Essay on Abstract Expressionism
Pop Art turned type the extremely personal abstraction of Abstract Expressionism to images from well-liked culture. Pop Art was a movement from late 1950’s for the early 1960’s, predominantly in London and New York. Pop Artists looked at well-liked culture for their source of inspiration.
Andy Warhol established and enhanced the status of Pop Art. Warhol’s screen-print, “Green Coca Cola” 1962 consists of several images of coca cola. By the repetition of this kind of a banal object, the audience is reminded of mass production, which was a reflection of their modern consumer society. Repetition and lack of foreground, middle ground and background has resulted in loss of fact during the artwork which challenges conventional art. It is obvious that Warhol creates a conceptual comparison between celebrities, like Marilyn Manrow, Elvis Presley and Jacqueline Kennedy and commercial items like Coca Cola in his artworks, implying that they're all just corporation merchandise intended for mass consumption.
Warhol was obsessed with fame, food, sex and death and these have been the influences of his subject matter. He often depicted horrific car crashed, suicides, electric chair and riot images which he gathered from newspapers. “Red Race Riot” 1963 is often a silkscreen taken from photographs of an infamous riot in Southern America. Each image looks to be laid down randomly inside a busy manner. The repetitiveness has the effect of deflating the disturbing content from the images, which reflects the publics’ immunity to disturbing images of that kind as a result of the media.
Abstract Expressionism was a extremely complex sort of art doing and its understanding was restricted to certain intellectual few. The sudden use of Pop’s banal subject matter had critics up in arms, the Abstract Expressionist were angry that they had been loosing their spot light in the art market. Any ordinary individual could appreciate Pop Art due to the images he depicted and there was a high demand for them by the rich and famous. From Cambells soup cans to Elvis Presley, Warhol brought art down from highbrow into lowbrow. He challenged the particular importance of a one-off artwork and went against the modernists’ concept with the originality from the artist as he mass made his artworks. He referred to his art studio as his “factory” and “want(ed) to become a machine” . He had a team of workers to support him create his silkscreen like a result; Warhol had modest person involvement inside artworks. He challenged and radicalized peoples view of what art quite was.
Claes Oldenburg is a Pop Artist who enjoys playing from the audiences perceptions of what is real and what's fake. Through sculpture he represents commercial foods humorously and transforms these banal objects by changing the size, texture, color, density, and context. “Show String Potatoes Spilling from a Bag”1965-6 is a sculpture piece over A couple of meters high of vinyl French fries spilling from a giant vinyl paper bag. This give the audience a strange and new perspective with the items they eat everyday. Potato chips were originally a foods of desire; however, Oldenburg has represented them in an unappetizing and unhygienic way. By enlarging the size, the chips have the effect of cascading down onto the audience. The alter in texture and color makes a floppy and dirty consider and simply because it’s displayed on a floor, the chips come to be extremely uneatable. The bag represents the mass production nature with the 1960’s.
Oldenburg is attempting to ruin people’s appetite for mainstream fast foods. “2 Cheese Burgers with Everything” absolutely ruins the audience appreciation for fast foods. The droopy, mushy layers of food oozing out of the saggy buns give the audience a shock, in addition to a laugh. The presentation of “Floor Cone” 1962 is so off putting as a result of the unexpected adjust in size, texture and context. Presented flopped on a floor, the ice-cream is as tall like a person, and texture is as soft as a cushion. The representation from the foods juxtapose the glorification the media feeds the world.
Oldenburg’s public sculptures are humorous and ironic. He challenges conventional sculpture by representing banal object like “Spoon and Cherry Bridge”, as apposed to heroic masculine men. “Clothespin” 1976 stands almost as high as the multistory building behind it dwarfing the world below it. It ironically makes fun of society’s dependence on prized household retain goods. Oldenburg’s jobs is an attempt to move art out of its conventional domain and to really make it popular.
Roy Lichtenstein was the master of the stereotype. He painted comic like images of romance, science fiction and violence. Mimicking comic book style ways “the dot method” gave the effect of flat prints even though rejecting the simple principles of art. He transformed lowbrow comic strips into high art. His works have been usually ironic and had an element of humor. “We Rose Up Slowly” 1964 is a single of his quite a few paintings inspired by “true romance.” It’s ironic comment in the shallowness and absurdity portrayal of romance and love in their society. The stereotypical young, blond, female always seem in Lichtenstein’s paintings, is hopelessly in adore the handsome, dark, man. Both characters are very exaggerated with artificial emotions which creates fakeness.
