What Art Style Came After Pop Art?

Art|Pop Art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and the late 1950s in America. It presented a challenge to traditional fine art values and focused on mass-produced popular culture. The term “pop art” was first used by British art critic Lawrence Alloway in 1955 to describe the work of artists such as Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, and Eduardo Paolozzi, who drew their inspiration from sources such as advertising, comic books, and consumer products.

Pop art was initially associated with a sense of fun and irreverence; its bright colors and bold lines were a far cry from the muted tones of traditional fine art. Artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used popular images from advertising, television, and comics to create their works. Their approach embraced the idea that an artwork doesn’t have to be serious to be meaningful; instead, it can be a reflection on everyday life.

In the 1960s and 1970s, pop art evolved into a number of different directions. In New York City, artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein took pop art further into abstraction while artists like Claes Oldenburg explored new materials such as plastic. Meanwhile in Britain, artists like David Hockney turned away from mass-produced materials towards more personal subject matter such as landscapes or portraits.

By the 1980s pop art had become firmly entrenched in popular culture as it was taken up by fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier who incorporated elements of Pop Art into his designs. This period also saw the emergence of Neo-Pop Art which combined ideas from both pop art and modernism but with a focus on consumerism instead of politics or social commentary.

The 1990s saw the emergence of Postmodernism which sought to redefine established notions of beauty by mixing different styles together in a single work. Artists such as Damien Hirst combined elements of Pop Art with elements borrowed from other movements such as Minimalism or Expressionism to create works that challenged traditional interpretations of beauty or meaning.

In conclusion, after Pop Art came Neo-Pop Art followed by Postmodernism which challenged traditional notions of beauty and meaning through its eclectic mix of styles from different periods. In this way Pop Art continues to influence contemporary culture today through its spirit of experimentation and its refusal to accept existing definitions of what is beautiful or meaningful.