Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source has been one of the most influential characteristics of Pop art.
Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-World War II manufacturing and media boom. Some critics have cited the Pop art choice of imagery as an enthusiastic endorsement of the capitalist market and the goods it circulated, while others have noted an element of cultural critique in the Pop artists' elevation of the everyday to high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the status of the art object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at the base, a commodity.
FAMOUS ART
Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Richard Hamilton, 1956
A Bigger Splash
David Hockney, 1967
Marilyn Monroe
Andy Warhol, 1967
Drowning Girl
Roy Lichtenstein, 1963
Campbell's Soup I
Andy Warhol, 1968
President Elect
James Rosenquist, 1960
KNOWN ARTISTS
Andy Warhol 1928 - 1987
Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art destined for galleries. Nevertheless, his screen-printed images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop art.
He emerged from the poverty and obscurity of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh, to become a charismatic magnet for bohemian New York, and to ultimately find a place in the circles of High Society. For many his ascent echoes one of Pop art's ambitions, to bring popular styles and subjects into the exclusive salons of high art.
Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997
Roy Lichtenstein was one of the first American Pop artists to achieve widespread renown, and he became a lightning rod for criticism of the movement. His early work ranged widely in style and subject matter and displayed a considerable understanding of modernist painting: Lichtenstein would often maintain that he was as interested in the abstract qualities of his images as he was in their subject matter. However, the mature Pop style he arrived at in 1961, which was inspired by comic strips, was greeted by accusations of banality, lack of originality, and, later, even copying.
His high-impact, iconic images have since become synonymous with Pop art, and his method of creating images, which blended aspects of mechanical reproduction and drawing by hand, has become central to critics' understanding of the significance of the movement.
David Hockney 1937-
David Hockney's bright swimming pools, split-level homes and suburban Californian landscapes are a strange brew of calm and hyperactivity. Shadows appear to have been banished from his acrylic canvases of the 1960s, slick as magazine pages. Flat planes exist side-by-side in a patchwork, muddling our sense of distance.
Hockney's unmistakable style incorporates a broad range of sources from Baroque to Cubism and, most recently, computer graphics. An iconoclast obsessed with the Old Masters, this British Pop artist breaks every rule deliberately, delighting in the deconstruction of proportion, linear perspective, and colour theory. He shows that orthodoxies are meant to be shattered and that opposites can coexist, a message of tolerance that transcends art and has profound implications in the political and social realm.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
MAY 1950s: Postwar Baby Boom begins
JUNE 25, 1950: Korean War starts
JMAY 14, 1955: Warsaw Pact signed
NOVEMBER 1, 1955: Vietnam War begins
SEPTEMBER 13, 1961: Berlin Wall Is Constructed
OCTOBER 16, 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
AUGUST 28, 1963: Kings I Have A Dream Speech
NOVEMBER 22, 1963: JFK Is Assassinated
JULY 16, 1969: American Astronauts Land on the moon
SEPTEMBER 15, 1969: First Woodstock Concert
SWISS ART
ca.1950- late 1960
The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s.
The International Typographic Style has had a profound influence on graphic design as a part of the modernist movement, impacting many design-related fields including architecture and art. It emphasizes cleanness, readability, and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in the text, and it is for this that the style is named.[3][4] The influences of this graphic movement can still be seen in design strategy and theory to this day.
Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten Bei Bern.
Frutiger's most famous designs, Univers, Frutiger and Avenir, are landmark sans-serif families spanning the three main genres of sans-serif typefaces: neo-grotesque, humanist and geometric.[5] Univers was notable for being one of the first sans-serif faces to form a consistent but wide-ranging family, across a range of widths and weights.[6] Frutiger described creating sans-serif types as his "main life's work," partially due to the difficulty in designing them compared to serif fonts.
Josef Müller-Brockmann 1914-1996
Josef Müller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher. He studied architecture, design and history of art at both the University and Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. In 1936 he opened his Zurich studio specialising in graphic design, exhibition design and photography.
