Origins of Pop Art
“Pop art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business.” — Richard Hamilton, 1957
Known for its 2D shapes, bold colors, hard edges, everyday subject matter, commercial techniques, and use of irony and satire, Pop Art emerged as a reaction to WWII. The public depression encouraged artists to create art that would lighten everyone’s spirits and comment on post-war society. Many historians believe the change to Pop was formed from a desire to move away from the previous influential art movement, Abstract Expressionism. Other cultural shifts, including the development of rock music, encouraged the contrast of tradition.
Pop artists utilized techniques and elements such as silk-screening, woodcut, etching, lithography, screen printing, mixed media, benday dots, overlays, primary color palettes, graphic layouts, and collages. Much of Pop Art imitated comic books, fashion illustrations, billboard designs, and magazine layouts.
What Came Before
Dada
Like other groups and movements of the early 20th century, Dada art emerged as a reaction to the first world war. Dada art was satirical, nonsensical, and vented about the war’s horrors and lunacy. Dada art was a complete investigation into post-war society, which seemed complacent about the war and its effects. In an attempt to create something opposite to the conflict — something artistic and beautiful — artists parted from pre-war art methods and values. This rejection of tradition made Dada the first major anti-art movement: anti-art meaning art that challenges the existing and accepted definitions of art. For example, Dada art focused on the meaning of the art rather than the aesthetics or visual looks. Dada art tended to harbor anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and radical left sentiments.
“‘Without World War I there is no Dada,’ says Laurent Le Bon, the curator of the Pompidou Center’s show. ‘But there’s a French saying, ‘Dada explains the war more than the war explains Dada.’’” — Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine
Writer Hugo Ball started a satirical nightclub in Zürich named the Cabaret Voltaire in February of 1916 — drawing from Voltaire’s novella Candide, which mocked the rituals of society. The club hosted young artists and guests who performed music and gave readings. Artist Jean Arp once described the club as total mayhem, stating, “Tzara is wiggling his behind like the belly of an Oriental dancer. Janco is playing an invisible violin and bowing and scraping. Madame Hennings, with a Madonna face, is doing the splits. Huelsenbeck is banging away nonstop on the great drum, with Ball accompanying him on the piano, pale as a chalky ghost.” From this club emerged Ball’s art and literature review magazine, Dada. The movement took its name from the magazine and subsequent publications. Dada artists were fond of saying, “Dada is anti-Data.” This phrase comes from the artists sharing a group ideology — even though having a group ideology opposed their anti-authoritarian beliefs. Additionally, many of the artists were a part of bourgeois culture, which led to self-criticism.
The origin of Dada as the magazine’s name is unknown. The favored story is that Richard Huelsenbeck, one of Cabaret Voltaire’s regulars, inserted a knife into the top of a French-German dictionary. The name is thought to have been picked from where the tip of the knife landed. Ball later wrote, “Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Romanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French… For Germans it is a sign of foolish naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the baby carriage.”
In 1917, Ball left the movement to pursue journalism. Artist Tristan Tzara took over as leader and founded Galerie Dada on Bahnhofstrasse, where he continued to host readings and performances. At the end of the war, many artists returned to their home countries, spreading the Dada movement throughout Europe. What brought the end of Dada was the Dada event of April 1919. The event — a speech about the value of abstract art — was planned to instigate the Zürich crowd. Following the speech, cacophonous and shrill music was played, and several readings occurred. The crowd soon gave in, beginning to riot. Tzara described the event by stating “the tumult is unchained hurricane frenzy siren whistles bombardment song the battle starts out sharply, half the audience applaud the protestors hold the hall . . . chairs pulled out projectiles crash bang expected effect atrocious and instinctive . . . Dada has succeeded in establishing the circuit of absolute unconsciousness in the audience which forgot the frontiers of education of prejudices, experienced the commotion of the New. Final victory of Dada.” Tzara later remarked that the key to the success of the riot was audience involvement, which made the crowd producers of art rather than observers. After the riot, Tzara moved to Paris, where he began to formulate theories later used in Surrealist ideology. While Dada had spread through many European cities, the movement lasted only a few years. Notable events that prolonged the movement include the establishment of Huelsenbeck’s Club Dada in Berlin (active from 1918–1923), Max Ernst’s Dada Early Spring exhibition (1920), the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (1920), the Paris “Dada Festival” (1920), and New York publications including The Blind Man, Rongwrong, 391, and New York Dada.
