Pop Art Painting

Pop Art exploded in the mid-20th century as a reaction to consumerism, mass media, and pop culture. The movement started in the 1950s and became popular in the sixties. It successfully transitioned from abstract expressionism and theories, which were art styles that preceded Pop Art.

The art style involves using mundane objects from ordinary life like newspapers, magazines, and comic books to create amazing art compositions, which fostered the rise of contemporary arts. It was a major shift from the modernist art style that pop artists thought was for the rich and empty.

Artists who made Pop Art became famous and made their artwork mainstream. Today, the Pop Art style is still fancied and incorporated by many artists like Angelo Accardi. Looking to buy a Pop Art style painting? Check out Angelo Accardi’s collections for suitable pieces.

What Is Pop Art Style?

Pop Art emerged in the 1950s and peaked in the sixties. It was an art movement that started as a reactionary to traditional art forms, outlining that the theory and abstract expressionism pretty much didn’t represent the real world. The style was often referred to as anti-art as it previously failed to abide by the standard rules.

Overall, pop artists used different techniques that were native to commercial screen-printing, fashion illustration, magazine designs, and comic book arts. These techniques blurred the line between high and low arts.

What Kind of Paint Do You Use for Pop Art?

Pop Art was characterized by bold colors, especially the primary colors red, yellow, and blue. It was kind of similar to the bright comic strip palette. The colors did not represent the artist’s inner self, which was often depicted in classical painting, but they represented the real vibrant world around them.

They also used hard edge composition to try and defuse the painterly looseness of abstract expressionism and abstraction impressionism. Most pop artworks were made of distinctive or satirize shapes to enlarge them to comical proportions.

Pop Art Painting Examples

Some of the great works of Pop Art style are still remembered to date. They include:

Bigger Splash

It was created by the pioneer of Pop Art style, David Hockney, in the 1960s. Most of his paintings were about creating semi-abstract paintings and playing around with various media. Bigger Splash painting was centered on swimming pools, triggered by his move to California. He was fascinated by the relaxing and sensual way the residents of California move about their business.

Andy Warhol Paintings

Andy painted a whole lot during his lifetime, from Polaroids to photographs. The artist is well known in Pop Art style culture for his contribution. He was popularly known to appropriate iconic faces from newspaper publicity stills and other media.

He was quoted saying, ‘everyone will be famous in 15 minutes in the future,’ and certainly, his portraits reflected that saying. They majorly tried to elevate their subjects to models of superstardom, which Warhol was obsessed with. Other portraits dealt with darker issues like legacy and death.

Lichtenstein Signature’s Style

Roy Lichtenstein is another hall name in Pop Art style. He paid homage to mass production and the printing process through his works, then shifted to a wide range of mediums like sculptures. As an artist, he was fascinated by reproductive parts, which garnered a lot of criticism back then. Even so, Roy is still an iconic figure in the realm of Pop Art culture.

Pop Art Painting Ideas

Andy Warhol was at the forefront of the Pop Art style. He pointed out that many artists were disconnected from modern things that everyone else noticed, as they refused to incorporate them in their artwork. In turn, this made the obsession with the brushstrokes highly exclusive, as painters during that time were disconnected from real people and life in general.

Pop Art style focused on the real and important subject matter; it made the line between high and low art blurry as pop artists bridged the gap between popular culture and classical art, which changed the narrative of what constitutes art and artists. Therefore, the Pop Art movement became accessible to the masses and not just the elite.

Pop Art Painting Techniques

The artists used ready-made items and imagery of popular political and social events. They were then displayed in an artistic collage and arranged properly in a process called appropriation. Appropriation basically means borrowing, altering, and copying items and objects, plus images from mass popular culture.

With the ever-growing mass media outlets, the proliferation of visual events and consumerism culture took center stage, therefore enabling the appropriation of artwork possible. Pop artists were seen to go far and wide in the appropriation technique as some appropriated commercial screen-printing, billboards catalogs, graphics layouts that mimicked advertisements, plus any other marketing tool popularly referred to as propaganda that filled up their world. Due to this reason, it was previously referred to as the propaganda art style.

Is Pop Art Style Still Used Today?

There are a lot of contemporary pop artists on the horizon who have made sure that the Pop Art style movement continues to go on strong and thrive. These popular artists like the likes of Angelo Accardi have continued to create unique masterpieces that mirror the Pop Art style.

If you’re looking to buy Pop Art for sale, buying from printmaker Angelo Accardi is highly recommended. Check out Angelo Accardi’s collections to see unique pieces you might like.