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The History Of Pop Art As An Art Movement

Decent Essays

Pop Art is an art movement that started sometime during the 1950’s and 60’s, it is said that it emerged first in the United Kingdom and slowly made its way to the United States. It incorporates popular everyday symbols such as Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonalds or any other company conglomerate. Before pop art, art was being held to some crazy standards such as that an art piece had to be unique, one of a kind ,deeply contemplative or philosophical; however, people argued that this made art highly elitist and inaccessible to the masses. America during the 1950’s was in an era where film, television, advertisements and mass produced imagery on magazines, comic books and news stands which allowed for these images to be burned into the collective conscious minds of your average American because of these media. The American culture undoubtedly began to be shaped by celebrities, consumer products and huge corporate brands. Artists of this time recognized this trend and wanted to reflect this newly developed reality and began to highlight the mass production and sensational nature of the mainstream media. Take the famous pop art artists himself, Andy Warhol, for example, making multiple copies of the same photograph over and over or Claes Oldenburg’s overt larger than life depictions of decadence and food consumption. Whether these artists did it intentionally or not, they called into question many of the established values of art. Pop artists also brought attention to how other

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