1960s Pop Art

Words: 943
Pages: 4

Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans or Lichtenstein’s comics are images most people recognize but what made these simple images so popular? The 1960s are well known as a time of change for our country from the Vietnam war, to the fight for civil rights, to the large spread of popular culture, our country was truly beginning to change into what we know it as today and in this frenzy for self identify we see the emersion of pop art. By embracing the media boom and post-WWII manufacturing pop artist set out to “blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture”(theartstory.org) by taking common items and people and turning them into what may be considered the most recognizable take on modern art. The mid 1900s were well known for their radicalism, and the art of this time followed suit with the introduction of abstract expressionist such as Jackson Pollock. Abstract expressionism came as a result of WWII in an act of …show more content…
These works of well-known are were often considered “emotionally removed” (theartstory.org), a reflection of America’s culture at the time. At this point people were trying so hard to “fit in” and “appear wealthy” that the world around them got caught up in all this chaos seemingly removing emotion from one state of existence. Pop art mimics the meld of culture through the mix of bright color and well-known images. The purpose of this mix is the show how everything is seemingly connected even if we don’t see it like that which, in turn, takes away any legitimacy behind this desire to me something more. Each image as tacky as the next pink polyester couch and blue knee length skirt, yet this art held the faces of both fame and common life and still held simplicity and beauty. Pop art and it’s movement was there to bring the complicated flurry of culture into an image so people could understand what they had become, but that message was only so