Pop Art: Lichtenstein and Warhol

Pop Art: Lichtenstein and Warhol

What is Pop Art?

Pop Art first appeared in the 1950s in both America and Great Britain, however during the 1960s is when the art form gained a massive popularity. Pop Art creators used popular culture such as comics and advertising to inspire their work. Artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol became famous for using this type of art form. The art movement brought change to galleries as paintings previously were seen as rare and expensive and now they had everyday culture presented in them created for a mass audience.

Roy Lichtenstein

Reverie from 11 Pop Artists, Volume II, 1965, published 1966

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the leading artists during this movement. His artwork was “based on imagery from comic strips and advertisements and rendered in a style mimicking the crude printing processes of newspaper reproduction.”[1] In many of Lichtenstein’s art pieces, Ben-Day dots were used which are shown in the piece ‘Reverie’. This type of technique was used to make his art look similar to comic books. Although his artwork is mostly admired now, at the time people thought he was just stealing from other people’s ideas in order to form his pieces. To a certain extent, Lichtenstein does copy from other artists but he makes particular changes to transform a comic strip to a massive oil painting worthy of being in a gallery.

Andy Warhol

Campbell's Soup Cans 1962

Andy Warhol was probably the most famous pop artist to come out of this movement, even decades after his most notable works and his death in 1987, his artwork was still being used in popular culture. One of his most famous paintings is ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ created in 1962. Warhol took an unremarkable item, painted an image of it several times and consequently managed to make the art piece expensive by hanging it in galleries which only housed artists who created one of a kind pieces. On the Fiftieth anniversary of Warhol’s famous art piece, Campbell released a limited edition of their soups with his work on them. Warhol managed to make advertising into expensive art and then back into advertising again.

The special edition of Campbell’s soup released in 2012

This movement was so influential as it paved the way for more modern art techniques whilst reflecting the mass consumerism time of the 1960s. The Pop Art movement changed art as people knew it as they now had to reconsider what was seen as a masterpiece. Artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein now deserved a place in galleries only previously dedicated to artists like Monet or Van Gogh. Even though their work can be criticised as not being real art, there is no denying that the longevity of fame their paintings have had has given them the right to be seen as influential artists of the 1960s.

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[1] Berman, Avis, ‘Biography’, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, 2017, http://lichtensteinfoundation.org/biography/, 22/11/17