In the post war world of the 1950’s both Britain and America wer

The subject matter and images of Pop Art, taken from mass culture, were familiar and included such things as beer bottles, soup cans, comic strips, road signs and similar objects incorporated into paintings, collages and sculptures. Much of the materials used were of modern technology such as plastic, urethane foam and acrylic paint. As well as using the subject matter from mass culture, Pop Art also used the techniques of mass production to mirror the mass production going on around them. Initially series of works all depicting the same image were used and in the early 1960’s Andy Warhol carried this idea a step further by adopting the mass production technique of silk screen printing, turning out hundreds of identical prints of Coca-Cola bottles, Campbell soup cans and other familiar objects. The initial reaction to this new found art form was that giant hamburgers and comic strips could not be serious works of art.#

The Pop Art movement began as a reaction against the Abstract Expressionist Movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Pop artists considered Abstract Expressionism to be overly intellectual, subjective and divorced from reality. Also the Pop artists did not like that this art was only sold to, and therefore implied only for, the middle class. Pop artists wanted to close the gap between life and art by embracing the environment of everyday life. This was an adoption of the aim of American composer John Cage.# “

Some topics in this essay:
Pop Art, Andy Warhol, Britain America, Rauschenberg Pop, Robert Rauschenberg, Abstract Expressionism, Art Pop, pop art, pop artists, American Pop, Expressionist Movement, John Cage#, mass production, screen printing, art mass, subject matter, pop art mass, robert rauschenberg, silk screen printing, images pop, american pop, comic book style, culture pop, images pop art, american pop artists,