Pop Art

Is pop art despicable? Basically what Lichtenstein, Warhol and Rosenquist produced was commercial art. Commercial art is considered to be the lowest of the low in the art world. So why is it that they have had so much success. You could say it is perfect timing, with everything that art has been up until this point; commercial art seemed like the only thing left. But to me the work of these pop artists were very appealing. Even more interesting than other art forms that came before it.

There is something fascinating about the work of Lichtenstein and Warhol in particular, to me. The soup cans have been something I have heard about and seen pictures of for a long time. To find out that he hand painted each of these after the silkscreen process was amazing. The detail and the machine like quality, for them to appear like they were simply printed off in a factory is a testament to his abilities as a great artist. Also in a similar way, Lichtenstein started off the same way before adopting his ben day dots, creating such graphic images that were reminiscent of comic book art with his own hand. The means by which they create art shouldn’t devalue their contributions. Just like mentioned in the article, artists were putting dripping paint rags on display and calling it art. Yet these artists labored over there work and it was reduced to something that people felt was inadequate. But eventually they caught on and I’m glad that there worked was preserved and awarded its place in history.