Pop Art (1955–1970)
Pop Art emerged in the mid-1950s and flourished through the 1960s, developing independently in Britain and the United States.
The name Pop Art comes from “popular art,” reflecting the movement’s use of imagery drawn from everyday life—advertising, television, packaging, comic strips, and celebrity culture. Artists rejected traditional ideas about what could be considered “high art”.
The driving force behind Pop Art was a reaction against the emotional intensity and abstraction of Abstract Expressionism. Instead, Pop artists embraced irony, clarity, and recognisable imagery, often presenting familiar objects in unfamiliar ways.
Pop Art reflects a world shaped by mass media, consumerism, and post-war prosperity, holding up a mirror to modern society while questioning its values.
Artworks to be inspired by-
You may like to try to reproduce Tamara de Lemoicka's artwork. I will be inspired by the ceramic designs of Eric Slater.
Andy Warhol – Marilyn Diptych
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Date: 1962
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Medium: Silkscreen ink and acrylic on canvas
Marilyn Diptych consists of fifty repeated images of Marilyn Monroe’s face, taken from a publicity still for the film Niagara. The images are arranged in a grid, with one half rendered in vivid, artificial colours and the other fading into black and white.
The work encapsulates Pop Art’s fascination with celebrity, mass production, and repetition. Warhol’s use of the silkscreen process echoes industrial printing, blurring the boundary between fine art and commercial imagery. The repetition both celebrates and questions fame, suggesting glamour, consumption, and eventual decay.
By using an instantly recognisable icon, Warhol invites viewers to reflect on how images circulate in popular culture and how identity can become a consumable product.
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) was an American Pop artist best known for transforming the visual language of comic strips and mass media into fine art. Emerging in the early 1960s, his work challenged traditional ideas about originality and artistic value by borrowing imagery from popular culture.
His paintings are instantly recognisable for their bold outlines, flat areas of primary colour and the use of Ben-Day dots, a printing technique he enlarged and hand-painted to mimic commercial reproduction. By isolating and magnifying comic-style images of romance, war and everyday drama, Lichtenstein turned familiar scenes into striking, ironic reflections on modern life.
Lichtenstein’s work played a key role in defining Pop Art, bridging high art and popular imagery and leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and visual culture.
Artists to Research:
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Andy Warhol
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Roy Lichtenstein
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Richard Hamilton
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Claes Oldenburg
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James Rosenquist
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Eduardo Paolozzi
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Tom Wesselmann
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Peter Blake
Other Research:
Learn more about Roy Lichtenstein, click here.