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Pop Art: Twenty-Five Colored Marilyns, And Drowning Girl

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With each new decade, a new method of self expression comes in the form of fashion, or music or art. Starting in the 1950s, Britain and the US erupted with excitement over a new art form that challenged all previous art forms by utilizing graphics from modern culture and advertising. The purpose of this new art form, known as “pop art”, is to expose basic and unoriginal ideas within society. Pop art could be considered satire in art form. Many people believe this critical form of art was the artists responding to the abstract expressionist era. Two very influential aspects in the pop art movement were Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and their works.
Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Being the third child to a …show more content…

Two influential works in the pop art movement were Twenty-Five Colored Marilyns, by Andy Warhol, and Drowning Girl by Roy Lichtenstein. Warhol’s painting was created using a silkscreen and oil based paint. This work was composed of a single photograph Marilyn Monroe reproduced twenty-five times, each with unique colors and levels of clarity. Because the painting surfaced so quickly after the actress’s untimely death, many believe Warhol was mocking society’s obsession with celebrities and wanted to expose the stars for what they really were: human. Marilyn was America’s definition of glamour and sex appeal, so by making her the center of the piece, Andy encouraged people to carefully consider these qualities in themselves. Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl was a spin off of a popular comic strip. The original featured a woman’s boyfriend standing above her in a boat as she drowned. To create a more dramatic image, Roy includes only the woman’s face in his work, along text that reads, “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!” The text Lichtenstein chose to use in his works was very influential in the overall meaning of the image. Imitating this common component of commercial art challenged the view of “true” art in that time

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