become suppressed.

Dada was a reaction to the brutality and destruction of world war one and was completely opposed to the fundamental values of nationalism, bourgeoise and of the construct of society as a whole. The movement was shocking and at times abrasive, as the artists - like Hannah Höch below - wanted to disgust and outrage the audience. The work shown here is clearly expressing the destruction of war and the broken fragments it has left behind. There is a stark bitterness and despondence in the work, due to the chosen colour palette as well as the meticulously placed newspaper trimmings conveying Höch’s condemnation of the nationalist belief in war and violence.