Art is one of the things that has existed on the planet since the existence of humans. We are made to create and art can be made from nearly everything. Even though art has evolved tremendously during the last hundreds of years, there’s always room for improvements and innovative ideas. In the beginning, the world of art was pretty basic, but the talent of the painters and artists has developed tremendously over the course of thousands of years.
And so has our perspective on art, including art’s major themes that were popular in specific periods. We can see that religion, spirituality, myths, and humans were the main themes you find historically in art. Life in the countryside, love, and portraits were other elements of notice. But Pop Art is different. It developed during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, then soon crossed the ocean and became a worldwide established way of creating art and looking at things.
British Pop Art and American Pop Art are very different, although similar in some particular ways. They both look at the objects, places, and humans that are near to us. They present current culture in a way that has not been done before. The artists that started pop culture aimed to put an emphasis on commercial culture with a desire to make people look differently at objects, and they succeeded.
Pop art changed the perception of art worldwide. Before Pop Art, people regarded art only as specific paintings or artworks; with Pop Art, things became more diverse. So, let’s take a look at how Pop Art has managed to change the perception of art as a domain.
Inspiration from Ordinary Things
All artists are in search of a muse, of someone or something that can trigger their creativity. Of something that makes ideas pop in their imagination for inspiration to easily appear. Artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, or James Rosenquist are just some of the artists that made Pop Art available worldwide. They helped spread it and made their ideas of making art more popular.
Pop artists take their inspiration from ordinary things, such as advertising, music, movies, comic books, and so on. And even though the movement of Pop Art was intensely critiqued at the beginning, now it is appreciated across the whole world. Because Pop Art has a distinctive style, different from the more traditional styles of artwork, it gets noticed.
In the traditional style, a model is always needed to spend a few hours on a chair, while the artist makes their portrait. In Pop Art, there is no need for posing. The inspiration comes from ordinary things, everyday objects you have in your house.
Popular Culture Translate Into Pop Art
Pop Art is basically a translation of the popular culture surrounding an artist. A Pop artist prefers to draw attention to the era we are living in currently, with lots of objects and options around us. Because Pop artists are taking their inspiration from ordinary things, they translate and paint them on a canvas. They search for the soul of an era, so they took a look at some of the most popular things during the time in which the life: cartoons, movies, and music.
Everything is Connected
Every artist has his own perspective on the environment he lives in. but Pop artists have a very different perspective on everything, and they want to show it in their art. The perception is that everything in the world is connected in one way or another, and it’s conveyed through their Pop Art. In doing this, the entire perception of art has changed. It also has changed the perception of life and how everything is connected. Pop artists embrace this and aim to make it obvious in every piece of Pop Art they create.
Emotionless Pop Art
One of the characteristics of Pop Art is that it was devoid of emotions. This contradicts the idea of art as we commonly know it. Before Pop Art, people were used to searching for emotion in works of art. In every piece of art, there were smaller pieces of different emotions everyone was looking to find. And the artists were looking for ways to send and express their emotions through paintings. But Pop Art takes ordinary elements from everyday life and made them look different — and with no emotion involved.
The Perspective of Artists
How has Pop Art changed the perception of art? Through all the artists that have shown their own perspective on the things around us. The rules to follow or a specific structure to paint or create art were abandoned. And Pop artists were the ones that initiated this artistic current. The same object might be represented differently by different Pop artists. And this is exactly what Pop Art is about. About the ability of each artist to take common and ordinary objects from their environment and express their own perspective on it. Each artist has a different attitude towards the same object, so we see similar but different works of art.
Bold Colors, Repetitive Patterns
Another thing that is characteristic of Pop Art and that changed the perception of art is the use of colors and repetitive patterns. If before Pop Art was established and became popular around the world, art was mainly represented by big paintings with warm and pastel colors, Pop Art changed this entirely. Pop Art is about using bold colors, repetitive patterns, and making the entire artwork look like a poster.
Pop Art changed the perception of art and laid the basis of a new art revolution, where artists allow their ideas to reality, without worrying about any art rules they might have been taught to follow. Pop Art brought high contrasts and posters to the eyes and attention of the people. Pop Art is about bold, bright collages and colors that are right in your face.
Ending Note
Even though Pop Art is an important part of the entire domain of art today, it was first looked upon with reluctance. Some of the most iconic Pop artists laid the basis for the artistic current of Pop Art, making it more popular, attractive, and interesting. They made room for artists to take bolder attempts at creating art of any kind and managed to create a movement that spread across the world, opening new doors of perception to art lovers and artists alike.
Author Bio: Jake S. Platt has a master’s degree in marketing and currently started his way as a content writer at bestdissertation.com. Jake wrote his first story at age 15, and now he brings his decades of experience to inspire people to explore the world of marketing and art.
