Pop Art and design
Art
movements throughout history have been created in the midst of various
political upheavals. The larger part of art wanted to have itself looked upon
as a form of expression with the sole purpose of providing aesthetic pleasure
rather than conforming to politics. But the authenticity of this ideological
concept was contradicted and faced in the late 1950’s with the emergence of a
predominately American Art movement by the name of Pop Art. Pop emerged in the
late 50’s and managed to thrive in the 60’s and way in to the late seventies.
It utilized the imagery and techniques of consumerism and popular culture.
Many
perceived pop as a mere continuation of abstract expressionism, well at least
in part, or if anything more a reaction against it. There were forces within
abstract expressionism that propelled artists towards the new mode. For
example, as abstract expressionism began to exhaust its impulse, prevailing
interests in texture led artists to ever-bolder experiments with materials. Pop
had been given a well-needed push to reflect upon the homogenous social
conditions of conformity that encouraged it to deviate from the normal and
thrive for the new. This artistic transition was made in the face of fierce
opposition from well-established institutions, unintentionally making pop a
very open voice of protest and an integral part of the broader cultural happenings
of the time.
The
50’s was an era which provided the right cultural, social and political
conditions for the emergence of this new art phenomenon in the 60’s. As the
50’s were seen as a period of immense prosperity and conformity, almost every
thing was being mass-produced. From food, to housing products were being
produced in the millions. Pop used this as a focal point as it replicated
images of mass consumerism to near life like status with a satirical view of
western society and its obsession with consumption.
This
new aesthetic mode confronted art lovers as well as ordinary people with
everyday objects, which gained a new quality. It served as a breaking down of
the division between race, poverty, excessive consumption and social injustice.
Everyone consumed more or less the same products (such as Coca-Cola) be it
someone rich and famous or the ordinary man on the street.
Art
critics and mainstream cultural institutions of the time that were rather
conservative had alienated pop art and its concepts. They did not respond very
nicely to change especially in the form of pop. Critics back then, as is the
case even till this day carried immense clout in the art world, one could say
they could ‘’make’’ or ‘’break’’ artists.
Pop
favoured figured imagery and the reproduction of everyday products such as
Campbell soup cans, comic strips and advertisements, giving art a new realism
in its most contemporary form. Pop involves the use of existing imagery from
mass culture already processed into two dimensions. Pop emphasises flatness and
frontal presentation. Pop artists, especially in America have a preference for
centralized composition and for flat areas of unmodulated and unmixed colour
bound by hard edges.
Andy
Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans are about sameness (although with differing
labels): same brand, same size, same paint surface, same fame as a product.
They mimic the condition of mass advertising, out of which his sensibility had
grown. This fascinated and yet indifferent take on the famous object, became
the key to Warhol’s work. Warhol extended it by using silkscreen. Pop
concentrated on the contemporary subject matter integral to the ready-made
sources the artists have used. Pop had been more than just an artistic voice;
it was a part of something bigger whose effects were even present in film,
literature and music.
Pop was very much a movement that emerged with
very few blessings from the establishment that housed it, as it was thought
upon as vulgar and completely contrary to what art should be. And unacceptable
were the images it was producing that had been thought of as no more than a
colourful satire of society with its sneer like qualities aimed at exposing the
inability of a nation as great in size and wealth. This publicity through pop
art was widely regarded by major institutions as damaging for the nations
morale. As pop delved deep into the darkest part of corporate America, it
exposed certain truths that had been repressed for too long.
At that time Pop had not acquired the respect
of an establishment, or been elevated in the mainstream to a position of the
highest acclaim that it surely deserved. However, it surely had been embraced
by ordinary people even more so than expressionism as it captivated the hearts
of millions of people through images of everyday ordinary life, represented in
varying degrees from its most simplistic to highly explicit. Pop surely should
have been credited with the fact that it so took art into to a new mode
aesthetically, through techniques and format’s which prior to pop had never
been seen before. Pop was a movement that wanted to deviate from the normal
practices, thus experimented with new modes of representation as versatile and
vigorously vibrant as the socio-political context in which it was created.
After Pop became Popular it started to influence product design in the late 60 and many designers like Joe Colombo,Quashar Khan,Verner Penton. Which they all where influenced from pop design and created products fot the pop culture at that time.Pop was in an era where a lot of movements were mixed,Like the psychedelic movement and the Space age era which made a very big combination of ideas and style which till this day is still inspiring a lot of people and designers.
Reference:
POP ART AND PRODUCT DESIGN. 2015. POP ART AND PRODUCT DESIGN. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/popart2a.html. [Accessed 30 January 2015].
The word Postmodern
was first used in as a way to interpret a new style of painting in other words
to depart from the French Impressionism and was used around 1870s. Also
postmodernism was another way to distinguish different kinds of music and
criticisms about religion and theology which means a study on the religion and
the concept of God and of the religion truths. Not to go deep in the subject
I’m going to focus my research on the connection of postmodernism with design
and architecture .the influences it made on design and different designers
through the 19th century.
Before post modernism idealists and creators their was the
Modernists, The modernist thought in a different way then the postmodernism era
they wanted a room for improvement a better world and in design art and
architecture less was more .
The first architects who made use of postmodern architectural
ideas are Aldo Rossi , Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson and Michael Graves .They
are known to recover and experiment with historical forms and the use of
elements of materials through art and architecture. The first major postmodern
work was the Portland public service Building also the At and T Building in New
York city .
