Pop art Research paper

The history of pop art first started in England in the late 1950’s and has spread to Italy, Japan, Germany, and America. Pop art includes a wide variety of vividly colored pictures, usually found in comic books, picture collages, anime and satirical drawings. The insight of pop art to all cultures is the satirical commentary f the characters in small comics or drawings, artistic visions and styles of artists and the impact of pop art upon mass commercialism and industry. Pop art is now taken in daily. Many viewers can expect to find new pop art continuously expanding in forms of mostly comic strips, advertisements and anime.



Satirical pop art can be shown through commentary or actions of characters in art:

Web (B.C by Mastroianni and Hart in gocomics.com)

The way that a comic strip usually starts is by a question and following statement. This particular newspaper comic strip basically is raw political satire from the beginning.

Web (B.C by Mastroianni and Hart in gocomics.com)

The second section of this newspaper comic is the first answer that comes to the bird’s mind. It is on obvious answer to the question. Coffin is the wrong answer even though it makes good sense and is probably the answer the reader is thinking of.







Web (B.C by Mastroianni and Hart in gocomics.com)

The third section gives another answer, which shows for itself that the campaign promises are fake and therefore useless. Many news paper comic strips and other forms of pop art depict controversial, political, trivial, and common life events. They include elections for office, quality of life affected by jobs, political party disputes, hostile nations and punishments for children, the list can go on in a variety of subjects for a while. Pop art today, as well as the 1950’s is very useful in getting the message across to the world.



Some people do not favor pop art, but others love it. “Some pop art viewers say it is sloppy and ugly”(anonymous) Pop art has a style to it, recognizable by many. The art itself stands out to the public eye in a high array of colors and sometimes cartoon drawings. There are books that critique pop art as well. They provide positive and negative criticism. “Pop Art is the most recent and perhaps the most maligned, but is it really that bad?” (Kelly 192) Edward T. Kelly is saying that pop artists art is badly critiqued, which is quite true. In most cases, critics make out pop art to be a monstrosity because it isn’t “beautiful” in their eyes. Richard Hamilton is a pioneer British pop artist and gave the definition of Pop art: “Pop Art is- popular(designed for a mass audience), transient(short term solution), expendable(shot term solution), low cost, mass produced, young(aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, clamorous, and big business.” This may possible be the clearest definition of Pop art accounted for today. Hamilton’s definition also explains why pop art is so largely critiqued, obviously because of the mass audience, attractive themes, and because readers are actually paying for most of it in news papers and other such items. Pop art is highly viewed and harshly criticized at the same time.



Pop art originated in England, but has made its what to other nations all over the world. An excerpt from an American online article tells a brief biography about Zane Fix. “ From the streets of New York City, to homes in the Hampton’s, from offices in Paris to restaurants in Tokyo and London, Zane Fix of sap Pop art is riding the tsunami of Hokusai’s ever present ‘wave’…”(unknown) Fix creates some of the most colorful pop art. Most of his work is religion oriented and deals with Buddha, women(with colorful make up),dragons, samurai warriors and sky scenes. Another excerpt from an online art viewing community states:“ British Pop was the product of the Independent Group(IG), Formed in 1952 whose members resisted the institute’s commitment to modernist art, design, and architecture.”(hunt for.com) The origin of pop art from the British in England eventually spread to the world. Most American pop art ideas originated in England and widely spread in America in the 1960’s. A third online art viewing website tells about European pop art. “ But what is it that really characterizes European Pop art? Attitude! European Artists have reacted to the influences of U.S. mass culture in a highly subtle manner, responding to the triviality of the topic with a mixture of fascination and irony that is often full of allusions and ambiguities” (Masterpieces of European Pop art) European pop art is very colorful like the others, but it is also more realistic than other styles of pop art. Pop art in the U.S. and Europe have also been developed early and coincide with one another. Pop art is viewed widely everyday by all regions and has a deep meaning of change.



Pop art controls the insight of the art observers, this is one reason it is so controversial. An anonymous online art community talks about the figural imagery of everyday objects: “ Pop art favored figural imagery and the reproduction of everyday objects, such as Campbell Soup cans, comic strips and advertisements. The movement eliminated distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste and between fine art and commercial art techniques.”(biddingtons.com) Pop art controls the insight of everyday views of common objects through words, colors, and suggestive images. It also deals with mass commercialism. One example of commercialism is the Pop tart commercial with the cartoon animation that sells openly to the public. From wwar.com, this next article talks about the commentary of pop art dealing with life. “Pop Art made commentary on contemporary society and culture, particularly consumerism, by using popular images and icons and incorporating and re-defining them in the art world. Often subjects were derived from advertising and product packaging, celebrities, and comic strips. The images were presented with a combination of humor, criticism and irony. In doing this, the movement put art into terms of everyday, contemporary life. This quote is another representation of how pop art influences society. It tells the readers that pop art sells and has changed life around the world. “ British and American pop artists employed a common imagery found in comic strips, soup cans, and Coke bottles to express formal abstract relationships.”(Columbia electronic encyclopedia) This article quote is saying that pop art expresses common relation ships. The way that his relates to the insight of pop art is through advertisements and comic strips, not just the through commentary, but also through the actions and colors. These three quotes mean almost the same thing, but explain three different major view points, imagery , commentary and the effect of commentary on society and culture.

Pop art in America is public and definitely a part of life including political, public, economic and social issues. “ Pop artists have focused attention upon familiar images of the popular culture such as billboards, comic strips, magazine advertisements, and supermarket products.” Pop art is all around us and it will always be seen wherever you go. It is a part of our culture and shapes the everyday world. Without it, the U.S. would be less democratic. Nicolas Pioch wrote about how pop art brought material realities of everyday life.“ Pop Art brought back to the material realities of everyday life, to popular culture(hence ‘pop’), in which ordinary people derived most of their visual pleasure from television, magazines, or comics.”(Pioch, Nicolas) This statement is increasingly relevant with growing technology that links the world together through satellites, TV, cell phones and the internet. Through all of these technologies, pop art can be spread a message of whatever it may be. “The media and advertising were favorite subjects for Pop Art’s often witty celebrations of consumer society.”(Pioch, Nicolas) This quote is saying that Pop Art artist’s target is for mass media and advertising. It includes witty celebrations of consumer society, implying that pop art doesn’t go without thought of alluring a regular everyday life society. Through the ages, pop art is possibly the most influential art in the world that has only started developing back in the early 1950’s.