Style and Techniques
Some of the more striking forms that Pop art took were Roy Lichtenstein’s stylized reproductions of comic strips using the colour dots and flat tones of commercial printing; Andy Warhol’s meticulously literal paintings and silk-screen prints of soup-can labels, soap cartons, and rows of soft-drink bottles; Claes Oldenburg’s soft plastic sculptures of objects such as bathroom fixtures, typewriters, and gigantic hamburgers; Tom Wesselman’s “Great American Nudes,” flat, direct paintings of faceless sex symbols; and George Segal’s constructed tableaux featuring life-sized plaster-cast figures placed in actual environments (e.g., lunch counters and buses) retrieved from junkyards. Most Pop artists aspired to an impersonal, urbane attitude in their works. Some examples of Pop art, however, were subtly expressive of social criticism—for example, Oldenburg’s drooping objects and Warhol’s monotonous repetitions of the same banal image have an undeniably disturbing effect—and some, such as Segal’s mysterious, lonely tableaux, are overtly expressionistic.
American vs. British Pop Art
In America, pop art was commentary on the American Dream, what is was like to be in America in the post-war 50s and 60s – Hollywood glamour, advertisements, stars of stage and screen, comic books, movies, entertainment, vibrant, burgeoning consumer driven industries that were part of the day-to-day lives of many Americans.
The purveyors of pop art in the USA claimed that elements, symbols and ideals of popular culture could and should command the same respect as that associated with traditional fine art. American pop art frequently employs mundane realities (such as giant oversized sculptures of everyday objects by Claes Oldenburg), references to popular culture and sarcasm.
In 1951, Scottish artist and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi created a series of collages called “Bunk”, the collages comprised cut outs and copies from magazines, comics and advertisements including consumer goods and logos. It is from this point, that the IG began to focus on the symbolism and language of American pop culture, and as the movement grew British Pop Art began to develop its own identity. Commentary on the American Dream and how American influences, brands and entertainment were reaching Britain’s shores, often incorporating a sense of parody or irony, informed by, but distanced from American Pop Art.
