pop art inspiration

Pop Art mood board

I have researched pop art in the past and focused on the major artists such as Richard hamilton, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. For this project I wanted to take it a step further and explore more of the lesser well-known artists of the pop art scene. I researched the British Pop Art scene and discovered  artists such as Allen Jones, Gerald Laing and Patrick Caulfield.

Gerald Laing
I chose to use this illustration by Gerald Laing as it showcases one of the iconic  features of pop art which is the  use of Benday dots. Laing uses Benday dots in the style of Roy Lichtenstein as a way of shading the body of his model. Pop art usually utilises bright, comic strip style colours but I like the more muted, monochrome colours of this illustration. Laing breaks up the negative space of the illustration with a pop of red which suggests the bathing suit. The brush strokes are rough and clearly visible. Warhol was a proponent of this as he wished to show the hand-made, do-it -yourself nature of the work as a way of conveying the idea that anybody could make art.

Eduardo Paolozzi
I included this collage as it showcases another aspect of pop art which  is collage. Artists such as Paolozzi use images ripped out of magazines and posters to incorporate pop culture images with original illusions. The colours are more typical of Pop Art as they are bright and dramatic. Paolozzi uses images of popular icons of his time such as Marilyn Monroe and JFK. I like this composition as it remind me of a pinball machine possibly suggesting that life is just a game. 

Patrick Caulfield
Patrick Caulfield uses commercial objects such as this clock  as a subject for his screen print. Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol believed that these objects were worthy of artistic merit in their own right as they were products and icons of the new consumer society which had emerged since the 1950's. 

Allen Jones
Like most Pop artists, Allen Jones wanted to redefine the perception of what fine art could be. Jones aimed to make art without  any traditional painterly or sculptural techniques, using unconventional subjects. Jones said of his choice of subject,  'The erotic impulse transcends cerebral barriers and demands a direct emotional response. Confronted with an abstract statement people readily defer to an expert; but confronted with an erotic statement everyone is an expert. It seems to me a democratic idea that art should be accessible to everyone on some level, and eroticism in one such level’. I find this image interesting as it seems to be a comment on the culturally-imposed ideal of the female body.

Andy Warhol

 Warhol was interested in mass-produced consumer items. In this silkscreen he uses coca cola bottles as the subject. Warhol also used silk screening,  a mass production technique to produce his prints. Like Many other pop artists he wanted to take the 'painterly techniques' out of the picture and just leave the image of the object to speak for itself.

Anya Hindmarch

Ashley williams

Peter Jenson