What Period Did Pop Art Arise and How Long For?

Art|Pop Art

Pop Art was a visual art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. The movement presented a challenge to traditional fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, comic books, and mundane cultural objects. Pop Art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them.

The term Pop Art was first used by British art critic Lawrence Alloway in 1954 to describe the emerging visual trend of using mass-produced imagery and objects. The term was quickly adopted by artists and critics in the United States, where it gained considerable popularity throughout the 1960s, although it had been around for some time before that.

Pop Art was heavily influenced by popular culture and mass media, with its images often appearing like enlarged versions of advertisements or comic book panels. Artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg used everyday objects such as soup cans and newspapers as their subject matter.

They also incorporated techniques such as silkscreen printing, collage, and assemblage to create works that were both visually striking and conceptually challenging. Pop Art brought together a variety of artistic styles including abstraction, surrealism, pop psychology, kitsch, and even aspects of Dadaism.

Pop Art is generally thought to have begun around 1955 and lasted until about 1969. During this period there were several notable exhibitions that showcased Pop Art such as The Independent Group’s 1956 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London titled This Is Tomorrow; the ICA’s 1963 exhibition Homage to Barcelona; and New York’s 1964 exhibition International Exhibition of Graphic Design at MoMA which featured works from Andy Warhol amongst others. During this period Pop Art transitioned from being viewed as a trend or novelty style into an accepted form of contemporary art with its own canon of influential artists.

In conclusion, Pop Art arose around 1955 and lasted until about 1969 – a period of roughly 14 years – during which it gained increasing acceptance as an established form of contemporary art with its own canon of influential artists.