'Everything is beautiful, Pop is everything' - Andy Warhol

POP ART

Pop Art is a mid 20th Century art movement. It is not understood well when  compared to other movements at the time. Some people take pop art to have been influenced by the excess use of drugs during that period. Pop art had an over whelming footprint on visual art all along. This movement was an intense period but short lived. Pop art was not taken seriously; for some it was a joke towards the arts because they acknowledge and recognise everyday objects such as cans, bottles, comic strips and so on as fine art. Just like in Dadaism, they mock the norm of traditional art aesthetics. It might have been short lived but it had a big impact on art and still influences artists till this present day. You still find elements of it on billboards, posters, books, cards and much more. It started off in Britain in the 1950's and moved on to America a few years on. Whereas the british focused on theme and metaphor, The Americans gave aggressiveness and symbolism most importance in their work.

Two of the most famous artists from the Pop Art Movement were Ray Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. andy Warhol was a magazine illustrator and graphic designer. He worked with Vogue, Glamour, And the New York Times, doing commercial advertising. He was a firm believer that we should be likes machines and therefore made is work seem as if it was made my actual machines. This is evident in his work of the repetition of stars' faces, such as Marilyn Monroe, Liz, Jackie, Marlon and more! Effects of his work are still seen in the present such as on the application 'Photo Booth' on Mac products. When it was first launched on Photo Booth it made a huge hit. It was used by everyone and anyone. It become so overused in fact it became a bit cliche and boring after some time.

Marilyn Monroe Repetition of stars' faces; andy Warhol 

This [below] is a piece by Eduardo Paolozzi, co-founder of The Independent Group. It is a collage consisting of things he 'found' lying around such as magazine cutouts, comic books and advertisements found in newspapers and other graphic media. In this collage you can see different cutouts including a hand holding a gun, a cloud of smoke and ''pop'' written on it. 

I was a Rich Man’s Plaything (1947) – Eduardo Paolozzi

Adriana Marinica, (January 16, 2012) speckyboy Design Magazine. [ONLINE] Available at: <http://speckyboy.com/2012/01/16/20-things-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-pop-art-graphic-design/>, [Accessed 24 November 2013].

Guity Novin, (may 1st 2012) A history of Graphic Design. [ONLINE] Available at: <http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2010/06/chapter-33-pop-art.html> [Accessed 25 November 2013].