From 1951 he produced concert posters for the Tonhalle in Zurich. In 1958 he became a founding editor of New Graphic Design along with R.P. Lohse, C. Vivarelli, and H. Neuburg. In 1966 he was appointed European design consultant to IBM.
Brockmann is recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography (notably Akzidenz-Grotesk), shapes and colours which inspire many graphic designers in the 21st century.
Müller-Brockman was the author of several books on design and visual communication.
Armin Hofmann 1920-
Armin Hofmann is a Swiss graphic designer. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ruder as head of the graphic design department at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style.
His teaching methods were unorthodox and broad-based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied - books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, posters, sign systems, and environmental graphics. His work is recognized for its reliance on the fundamental elements of graphic form - point, line, and shape - while subtly conveying simplicity, complexity, representation, and abstraction.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
MAY 1950s: Postwar Baby Boom begins
JUNE 25, 1950: Korean War starts
JMAY 14, 1955: Warsaw Pact signed
NOVEMBER 1, 1955: Vietnam War begins
SEPTEMBER 13, 1961: Berlin Wall Is Constructed
OCTOBER 16, 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
AUGUST 28, 1963: Kings I Have A Dream Speech
NOVEMBER 22, 1963: JFK Is Assassinated
JULY 16, 1969: American Astronauts Land on the moon
SEPTEMBER 15, 1969: First Woodstock Concert
PSYCHEDELIC MOVEMENT
ca.1960 to mid 1970
Psychedelic art (also known as psychedelia) is art, graphics or visual displays related to or inspired by psychedelic experiences and hallucinations known to follow the ingestion of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and psilocybin. The word "psychedelic" (coined by British psychologist Humphry Osmond) means "mind-manifesting". By that definition, all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic". In common parlance "psychedelic art" refers above all to the art movement of the late 1960s counterculture, featuring highly distorted or surreal visuals, bright colours and full spectrums and animation (including cartoons) to evoke, convey, or enhance psychedelic experiences.
Psychedelic visual arts were a counterpart to psychedelic rock music. Concert posters, album covers, liquid light shows, liquid light art, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling colour patterns of LSD hallucinations but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from these psychedelic states of consciousness.
FAMOUS ART
Jim Hendrix, 1968
Grateful Dead, Junior Wells, Chicago Blues Band, and The Doors
Wes Wilson, 1966
Siegel Schwall Band, Miller Blues Band
Victor Moscoso, Photograph by Eric Webber, 1967
The Yardbirds, The Doors
Bonnie Maclean, 1967
Moby Grape, The Sparrow, Charlatans
Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, 1966-1967
Bo Diddley, Quicksilver Messenger Service
Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, 1967
KNOWN ARTISTS
Richard Griffin 1944- 1991
Richard Alden "Rick" Griffin was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in Zap Comix. Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best-known posters and album covers such as Aoxomoxoa. His work within the surfing subculture included both film posters and his comic strip, Murphy.
In the mid-1960s, he participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Tests. His first art exhibition was for the Jook Savages, celebrating the first anniversary of the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street. Organizers for the Human Be-In saw his work and asked him to design a poster for their January 1967 event. Chet Helms was also impressed by Griffin's work and asked him to design posters for the Family Dog dance concerts at the Avalon Ballroom, which led Griffin to create concert posters for the Charlatans. In 1967, Griffin, Kelley, Mouse, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson teamed as the founders of Berkeley Bonaparte, a company that created and marketed psychedelic posters. In the fall of 1967 through the end of the year, Griffin also created posters for Chet Helms's "Family Dog" ballroom in Denver, CO.
Robert Wesley Wilson 1937-2020
Robert Wesley Wilson was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. Best known for designing posters for Bill Graham of The Fillmore in San Francisco, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, the psychedelic era and the 1960s. In particular, he was known for inventing and popularizing a "psychedelic" font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting.
His style was heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau movement. Wilson was considered to be one of "The Big Five" San Francisco poster artists, along with Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and Stanley Mouse.
