‘POP ART’.
The term has been used so often that people are no longer quite sure what it
was ever originally supposed to be – is it
a movement, is it a concept, is it a hybrid or is it just a neologism? I
myself used to be sceptical of the term, my knowledge of the movement extending
only to the Campbells soup cans of Andy Warhol and the cartoon prints of Roy
Lichtenstein, an American artist whose fabulous exhibition at the Centre
Georges Pompidou truly ignited my interest earlier today.
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| Lichtenstein Poster |
The
exhibition was a walk-through of Lichtenstein’s fascinating career – his flirtations
with cubism, his years of ‘image duplication’, his use of abstract materials
and even his comic-strip commentaries on wartime America. However, despite all
of this, the beginning of his career was the era which caught my eye the most;
the time period in which he was intrigued by the brutally direct slogans and
ubiquitous imagery of the advertising industry. Everyday items such as coffee
cups and hot dogs became staples of American culture through advertising,
therefore becoming (due to America’s worldwide dominance) representations of ‘pop
culture’. Lichtenstein created sculptures and paintings of these everyday
objects in three primary colours – pillarbox red, lemon yellow and marine blue
(and, on occasion, green). The striking impact of the graphic paintings was
made to imitate the eye-catching statements of American advertisement, a
commentary on the way that advertisers would shove the ideal of ‘the American
dream’ in the face of their prospective consumers.
