Art is All Around Us; The Enduring Cultural Legacy of Pop Art.
Words by Edsard Driessen.
Emerging in the United Kingdom in the mid 1950s, and popularised in the States in the 1960s, the pop art movement aimed to capture and explore mass culture, everyday objects and the cult of popularity and celebrity in an attempt to blur the lines between high-art and low-culture. With the explosion of capitalism after wartime austerity, the average person was suddenly confronted with advertisements like never before. Inspired by these conditions, the pop art style embodied the necessities of cultural advertising; relying on bold lettering, intense colours and a cartoony, non-serious attitude to capture the zeitgeist of the time. Although emerging so many years ago, its relevance is still continuous to this day, with the work of pop art giants such as Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol still being revered. Why is it that this movement has survived for so long and how does it continue within the world of today?
Roy Lichtenstein, ‘Drowning Girl’, 1963
Andy Warhol, ‘Brillo Box (Soap Pads)’, 1964
The simple answer would simply be to say that pop art is culture and as long as culture keeps evolving so will pop art, as viewers will always have something to ground the work in. However, no more is this true for the generation of today, whose digital consumption is unbounded by the real world. Nowadays culture is consumed on a second-by-second basis, apps and social media make sure that we are exposed to ‘culture’ continuously. Interestingly those artists in the 50s managed to pre-empt the style of today, with digital advertising and social media relying on cartoony, playful styles to illustrate their message to the world. As such, art imitates life and life imitates art. Notably there seems to have been a shift away from the highbrow ‘fine-art’ of the past and instead I would argue that the art world of today is moving more and more towards lowbrow, cartoony styles, as documented already by the first renaissance movement of pop art in the 1970s, dubbed ‘neo-pop’. Led By Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons, a new wave of artists would come to carry the torch of the pop art ideology, with both Koons and Murakami using their obsession with mass media and culture to fuel their artwork. Taking inspiration from objects around them such as vacuum cleaners or cutlery, Murakami and Koons expressed the notion that pop art had never truly left, and as long as there is popular culture there will be pop art.
Takashi Murakami, ‘GARDEN (WHITE)’, 2018
This leads us to the art of today. With a shifting landscape of popular culture and ways of consumption, I find that pop art has never had a more dominant moment. With all art, people want to find a way to relate to it or find meaning within it and as such (when we consider the tastes of today) digital means of consumption has meant that now, more than ever, we are drawn to bold lettering and extreme colours. This new exposure to pop art styles has stylised a new generation towards the tastes of the pop art manifesto. This can especially be seen in the prominence that pop artists have had on music in the past couple of years, notably with Murakami designing the cover art for Kanye West’s 2007 Graduation album, using his notorious colourful, cartoonish style. Even more recently Koons worked with Lady Gaga to design the artwork of her 2013 Artpop album. In this sense the pop art movement collides with the ethos of today; with the pop artists of the 50s creating art that was instant, fast and bold. Much like the way we consume all our media today.
Takashi Murakami ‘Graduation’ album artwork for Kanye West, 2007
Jeff Koons ‘Artpop’ album artwork for Lady Gaga, 2013
As the world continues its spiral into the depths of mass consumption, pop art continues to thrive on the same cultural values that led to its timely genesis: as long as there is mass media there will be creativity fuelled by the external conditions of the artists’ world. As such, I would say that pop art seems to have found its place within the world of today; perfectly expressing and ascribing the conditions of today onto the canvas. Galleries continue to curate huge exhibitions of pop artists, new and old, and we continue to see influences across other cultural plains; most recently Prada and Commes Des Garcons flaunted colourful and repetitive designs, whilst Donatella Versace reprinted Warhol’s designs onto dresses to recreate the 1991 SS collection, a few years ago.
Pieces from Versace’s ‘Pop Collection’, inspired by Andy Warhol
With the continued consumption of art and media across computer and phone screens, staring endlessly at repeating images, it seems only fitting that pop art has had a renewed life within the modern world. With media becoming fast and repetitive, does that not perfectly summarise Warhol’s vision of life being “a series of images that forever change and repeat themselves?”
