Pop Art and Photorealism - Essay Example

Teacher Pop Art and Photorealism: The teacher and the In the late 1950s, there were turmoil and protesting going on in multiple locations around the United States. In attempts to visually depict what was happening artistically, artists created a method of painting that is known as Pop Art, or Popular Art. From Pop Art came many subsets that were more representative of the artist. A popular subset that caused many painters to argue about what constituted painting was photo realism. These two artistic methods continued to maintain popularity while other methods faded into the background.

In the art world many who are photo realists consider themselves pop artists, but not many pop artists consider themselves true photorealist. This distinction is important in understanding the differences in how these specifics methods are created and what the artists are trying to show their audience. Pop-Art uses published visual representations of societal culture. Published sources include magazines, comic books and advertisements to merge into a painting. These elements assisted in showing how the nation was progressing socially.

In many cases, the art was formed as a mockery of culture and what the United States has become. This was specifically true during the early years of pop art when individuals were more concerned with themselves than with what was going on in the government. Artists, such as Andy Warhol used Campbell, picture soup cans to show how materialistic the United States has become. Other artists used found objects to explore their own forms of irony. At times, the message was unclear to the audience. What was clear is that the artist was frustrated with something in society and wanted to visually display this representation.

The artistic rules for pop artists were: anything goes, any form of published material could be used in the depiction of mockery. Pop Art was not strictly a United States creation, but it was highly popular in Great Britain as well during the 1950s and 1960s. Photorealism, although a product of the much larger pop art movement during the 60s, had another aim during creation. The artists first took photographs of a place or event and then back in their studio the artist replicated the photo onto canvas.

The paintings coming from photos were highly realistic and appealing. These artists differed from traditional pop artists in that they did not use already published material and superimpose it to a painting. Instead, the painter was intimately familiar with the location as the painter was also usually the photographer. Photo realism was not about the mockery of life, but more the enjoyment and wonderment of the ordinary. Anything could be ordinary, but when looked upon a different way, it became something new.

While pop artists were able to use relatively any media for their paintings, photo realists had a specific set of rules on what constituted a photorealism painting. These five guidelines set about what it meant to be an originator of the movement. Due to these rules, only a select few could be considered founders of the movement. Artistic movements evolve and die out as new methods present themselves. Pop art, while extremely popular during the 1960s, has faded from popularity. Photo realism, on the other hand, gained popularity with its lifelike paintings and representations of life.

Many remember Andy Warhol, while there are not that many photo realists that are household names. This is due to the fact that what pop artists did caused people to remember for days, months, and even years after the painting was showed. Both, however, showed the inner spirit of the artists and how they felt about their subject matter. Art is something that while the artist may mean one thing, it is perceived as another by the viewer and that is what makes specifically pop art and photorealism so interesting and important to the artistic community.

These two formats are important to the artistic community because they show what a disillusionment of society can produce. The artists were upset about how the United States and fellow countries were treating others and took a stand to change it. After pop art became popular, another genre of artists wanted to reflect the good, the ordinary, and the mundane in a new way. With that ushered in a new form of popular art that revolutionized how art was viewed both internally and externally. These two methods promoted new methods of painting that continued to change how art is visualized.

Art is ever changing and emotional. Works Cited Crane, Diana. The Transformation of the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940-1985. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Print.