“Dada talks with you, it is everything, it includes everything, it belongs to all religions, can be neither victory nor defeat, it lives in space and not in time.” — Francis Picabia
One of the most influential avant-garde art movements of the post-war period, Dada would inspire French Surrealism, the Conceptual Art movement, and Pop Art. Dada artists often implemented chance — a notable aspect of Surrealism. This contrasts tradition, which encouraged meticulous planning and detailed completion of any art piece. Dada artists also used a novice form of popular culture: readymades were everyday objects that Dada artists manipulated slightly and claimed as art. Much like Pop Art, the use of everyday objects in Dada challenged existing definitions and boundaries of art, questioning its role in society. Several readymades were often combined to create an assemblage.
“The Dada spirit really only existed between 1913 and 1918 . . . In wishing to prolong it, Dada became closed . . . Dada, you see, was not serious… and if certain people take it seriously now, it’s because it is dead! . . . One must be a nomad, pass through ideas like one passes through countries and cities.” — Francis Picabia
Abstract Expressionism
While never an official group, a collection of artists dubbed “The New York School” or “Abstract Expressionists” emerged in the 1940s with artworks that prioritized improvisation, freedom of movement, spontaneity, inner reflection, dynamic gesture, abstract imagery, and color fields.
A decade earlier, the lingering effects of the world wars and the Great Depression birthed two art movements, Regionalism and Social Realism. Artists involved in these movements found themselves unsatisfied with the movement’s ideology. They sought meaningful content — subject matter that acknowledged social responsibilities and the vulnerability of the Depression, as well as the dark side of man and the irrationality of the world wars.
The segway from these movements to Abstract Expressionism was spurred by the development of the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was a jobs program that created public works jobs for unemployed Americans. While most of the jobs were in construction, hundreds were hired to create public art. These opportunities encouraged artists to create large-scale sculptures unique to this era. Abstract Expressionism took from jazz, beat poetry, European Modernism, and Surrealism (the latter two had come in New York in the early 1930s).
“Having matured as artists at a time when America suffered economically and felt culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract Expressionists were later welcomed as the first authentically American avant-garde. Their art was championed for being emphatically American in spirit — monumental in scale, romantic in mood, and expressive of a rugged individual freedom.” — The Art Story
Many Abstract Expressionists focused on expressive, dynamic gestures within their work. Jackson Pollock famously threw all existing art conventions out the window in 1947, when he first dripped paint onto a raw, un-stretched canvas laid on the ground. In 1948, Willem de Kooning presented his Women paintings, which disregarded traditional composition, light, and arrangement, and introduced purely abstract figures. Stella Paul, a member of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s education department, described Abstract Expressionism by stating, “…the authenticity or value of a work lay in its directness and immediacy of expression. A painting is meant to be a revelation of the artist’s authentic identity. The gesture, the artist’s ‘signature,’ is evidence of the actual process of the work’s creation.” At this time, art became an event. Instead of a visual representation, it focused on the process — it became an action and an experience. Abstract Expressionists created movement and story out of paintings without a clear subject. Often, they implemented unconventional techniques like broad, random, sweeping gestures with large paintbrushes; this movement inspired the term “action painting.”
“It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples.” — Jay Meuser
Other Abstract Expressionists, namely Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, sought a diversion towards extremely simplified art that fostered personal expression. Color Field painting used only large, simplified, colorful shapes. Deeply inspired by religion and ancient myth, these artists wanted to initiate meditative thinking within the viewer. Color Field paintings were painted on massive scales and were often showcased close together or in small environments. By enveloping the viewer in the art around them, the experience became one of authentic expression and intimacy.
Pop Art History
Britain
From Dada and Abstract Expressionism came Pop Art, one of the essential American art forms. Its pop-culture focus encouraged it to grow roots in the media-based, artistic streets of New York City.
Post World War Two, America had adopted “paradise” consumerism. Advertisement and media displayed a seemingly perfect lifestyle, both in and out of the country. Despite the lingering effects of conflict, “companies wanted the war to be seen not just as a victory for the United States and freedom, but also for free enterprise (Lawrence Glickman, Cornell).”
European media quickly caught on to the new consumerist trend, leading Pop Art to begin in Britain.
“From the early 1950s, a group of artists and writers called the ‘Independent Group’ would meet in London’s Institute for Contemporary Art to discuss the growing culture of movies, advertising and consumerism emigrating from the United States” (nationalgalleries).
