Pop Art is an art movement that originated in England in the 1950’s but became best known in the United States during the 1960’s. Many Pop artists use common, everyday, “nonartistic” commercial illustrations as the basis of their style or subject matter. Many of the works these artists produce are satirical or playful in intent. However, their uses of forms and themes from mass culture are intended to devalue what they consider to be unnecessarily difficult and private aspects of traditional fine art forms.
Pop artists have no single way of working. Some are fascinated by the bold, simple patterns of commercial illustrations. For example, Andy Warhol made exact painted copies of soup cans, repeating them over and over in the same painting. James Rosenquist and Tom Wesselmann use advertising art as the basis of paintings with their own complex, often humorous and frequently critical designs. Several Pop artists have made three-dimensional constructions that resemble and embrace the world of ordinary objects.