He amicably stopped working with Helms in the 1960s, with Wilson feeling "stifled" by the promoter saying his art was "too far out" at the time. Several months later, Wilson had begun working exclusively for Graham, an arrangement which ended in 1967 over a contract dispute. One of Wilson's Grateful Dead posters was used on the cover of Life in September 1967, with the magazine quoting him in an article on "the national poster craze." He received a National Endowment for the Arts award in 1968.
Bonnie MacLean 1939-2020
Bonnie MacLean was an American artist known for her classic rock posters. In the 1960s and 1970s, she created posters and other art for the promotion of rock and roll concerts managed by Bill Graham, using the iconic psychedelic art style of the day. MacLean continued her art as a painter focusing mostly on nudes, still lifes, and landscapes. Her work has been placed alongside the "big five"—male Haight-Ashbury poster artists who were seminal to the "iconography of the counterculture scene.
Artist Wes Wilson was the main poster artist for The Fillmore when he and Bill Graham had a "falling out" and Wilson quit. MacLean had been painting noticeboards at the auditorium in the psychedelic style and took up the creation of the posters after Wilson left, creating more than thirty posters, most in 1967. Some of her posters have been sold for $10,000, and are highly valued in the collectors' market.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
JANUARY 20, 1961: President Kennedy Is Elected
SEPTEMBER 13, 1961: Berlin Wall Is Constructed
OCTOBER 16, 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
AUGUST 28, 1963: Kings I Have A Dream Speech
NOVEMBER 22, 1963: JFK Is Assassinated
JULY 1, 1967: San Francisco Summer of Love Begins
APRIL 27, 1968: Russians Send First Man Into Space
JANUARY 20, 1969: Richard Nixon is Elected
JULY 16, 1969: American Astronauts Land on the moon
SEPTEMBER 15, 1969: Woodstock Concert
GRAFFITI AND STREET ART
ca.1980-
The common idiom "to take to the streets" has been used for years to reflect a diplomatic arena for people to protest, riot, or rebel. Early graffiti writers of the 1960s and 70s co-opted this philosophy as they began to tag their names across the urban landscapes of New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. As graffiti bloomed outward across the U.S., Street Art evolved to encompass any visual art created in public locations, specifically unsanctioned artwork.
The underlying impetus behind Street Art grew out of the belief that art should function in opposition to, and sometimes even outside of, the hegemonic system of laws, property, and ownership; be accessible, rather than hidden away inside galleries, museums, and private collections; and be democratic and empowering, in that all people (regardless of race, age, gender, economic status, etc.) should be able to create art and have it be seen by others. Although some street artists do create installations or sculpture, they are more widely known for the use of unconventional art mediums such as spray paint, stencils, wheatpaste posters, and stickers. Street Art has also been called independent public art, post-graffiti, and guerilla art.
FAMOUS ART
Obey Giant
Frank Shepard Fairey, 1998
Tuttomondo
Keith Haring, 1989
Hip Hop Rat
Banksy, ca. 2008
Art Less Pollution
Alexandre Orion, 2007
Liquidated Chanel Logo
ZEVS, 2009
Bethlehem Boys
SWOON, 2011
KNOWN ARTISTS
Banksy Ca. 1970-
Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director, active since the 1990s. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.
Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public "installations" are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on. A small number of Banksy's works are official, non-publicly, sold through Pest Control. Banksy's documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film. In 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.
Shepard Fairey 1970-
Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator, and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has described him as one of the best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Blek le Rat 1952-
Blek le Rat; born Xavier Prou, is a French graffiti artist. He was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris, and has been described as the "Father of stencil graffiti".
He has had a great influence on today's graffiti art and "guerilla-art" movements, the main motivation of his work being social consciousness and the desire to bring art to the people. Many of his pieces are pictorials of solitary individuals in opposition to larger, oppressive groups. In 2006 he began his series of images representing the homeless, which depict them standing, sitting, or lying on sidewalks, in attempts to bring attention to what he views as a global problem.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
JUNE 1, 1980: Ted Turner establishes CNN.
JUNE 5, 1981: AIDS recognized by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
JUNE 18, 1983: Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.