Bankrupt, distraught artists, looking for a way to change British thought, took media’s idealistic conditions and transformed them into art subjects. Many believed the best way to replicate the positive American outlook was to make art that imitated American pop culture. British Pop artists created flat, 2D, bright-colored pieces that looked like what one might see in advertisements or TV.
Before the birth of Pop Art, Scottish artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi created the collage I was a Rich Man’s Plaything. The collage was one of many in Paolozzi’s famous “Bunk!” series (1947–52) and illustrated lecture (presented in 1952 at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts). As described by Tate, the project “reflected his interest in the photomontage techniques of Surrealist and Dada art”; Paolozzi “demonstrated how people were daily bombarded by an unprecedented array of images. He showed a series of collages in rapid succession that he had created from advertisements, glossy magazines, science journals and comics.” The collage material came from American servicemen; similarly, the series title stands for both the bunk beds commonly used by soldiers and as a synonym for “nonsense”. Many take this lecture to be the true birth of Pop Art.
The collage includes the word pop, which influenced the name of the movement. Art critic Lawrence Alloway — who was part of the London independent group Paolozzi interacted with — would begin to use the term “mass popular art” in the mid-50s. Later, he assigned the phrase Pop Art to works inspired by the popular culture around them. Later in life, Alloway would claim that “Pop Art” originated with his usage of it.
While Paolozzi’s collage showed significant Pop characteristics, it’s typically not regarded as the piece to kick off the movement. Instead, historians refer to Richard Hamilton’s Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? This British collage features a bodybuilder holding a life-size tootsie pop, which, along with Paolozzi’s use of the word, helped coin the movement’s name. Hamilton once stated, “[the objective of the collage] was to throw into the cramped space of a living room some representation of all the objects and ideas crowding into our post-war consciousness: my ‘home’ would have been incomplete without its token life-force so Adam and Eve struck a pose along with the rest of the gadgetry. The collage had a didactic role in the context of a didactic exhibition, ‘This is Tomorrow’, in that it attempted to summarize the various influences that were beginning to shape post-war Britain. We seemed to be taking a course towards a rosy future and our changing, Hi-Tech, world was embraced with a starry-eyed confidence; a surge of optimism which took us into the 1960s. Though clearly an ‘interior’ there are complications that cause us to doubt the categorization. The ceiling of the room is a space-age view of Earth. The carpet is a distant view of people on a beach. It is an allegory rather than a representation of a room.”
New York
Hamilton’s collage inspired artists to take from popular media. This concept quickly made its way to New York, where the heavy promotion of fame and consumption in postwar media had captured American attention. Unlike other movements, there were no focused groups, schools, or organizations. Pop artists were largely independent, though many lived and worked in New York City. Taking inspiration from everyday objects and celebrities, Pop Art appealed to perhaps the most inclusive audience art had ever seen. Exploring such infamous subject matter was an opportunity for critique and a chance to spark joy in viewers; American artists had hoped that adopting it would help battle the lingering post-war depression. By the ’60s, Pop Art would reach its peak. The movement technically ended in the early ’70s. However, as with all art movements, Pop Art continues to influence artists today. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, early Pop Art concepts remerged as neo-Pop Art. From the neo-Pop movement, we see artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.
It must be acknowledged that while Pop Art connected the general public with fine art, it also was catered towards white, straight, cis men. There were notable female artists of the movement, as highlighted in the 2020–2021 MAMAC exhibition titled The Amazons of Pop: She-Bam Pow Pop Wizz! Furthermore, although Pop Art sought to highlight American culture, there was little to no attempt to include people of color. Additionally, the subject material in some Pop Art pieces held darker critiques on American culture and the American dream, as showcased in Whitney Museum’s 2012–2013 exhibition Sinister Pop.
“Before it was anything else, Pop Art was American…and white…and urban….and male…and middle class…and straight. Pop Art was about affluence, about money and all the things that the middle class white male could afford to buy and everything the man of affluence wanted to look at. Mainstream art history has tended to present Pop Art as if it were ungendered and unclassed and uncolored, while at the same time, stressing the “American-ness” of a movement that eliminated color, exploited the images of women and ignored the plight of the poor. The exception that proved the rule of Pop’s machismo was the now-celebrated “queer” artist, Andy Warhol, who had to got to the Left Coast to get his first show of Pop Art, his now famous soup cans, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles” (Dr. Jeanne S.M. Willette, arthistoryunstuffed).
