Synopses & Reviews
Soup cans and Whaam! The ultimate introduction to Pop Art "Everything is beautiful," raved Andy Warhol, in raptures about the glamour of modern life, consumer society, and the world of the media and its stars.
His proclamation can be considered the maxim of Pop Art, which does not so much describe a style, as an artistic phenomenon in which the sense of being in a particular era found its concrete expression. Emphasizing the banal, kitschy, and mass-produced, pop pioneers elevated popular and mass-market imagery to artistic status with an ironic self-awareness. From the labelling of a soap box to comic strip style characters, their works revelled in ideas of image and representation, marketing and modernity.
In this concise introduction, Tilman Osterwold explores the styles, sources, and the stars of Pop Art, including the influential work of Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Richard Hamilton.
Synopsis
Soup cans and Whaam The makers and shapers of Pop Art Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, and the role of the artist and artwork.
Pop artists primary provocation was to defy ideas of the artistic canon or "originality" by integrating mass market imagery into their works. Whether advertising slogans, famed Hollywood faces, comic strip style characters, or the packaging of consumer products, the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein knowingly reproduced mundane, everyday images from popular culture.
At the same time, Pop Art reduced the role of the individual and challenged the notion of originality by deploying mass production techniques such as screen printing. Like a hall of mirrors, the resulting works came to interrogate both the ideas and desires of contemporary culture, and its state of simulacra, whereby images, substitutes, and representations come to define the experience of 'reality'.
In this book, Tilman Osterwold explores the styles, sources, and stars of the Pop Art phenomenon. From Lichtenstein's comic book aesthetics to Warhol's images of Marilyn, it explores how a movement that interrogated the icons of its time came to produce icons of its own.
Synopsis
Less a distinct style than the concrete expression of being in a particular era, Pop art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, and the role of the artist and artwork. The movement's primary provocation was to defy ideas of the artistic canon or "originality" by integrating mass market imagery into their works. Whether advertising slogans, famed Hollywood faces, comic-strip-style characters, or the packaging of consumer products, the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein knowingly reproduced mundane, everyday images from popular culture. At the same time, Pop art reduced the role of the individual and challenged the notion of originality by deploying mass production techniques such as screen printing. Like a hall of mirrors, the resulting works came to interrogate both the ideas and desires of contemporary culture, and its state of simulacra, whereby images, substitutes, and representations come to define the experience of "reality." In this book, Tilman Osterwold explores the styles, sources, and stars of the Pop Art phenomenon. From Lichtenstein's comic-book aesthetics to Warhol's images of Marilyn, it explores how a movement that interrogated the icons of its time came to produce icons of its own.
About the Author
Tilman Osterwold studied art history, archaeology, philosophy, and psychology, obtaining his PhD in art history in 1969. After teaching at university for many years, he was director of the Württembergischer Kunstverein from 1973 to 1993. He has organized numerous exhibitions and published widely on the subject of 20th century art and culture.