“In the Car” 1963 is an additional painting inspired by romance. An additional glamorous, love struck blond will be the passenger of in a speeding car which is driven by the dark mysterious man. This painting differs to his other artworks as it doesn’t contain speech bubbles, which leaves it as much as the audiences’ imagination to draw the conclusion of this couples destiny. He adopted several features of comic book visual effects; the closely cropped composition with close focus on the faces, flat color, simplified shapes and dark outlines.
He created many scenes of explosive action inspired by war comics. Lichtenstein’s “Whamm!” 1963 belongs to a group of pictures produced within the early 1960s. Because of its incredibly large size of 4 meters in width and its dramatic subject matter the audience which was according to heroic images on the comics of Globe War II battles, “Whamm!” became a historic painting for your Pop generation. He includes onomatopoeic words like “whaaam!” “Snap!” “Bop!” and “Crunch!” which energizes the artwork. Lichtenstein was interested in capturing violent emotion in these dramatic scenes.
Lichtenstein contrasted the original comic strips with his artwork. Comic strips are normally small, easily disposable and quickly read like a part of the sequence image. However, his artworks had been on a large scale, permanent images that craved our attention. He borrowed compositions from famous works of art. Lichtenstein’s “Haystacks” 1968 reduced Claude Monet’s “Haystacks” 1891 into its most easy compositional elements. Monet’s delicate brushworks capturing the light and atmosphere has all been lost and replaced by harsh grids of flat monotone color utilizing crude printing like techniques.
All his subjects are detached from genuine life. He tried to remove all evidence of his unique hand and emotion in his artworks and gave them a carefully crafted machine produced appearance. His images reflect the banality of the American client culture and reaction against the accomplishment and seriousness of Abstract Expressionism.
Robert Rauschenberg stretched the boundaries on the art making technique by tough and braking down tradition. He was a single on the founding artists which bridged the gap in between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Rauschenberg was referred to as “the local recycler of Manhattan,” the objects for his “combines” have been found on the streets as he walked around his block. “Bed” 1955 was a result of a spontaneous act of art creation, after one day he decided that he “didn’t have any cash to by canvas” so he used his personal bed. Thick gluggy paint was slopped on with each the quilt as well as the pillow nevertheless on. “Bed” was refused access from New York Spoleto Festival as it was too extreme and outrageous for your conventional art world. Art critics had been disgusted and viewed it as “merely a decorative accident without the need of more meaning than a house-painter’s drips and blobs.”
Rauschenberg usually transformed his paintings into free standing three dimensional objects. He thought that “a painting is a lot more real if it's created out of bits in the genuine world,” for that reason so that you can represent truth in its truest forms, he has to include bit of everyday life.
“Odalisque” 1955 is an assemblage of Manhattan junk. Each object has practically nothing to accomplish with any other object, except that they're apart of the well-liked sculpture piece. It’s the randomness that holds the whole piece together, and stands out as the most essential component on the artwork.
“Odalisque” is often a humorous piece which got the critics fired up because it challenges all forms of traditional sculpture because it is often a ready-made.
By duplicating his artworks in “Factum 1”, 1957 and “factum 2”, 1957, Rauschenberg has challenged the creative spontaneous process. “Factum 1” is a seemingly random assemblage of collage with paint and dribble. “Factum 2” is often a practically identical copy with the same collage and dribbled paint. Suggestions that Rauschenberg “fakes” his brushstrokes as the identical works show the manage the artist has more than his brush marks.
Rauschenberg’s “Persimmon” is an example of his works which has characteristics that are nowadays known as postmodern. He purposely layered down colors, figures as well as other abstract imagery that stylistically clash. “Apollo” is an instance of juxtaposition collaged images with bold colored paints that makes a fragmentation. He does this in an attempt to challenge what art quite is. Through his works he challenges tradition and pushes the limits of anti art additional and further.
Pop Art turned within the extremely individual abstraction of Abstract Expressionism to images of popular culture. Abstract Expressionism was a very complex sort of art generating and its understanding was restricted to specific intellectual few. Pop Art’s use of banal subject matters, which have been always lighthearted and humorous, opened art to the wider public. Pop Art innovations have much paved the way for modern day art practices.