APRIL 26, 1986: Chernobyl nuclear meltdown occurs.
NOVEMBER 9, 1989: Berlin Wall falls
JDECEMBER 25, 1991: Soviet union ends
JULY 5, 1997: Dolly the sheep is cloned successfully
JUNE 4, 1999: Rapper Marshal "Eminem" Mathers releases his first album, Slim Shady
NEW WAVE / PUNK
ca.1970 - mid 1980
In design, New Wave or Swiss Punk Typography refers to an approach to typography that defies strict grid-based arrangement conventions. Characteristics include inconsistent letter spacing, varying type weights within single words and typeset at non-right angles.
New Wave design was influenced by Punk and postmodern language theory. But there is a debate as to whether New Wave is a break or a natural progression of the Swiss Style. Sans-serif font still predominates, but the New Wave differs from its predecessor by stretching the limits of legibility. The break from the grid structure meant that type could be set centre, ragged left, ragged right, or chaotic. The artistic freedom produced common forms such as the bold stairstep. The text hierarchy also strayed from the top-down approach of the International Style. The text became textured with the development of transparent film and the increase in the college in graphic design.[2] Further breakdown of minimalist aesthetic is seen in the increase in the number of type sizes and colours of fonts. Although punk and psychedelia embody the anti-corporate nature of their respective groups, the similarity between New Wave and the International Style has led some to label New Wave as “softer, commercialized punk culture.”
FAMOUS ART
The Face magazine
Neville Brody, 1988
God Save our Forests
Jamie Reid
Seven And The Ragged Tiger (album cover)
Malcolm Garrett
Album cover for Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
Peter Saville, 1979
Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen
Jamie Reid, 1977
Sex Pistols, Young Flesh Required
Jamie Reid, 1979
KNOWN ARTISTS
Jamie Reid 1947-
Jamie Reid (born 16 January 1947 in London, United Kingdom[1]) is an English artist and anarchist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note, came close to defining the image of punk rock, particularly in the UK. His best-known works include the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and the singles "Anarchy in the UK", "God Save The Queen" (based on a Cecil Beaton photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, with an added safety pin through her nose and swastikas in her eyes, described by Sean O'Hagan of The Observer as "the single most iconic image of the punk era"), "Pretty Vacant" and "Holidays in the Sun".
Peter Saville 1955-
Peter Saville is deemed one of the most popular British graphic designers and art directors of the generation. He gained popularity by designing several record sleeves for Factory Record while serving as art director of the studios.
Saville designed a number of record sleeves for Factory Records artists. Some of his notable clients were Joy Division and New Order. A fellow student influenced him to develop an interest in Herbert Spencer. He was highly inspired by a chief propagandist for the New Typography, Jan Tschichold, about whom he read in Herbert Spencer’s Pioneers of Modern Typography. According to Saville, the subtlety of the chapter “New Typography” penned by Tschichold, appealed to him. He drew parallels between the work and the New Wave that emerged out of Punk.
Malcolm Garrett 1956-
Malcolm Garrett is a British graphic designer, and Creative Director of ImagesCo, a communications design consultancy based in London, UK. He is Ambassador for Manchester School of Art and co-founder of the annual Design Manchester festival, now in its sixth year.
He came to prominence in the late 70s and early 80s through his work for music artists such as Buzzcocks, Magazine, Duran Duran, Simple Minds, and Peter Gabriel. He was an early convert to exploring the opportunities and challenges of design with digital technology, and his London studio was amongst the first of its peers to go totally digital in 1990.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
APRIL 22, 1970: First Earth Day
APRIL 15, 1973: the U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam
APRIL 4, 1975: Microsoft Founded
APRIL 1, 1976: Apple Computer launched
MAY 25, 1977: Star Wars Movie Released
JAUGUST 16, 1977. Elvis Found Dead
OCTOBER 16, 1978: John Paul II Becomes Pope
JUNE 5, 1981: AIDS recognized by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
JUNE 18, 1983: Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.
APRIL 26, 1986: Chernobyl nuclear meltdown occurs.
