# data[].attributes.headline
Pop Art and the Celebrity Crush: One Monroe... One Hundred and Fifty Monroes

# data[].attributes.subject
Pop Art and the Celebrity Crush: One Monroe... One Hundred and Fifty Monroes

# data[].attributes.body
Pop Art was fascinated with popular culture. In the 1960s Marilyn Monroe was certainly apart of popular culture and was often the main subject in many pieces of art. If Marilyn Monroe was at the center of pop culture during these times, then what would be a better portrait than that of Marilyn Monroe? Maybe a portrait of one hundred and fifty Marilyn Monroes.

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol joined the movement by painting comic strip characters and images. His inspiration for these images came from popular culture. His work consisted of Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, and paintings of celebrities. His art piece titled One Hundred and Fifty Multicolored Marilyns is a great example of pop art. From this piece it is easy to see that the work was different. The work was different and it was inspired by Marilyn Monroe, who is still inspiring artists these days. This artwork may symbolize Warhol’s reflection of his own mortality. The thick application of paint appears to be a more devastating version of this portrait than earlier portraits of the subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One Hundred and Fifty Multicolored Marilyns | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions.

# data[].attributes.body
Pop art derives from popular culture. This is a pretty memorable definition as we see popular in the name pop art. So popular culture is what inspires pop art and this type of art took off in the United States in the 1960s. The styles and techniques were based on massive types of media during this time frame. So this would include simple pieces like billboards, pulp magazines, movies, television, comic strips, and shop windows. These pieces of art were not always in support of the pieces that they were based on. They could be used to promote and celebrate popular culture, or to tear down and critique popular culture. Pop art became popularized in 1960 in the United States, but it is important to note that it was actually pioneered in the mid-1950s in London.

This video is a good resource that provides a brief introduction to Pop Art.

# data[].attributes.body
As stated previously in the introduction to pop art, pop art was pioneered in the mid-1950s in London. Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi were some of the original pioneers of this style of art followed by Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Peter Phillips. Artists that helped lift off the movement of this type of art in the United States were Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann.

Important names to remember from these influencers will be Richard Hamilton and Claes Oldenburg, as they will be some of the prime focuses of this study.

# data[].attributes.body
Claes Oldenberg studied at Yale University with a focus on art history and literature. After school he opened up a studio where he created magazine illustrations and easel paintings. His rise to fame came when he moved to New York and met other prominent artists. His range of artwork stood out to most viewers as some of his art include monstrous human beings while other pieces of art included typical everyday objects that were made out of a mix of drawings, paper-mache, and photo collages. In 1962, he was actually recognized as a Pop artist as the movement began to progress. He continued his work in this field and his work continues to fascinate and inspire.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Freighter and Sailboat | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions.

# data[].attributes.body
Richard Hamilton attended the Royal Academy Schools , London, in the years of 1938-1940 and 1945. 1945 actually appeared to be his last year at the school as he was expelled from the school. After more studies and work experience like going into military service, teaching, and attending more schools, he found himself teaching design in various schools between 1952 and 1966. He was also a member of the Independent Group in the Contemporary Arts, London, which focused on how new technologies and mass culture could play a role in creating visual art. He was recognized in 1956 for his contributions to art in his collage titled “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956). This appears to have been the very first work of Pop Art which consisted of modernist iconography that was pulled from mass-circulation magazines. Following this, Hamilton continued his work in the arts winning many awards and stamping his place in history as one of pop art’s most influential artists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Solomon R. Guggenheim | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions.

# data[].attributes.body
Claes shows his expertise in everyday objects like what is depicted here. Prior to Pop Art, artists would overlook the everyday object like the telephone. Claes saw these objects as extensions of the bodies and used them to convey powerful messages. Claes had a sense of humor as well and felt that everyday objects like food, telephones, toys, and knickknacks were valuable tools of expression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Soft Pay-Telephone | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions.

# data[].attributes.body
Richard Hamilton used new media to expand the boundaries of Pop Art. As seen in Four Self-Portraits, Hamilton uses four different portraits of himself to create a single art piece. Self-portraits have come a long way to arrive at this particular piece. Albrect Durer painted a self portrait of himself, personifying himself as a Christ figure. If Richard Hamilton’s goal was making himself look perfect, he fell pretty short. Instead Hamilton is trying to show four different portraits of himself that tell a different story. In this case Hamilton is using something ordinary like a portrait to tell multiple stories. The most interesting aspect of this piece is the imperfection itself. Hamilton has scribbled paint all over each of his portraits and yet the desired message of each portrait can be seen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Richard William Hamilton CH (24 February 1922 – 13 September 2011) was an English painter and collage artist. His 1955 exhibition Man, Machine and Motion (Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) and his 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, are considered by critics and historians to be among the earliest works of pop art. A major retrospective of his work was at Tate Modern until May 2014.

Hamilton was born in Pimlico, London on February 24, 1922. Despite having left school with no formal qualifications, he managed to gain employment as an apprentice working at an electrical components firm, where he discovered an ability for draughtsmanship and began to do painting at evening classes at Saint Martin's School of Art and at the Westminster School of Art. In 1938, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts.

After spending the World War II working as a technical draftsman, he re-enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools but was expelled in 1946 on grounds of "not profiting from the instruction". Loss of his student status forced Hamilton to carry out National Service. After two years at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, Hamilton began exhibiting his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), where he also produced posters and leaflets. He taught at the Central School of Art and Design from 1952 until 1966.

Hamilton's early work was much influenced by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1917 text On Growth and Form. In 1952, at the first Independent Group meeting, held at the ICA, Hamilton was introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi's seminal presentation of collages produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s that are now considered to be the first standard bearers of Pop Art. Also in 1952, he was introduced to the Green Box notes of Marcel Duchamp through Roland Penrose, whom Hamilton had met at the ICA. At the ICA, Hamilton was responsible for the design and installation of a number of exhibitions including one on James Joyce and The Wonder and the Horror of the Human Head that was curated by Penrose. It was also through Penrose that Hamilton met Victor Pasmore who gave him a teaching post based in Newcastle Upon Tyne which lasted until 1966. Among the students Hamilton tutored at Newcastle in this period were Rita Donagh, Mark Lancaster, Tim Head, Roxy Music founder Bryan Ferry and Ferry's visual collaborator Nicholas de Ville. Hamilton's influence can be found in the visual styling and approach of Roxy Music. He described Ferry as "his greatest creation". Ferry repaid the compliment, naming him in 2010 as the living person he most admired, saying "he greatly influenced my ways of seeing art and the world".

Hamilton gave a 1959 lecture, "Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound", a phrase taken from a Cole Porter lyric in the 1957 musical Silk Stockings. In that lecture, which sported a pop soundtrack and the demonstration of an early Polaroid camera, Hamilton deconstructed the technology of cinema to explain how it helped to create Hollywood’s allure. He further developed that theme in the early 1960s with a series of paintings inspired by film stills and publicity shots.

This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The full text of the article is here →

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Richard Hamilton - 65 artworks - painting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Richard Hamilton lived in the XX - XXI cent., a remarkable figure of British Pop Art. Find more works of this artist at Wikiart.org - best visual art database.

# data[].attributes.body
Pop Art has even come a long way itself. Jeff Coons is a modern artist who emphasizes popular culture. The balloon dog is a knick-knack that most people are familiar with and may even have some type of attachment with. The balloon dog was actually sold for $58 million in 2013.

The purpose of showing modern pop art and the value of this art piece is to illustrate the importance of this style of art. The growth of pop art was made possible by the ideals of people like Richard Hamilton and Claes Oldenburg and continues to grow and change through works like the balloon dog.