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Comics were a powerful art method during the Pop Art era. Roy Lichtenstein pioneered this art movement and used comic and graphic mediums to poke fun and parody some historical art movements.

This painting, Brushstrokes was meant to mimic abstract expressionism. By making the painting reproducable in this way, he eliminates the grandeur of the original artist's painting. Lichtenstein said, "Visible brushstrokes in a painting convey a sense of grand gesture; but in my hands, the brushstroke becomes a depiction of a grand gesture." (https://www.moma.org/artists/3542)

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Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends in men’s wear and accessories (a) Together let us explore the stars 1962

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Richard Hamilton was hardly limited to collage and installation art. He also produced several paintings in the pop art era with curved lines and stark color contrast as he did in the painting above. While this painting doesn't appear as modern or commercial as some of his other work, it still has a similar meaning to his other work.

Hamilton said that this painting was inspired by the Playboy section in a mens fashion magazine. (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-towards-a-definitive-statement-on-the-coming-trends-in-menswear-and-accessories-a-t00705) The person's clothing is meant to look futuristic to reflect the buzz about the ongoing space race at the time.

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Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), Giant Fagends, 1967.

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Similar to Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg began his career after college doing illustration work. But, when Oldenburg moved to New York City in 1956, being surrounded by buildings and architecture shifted his interests to sculpture. He began creating small painted plaster sculptures of everyday items and placed them in his "Store" on display.

From there, he shifted yet again to focus on soft sculptures, or sculptures made of cloth and stuffed with fabric, paper, or rags. His most famous sculptures, including the one pictured here, were made this way on a giant scale. His works also included a giant clothespin, a tube of lipstick, and a cherry sitting atop a silver spoon. These colossal monuments still stand even after Oldenburg's death earlier this year.

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In 1962, Andy Warhol turned to his most notable style, photographic silkscreens. In addition to his blotted line technique, photographic silkscreen printing allowed Warhol to mass produce the same pieces of art while sometimes changing colors of the subject matter he painted. When he first started using photographic silkscreening, he did a series of celebrity portraits that included Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor.

"Warhol famously quipped, 'I want to be a machine,' alluding to his interest in mass production." (https://www.warhol.org/andy-warhols-life/) Silkscreening allowed Warhol to do just that.

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Perhaps the most well-known American Pop Artist is Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol studied pictoral design in college and began his career as an illustrator. He illustrated various magazine articles and advertisements before he began to gain recognition.

At this time of Warhol's career, he focused on blotted-line ink drawings to illustrate for his clients. This technique of illustration allowed him to mass produce the same illustration and change colors of the illustrations based one his client's needs. In many ways, this experience Andy Warhol gained as an illustrator aided his future success as a Pop Artist. Pop Art is characteristically easy to mass produce and seen as "disposable" in many ways.

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Fun house, 1956. 1987 reconstructionWood, metal and other materials415 × 600 × 300 cm Richard Hamilton, John McHale and John Voelcker

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When the Independent Group put on the This is Tomorrow exhibit, Richard Hamilton collaborated with John Voelcker to create this piece. The structure of this piece was created by Voelcker and then covered in images of Marilyn Monroe, the Sci-Fi robot from Forbidden Planet, as well as other pop icons.

This piece along with Hamilton's Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? show the collage technique used by pop artists at the time. The robot holding an unconscious Marilyn and the twisted nature of this exhibit give off a slightly dark and sinister mood. Instead of portraying what Hamilton would say is "high art," they are putting on display the gritty, real, nature of popular and current culture. Hamilton and his fellow artists, however, would say there is nothing wrong with foregoing the high art style and portraying the world the way it "really is."

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The first artists in the Pop Art movement were all part of the Independent Group. The members of the Independent Group challenged the modernist art styles at the time because they saw them as elitist.

The first meeting of the Independent Group is what established a lot of the ideas that ending up forming the British Pop Art movement. In 1956, members of the Independent Group put on the groundbreaking This is Tomorrow exhibition. This exhibition showed the group's acceptance of commercial culture and consumerism and included those aspect in the artwork it included.

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Pop Art is an art movement that emerged after World War II during the 1950s and 60s. This art style drew inspiration from popular culture and events and depicted things in a way that was easily digestible to the viewer. In many ways, Pop Art can be seen as a rebellion of sorts. Artists during this time period felt that they could not relate to the art they were taught about or shown in museums. Instead of conforming to that style of art, they focused on depicting the world around them in a straightforward and relatable way.

There was certainly pushback at the time to this new style of art. In fact, critics saw Pop Art as low-grade, gimmicky, and expendable. The Pop Art movement was strong in both the United States and Britain, but was different in each location. The most well-known Pop Artists include Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. The article linked describes the timeline and origins of the Pop Art movement.

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Emerging in the mid 1950s in Britain and late 1950s in America, pop art reached its peak in the 1960s. It began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be. Young artists felt that what they were taught at art school and what they saw in museums did not have anything to do with their lives or the things they saw around them every day. Instead they turned to sources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books for their imagery.

In 1957 pop artist Richard Hamilton listed the 'characteristics of pop art' in a letter to his friends the architects Peter and Alison Smithson:

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business

Modernist critics were horrified by the pop artists' use of such 'low' subject matter and by their apparently uncritical treatment of it. In fact pop both took art into new areas of subject matter and developed new ways of presenting it in art and can be seen as one of the first manifestations of postmodernism.

American pop vs. British pop

Although they were inspired by similar subject matter, British pop is often seen as distinctive from American pop.

Early pop art in Britain was fuelled by American popular culture viewed from a distance, while the American artists were inspired by what they saw and experienced living within that culture.

In the United States, pop style was a return to representational art (art that depicted the visual world in a recognisable way) and the use of hard edges and distinct forms after the painterly looseness of abstract expressionism. By using impersonal, mundane imagery, pop artists also wanted to move away from the emphasis on personal feelings and personal symbolism that characterised abstract expressionism.

In Britain, the movement was more academic in its approach. While employing irony and parody, it focused more on what American popular imagery represented, and its power in manipulating people's lifestyles. The 1950s art group The Independent Group (IG), is regarded as the precursor to the British Pop art movement.

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Tate glossary definition for pop art: Name given to art made in America and Britain from the mid 1950s and 1960s that drew inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture