Pop Art
After World War II, Pop Art emerged as an Art movement in Great Britain and the United States. The contents of Pop Art being the use of borrowed imagery from mass culture-high art mimicking low art. Pop artists would use pornography, advertisements, commercial products, newspaper clippings and comic books as all elements to add to their work.
It was in London in the 1940's where the first inklings of Pop Art had emerged, an artist by the name of Eduardo Paolozzi had used the idea of taking clippings from American newspapers and magazines, images being mass-consumer products like soda bottles and automobiles and mixing them with images from girlie and body building magazines and using them to create an affect of ridicule and irony.
In Great Britain after World War II, things were a bit bleak, the physical destruction of the war in that country brought with it exorbitant costs. There was widespread rationing which meant luxury items were out of the question and in the art world this meant things like colour printing. As a result in Great Britain many magazines, architecture, clothing and movies were very colourless and drab.
Unlike Great Britain, America's land was unscathed by the destruction of the war and as a result industry was quick to expand. This provided a period of high economic growth characterized by high profits and prices, higher levels of investment trade and other economic activity. With this growth in wealth also produced a technologically advanced popular culture.
American magazines and films were big, colourful and glossy. Icons from popular culture now emerged into the limelight and become very influential, they gained power in society akin to that of high profile businessmen and politicians.
The use of these icons became a predominant element in the productions of Pop Art, with huge blown up images of movie stars taken from Hollywood films, like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, paintings and...
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