Tuesday 10 November 2015

Pop art

Pop Art

Pop art originated in Great Britain in the 1950s and later came out of America in the 1960s.
It was a response to the post war optimism and social tensions which were being aired on TV for the first time, e.g. race relations, women's rights and colonial exploitation.
It coincided with the emergence of pop music and the rise of film stars, who often featured in the work.
The word 'Pop' originates from 'Popular' culture, which sums up what the movement was about.
Some artists such as Andy Warhol used elements from popular culture, like advertising and packaging in his work, for example this campbell's soup tin.

Campbell's Soup (1968) - Andy Warhol

The pop art movement was revolutionary in many ways and has influenced so much of modern design since then. Artists often used bright bold colours, like red, yellow and blue. Pop art combined different styles of painting, sculpture, collage and street art.
In the US, artists used to duplicate, reproduce, overlay and combine visual elements.

Album cover design from this period also reflected popular culture of the time.



Peter Bakes work



Pop art was influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism and Dadaism.

Leading artists of the era include Keith Haring (see below)

pop art

Claes Odenburg and Coosje an Bruggen were known for bringing pop art to the masses by enlarging every day objects in public places.

pop art


Robert Rauschenberg was known for his 1950s collages made from non-traditional materials and objects.  He combined painting and sculpture.

pop art

Richard Hamilton was famous for this collage combining references to newspapers, comics, advertising, appliances, food, packaging, television and movies.

 Hamilton

David Hockney is a British artist whose early work had a humorous mood, vivid colour and magazine style images.

 Hockney






Massimo Vignelli

Vignelli was an Italian designer, who worked on packaging design, furniture design and public signage.   He studied architecture in Venice.
His work was part of the modernist movement, focusing on simplicy and geometric forms.
He used very few typefaces in his work that he considered to be perfect, e.g. Bodoni, Helvetica and Garamond No 3.

He is most famous for designing the New York City Subway map.



Vignelli admired architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. He moved to New York in the mid 60s to introduce America to his design style which was inspired by their ideal for functional beauty.
He was responsible for taking modernist European graphic design to America.

His clients included American Airlines, Ford, IBM, Xerox and even St Peter's Lutheran church in Manhattan.

He described himself as an 'information architect', structuring information to make it more understandable.
His map of the New York subway received criticism for missing out streets and for its use of non conventional colours, like grey to represent water. Vignelli preferred to call it a diagram rather than a map, an ingenious work of streamlined beauty.

Vignelli opened a design company called 'Unimark International' with 6 other designers in the mid 1960s, which became one of the world's largest design firms.









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