Conceptual Art/ Pop art

Type of modern art in which the idea or ideas that a work expresses are considered its essential point, with its visual appearance being of secondary (often negligible) importance. Conceptual art challenges the validity of traditional art, and claims that the materials used and the product of the process are unnecessary. As the idea or ideas are of prime significance, conceptual art is made up of information, including perhaps a written proposal, photographs, documents, and maps. The term has come to encompass all art forms outside traditional painting or sculpture, such as video art and performance art.

David Nitsche

Conceptual art is a highly controversial art form. Its supporters think it marks a significant expansion of the boundaries of art, which were previously growing increasingly commercialized. However, its detractors believe that it is trite, banal, and pretentious.

Pop Art

“Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichenstein. His work probably defines the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody.Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while it parodies in a soft manner.”

The term first appeared in Britain during the 1950s and referred to the interest of a number of artists in the images of mass media, advertising, comics and consumer products. The 1950s were a period of optimism in Britain following the end of war-time rationing, and a consumer boom took place. Influenced by the art seen in Eduardo Paolozzi’s 1953 exhibition Parallel between Art and Life at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, and by American artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, British artists such as Richard Hamilton and the Independent Group aimed at broadening taste into more popular, less academic art. Hamilton helped organize the ‘Man, Machine, and Motion’ exhibition in 1955, and ‘This is Tomorrow’ with its landmark image Just What is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing? (1956). Pop Art therefore coincided with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and ’60s, and became very much a part of the image of fashionable, ‘swinging’ London. Peter Blake, for example, designed album covers for Elvis Presley and the Beatles and placed film stars such as Brigitte Bardot in his pictures in the same way that Warhol was immortalizing Marilyn Monroe in the USA. Pop art came in a number of waves, but all its adherents - Joe Trilson, Richard Smith, Peter Phillips, David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj - shared some interest in the urban, consumer, modern experience.

Although the movement began in the late 1950s, Pop Art in America was given its greatest impetus during the 1960s. By this time, American advertising had adopted many elements and inflections of modern art and functioned at a very sophisticated level. Consequently, American artists had to search deeper for dramatic styles that would distance art from the well-designed and clever commercial materials.As the British viewed American popular culture imagery from a somewhat removed perspective, their views were often instilled with romantic, sentimental and humorous overtones. By contrast, American artists being bombarded daily with the diversity of mass produced imagery, produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive.

Keith herring-conceptual art

When asked about the “commercialism” of his work, Mr. Haring said: “I could earn more money if I just painted a few things and jacked up the price. My shop is an extension of what I was doing in the subway stations, breaking down the barriers between high and low art. By the arrival of Pop Shop, his work began reflecting more socio-poliotical themes, such as anti-apartheid, aids awareness, and the crack cocaine epidemic. He even created several pop art pieces influenced by other products: Absolute Vodka, Lucky strike cigarettes, and Coca-cola. In 1987 he had his own exhibitions in Helsinki and Antwerp, among others. He also designed the cover for the benefit album A very special christmas, on which Madonna was included. In 1988 he joined a select group of artists whose work has appeared on the label of Chateau Mouton Rothschild wine.

“For Keith Haring, painting was a crucible - a site of transformation, of birth and death, a place where objects, lines, colors, and forms went through a creative catharsis and were then transmuted in order to experience a tempest of personal and social, erotic and mystical impulses.”

Pop art


Andy Warhol.
After a career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his avant-garde Pop Art paintings and screenprintings. He was a diverse figure known for friendships with bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats. He was also controversial figure because of the nature of his works, his near fatal shooting, and his sex life. For these reasons and others he is known as the Prince of Pop Art.
“http://www.lilithgallery.com/arthistory/popart/Andy-Warhol.html”