Pop Art

Pop Art: The Test of the Object
After the Second World War came the birth of the consumer society. The American way of life, with its emphasis on growth, quantity, consumption and fun, dominated western values. But underneath, many of the same old dark forces raged on: war - Berlin, Korea, Vietnam; racial unrest; the political intolerance of the early 1950s. Among the young, new values awoke, and protest movements sprang up...

What is Pop Art?
While the term Pop Art is widely known nowadays, its artistic scope and the issues it raises are nonetheless frequently misunderstood. Pop Art in Britain refers to a group of artists who began appearing on the scene in the mid-1950s. This identity was formed around The Independent Group, an intellectual circle consisting of the painters Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, the architectural partnership of Alison and Peter Smithson, and the art critic Lawrence Alloway. In its theoretical explorations, The Independent Group focused on a theoretical exploration of technology, hence the recurring references to science-fiction in British Pop Art. American Pop Art had no explicit linkups with British Pop Art and refers to a tendency that arose from individual initiatives. Though it was not a structured movement in the sense of a group putting on collective shows, it does however have a certain coherence. In general terms, it emerged from the work of Robert Rauschenberg and, chiefly, Jasper Johns, and is characterised by an interest in ordinary objects, irony, and a faith in the potency of images. American Pop Art has its home specifically in New York, where at the outset artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol exhibited, then James Rosenquist, George Segal and Tom Wesselman...

Guggenheim: Pop Art
Pop art was pioneered in London in the mid-1950s by Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi (members of the Independent Group), and in the 1960s by Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Peter Phillips. It was supported by such critics as Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham....

Princeton's Pop art collection
This exhibition celebrates the promised gift of an important collection of sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints, featuring later works by leading figures of the American Pop Art movement: Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and others. Also included are works from the museum’s distinguished permanent collection, provided a broad historical overview of Pop art, particularly as it has been practiced the artists represented in this gift, not only in the 1960s, but throughout their careers...