Pop Art and Harlem Renaissance - Essay Example

Harlem Renaissance was characterized by an overt racial pride that was representing the New Negro idea, who believed through production and intellect of music, art, and literature could challenge the pervading stereotypes and racism to foster socialist or progressive politics, social, and racial integration (Wintz, 2007). The movement sought to break free of bourgeois shame and Victorian moral values about lives’ aspects that may be seen by the whites as reinforcing racist beliefs. It should be noted that a specific school of thought did not dominate the Harlem Renaissance; instead, it was characterized by intense debate that laid the groundwork for subsequent African American art.

It attracted a remarkable concentration of talent and intellect and served as an inspiration of cultural awakening. Pop Art Renaissance happened in the mid twentieth century, in the late 1950s in the United States and earlier on in the mid-1950s in Britain. The history of pop art in the Great Britain and North America developed differently. In the Great Britain, its origin can be traced in the post-war period and employed parody and irony. It was more academic focusing on the dynamic and paradoxically imagery of the American Popular culture as manipulative, powerful symbolic devices that was not only improving society’s prosperity, but also affected patterns of life (Wilkins and Zaczek, 2005).

The precursor to the pop art Renaissance in Britain was the formation of the Independent Group in 1952 in London. This group was a gathering of young architects, critics, painters, writers, and sculptors who were challenging modernist approaches that were prevailing to culture and traditional fine art views. The discussions of this group revolved around the