Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad

Lucrare pentru obtinerea atestatului de competenta lingvistica -Limba Engleza2013

Pop-Art

Candidat : Dance Bogdan Clasa : XII C

Profesor indrumator : Christian Aurel

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad

Table of contents 1. Introduction....pag 3 2. Chapter Ipag 4 3. Chapter II...pag 8 4. Chapter III....pag 13 5. Summary..pag 16 6. Bibliography.pag 17

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad

Introduction
Pop Art was born from the need of making the material world visible once again. Dore Ashton. Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In Pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material.The concept of Pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it. Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. Much of Pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Post-modern art themselves. Pop art means a shorter version of popular art, which was launched in 1955 by the british critic Lawrence Alloway and introduced in 1957 in the Oxford Dictionary.Initially, Alloway used the term in order to make a reference to the massmedia products and not to the art.The word will be used to describe the art starting from the 1960s. The concept of Pop Art refers not only to the art itself, but also at the attitude which brought forward its creation : mass culture replaced elitist culture. Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising. Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping box containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures.

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad

Chapter I Origins
The movement appeared in Great Britain in the mid 1950s and in the USA at the end of that same decade. Pop Art defies tradition, stating that the use of visual objects produced on a large scale by the artist can be considered an art form. Pop artists include in their work a wide variety of communication environments, images and subjects excluded until then from art. Their purpose was not creating an unique work of art, instead, they chose to take their subjects and techniques from mass-media, modifying pictures, icons and familiar styles into works of art, often containing a certain amount of irony. By contrast, the origin in post-War Britain, while employing irony and parody, was more academic with a focus on the dynamic and paradoxical imagery of American popular culture as powerful, manipulative symbolic devices that were affecting whole patterns of life, while improving prosperity of a society. Early pop art in Britain was a matter of ideas fueled by American popular culture viewed from afar, while the American artists were inspired by the experience of living within that culture. Similarly, Pop art was both an extension and a repudiation of Dadaism. While Pop art and Dadaism explored some of the same subjects, Pop art replaced the destructive, satirical, and anarchic impulses of the Dada movement with detached affirmation of the artifacts of mass culture. United Kingdom The Independent Group (IG), founded in London in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to the Pop art movement. They were a gathering of young painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who were challenging prevailing modernist approaches to culture as well as traditional views of fine Art. The group discussions centered on popular culture implications from such elements as mass advertising, movies, product design, comic strips, science fiction and technology. At the first Independent Group meeting in 1952, co-founding member, artist and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi presented a lecture using a series of collages titled Bunk! that he had assembled during his time in Paris between 19471949. This material of "found objects" such as, advertising, comic book characters, magazine covers and various mass-produced graphics mostly represented American popular culture. One of the images in that presentation was Paolozzi's 1947 collage, I was a Rich Man's Plaything, which includes the first use of the word "pop, appearing in a cloud of smoke emerging from a revolver. Following Paolozzi's seminal presentation in 1952, the IG focused primarily on the imagery of American popular culture, particularly mass advertising. Subsequent coinage of the complete term "Pop art" was made by John McHale for the ensuing movement in 1954. "Pop art" as a moniker was then used in discussons by IG members in the Second Session of the IG in 1955, and the specific term "Pop art" first appeared in published print in an article by IG members Alison and Peter Smithson in Arc, 1956. However, the term is often credited to British art critic, Lawrence Alloway in a 1958 essay titled The Arts and the Mass Media, although the term he uses is "popular mass culture". Nevertheless, Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend the inclusion of the imagery found in mass culture in fine arts.

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad United States Although Pop Art began in the late 1950s, Pop Art in America was given its greatest impetus during the 1960s. The term "Pop Art" was officially introduced in December 1962; the Occasion was a "Symposium on Pop Art" organized by the Museum of Modern Art. 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. Two important painters in the establishment of America's Pop art vocabulary were Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While the paintings of Rauschenberg have relationships to the earlier work of Kurt Schwitters and other Dadaists, his concern was with social issues of the moment. His approach was to create art out of ephemeral materials and using topical events in the life of everyday America gave his work a unique quality. Johns' and Rauschenberg's work of the 1950s is classified as Neo-Dada, and is visually distinct from the classic American Pop Art which began in the early 1960s. Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichtenstein. 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. Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963), which was appropriated from the lead story in DC Comics' Secret Hearts #83. (Drowning Girl now is in the collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York.) Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Ben-Day dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction. Lichtenstein would say of his own work: Abstract Expressionists "put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's." Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art, while injecting humor, irony, and recognizable imagery and content into the mix. The paintings of Lichtenstein, like those of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and others, share a direct attachment to the commonplace image of American popular culture, but also treat the subject in an impersonal manner clearly illustrating the idealization of mass production. Andy Warhol is probably the most famous figure in Pop Art, in fact, art critic Arthur Danto once called Warhol "the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced". Warhol attempted to take Pop beyond an artistic style to a life style, and his work often displays a lack of human affectation that dispenses with the irony and parody of many of his peers.

Italy 5

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad In Italy, Pop Art was known from 1964, and took place in different forms, such as the "Scuola di Piazza del Popolo" in Rome, with artists such as Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli, Giosetta Fioroni, Tano Festa and also some artworks by Piero Manzoni, Lucio Del Pezzo and Mimmo Rotella. Italian Pop Art originated in 1950s culture, to be precise in the works of two artists: Enrico Baj and Mimmo Rotella, who have every right to be considered the forerunners of this scene. In fact, it was around 1958-1959 that Baj and Rotella abandoned their previous careers which might be generically defined as a nonrepresentational genre despite being run through with post-Dadaism to catapult themselves into a new world of images and the reflections on them which was springing up all around them. Mimmo Rotella's torn posters gained an ever more figurative taste, often explicitly and deliberately referring to the great icons of the times. Enrico Baj's compositions were steeped in contemporary kitsch, which was to turn out to be a gold mine of images and stimuli for an entire generation of artists. The novelty lies in the new visual panorama, both inside the four domestic walls and out: cars, road signs, television, all the "new world". Everything can belong to the world of art, which itself is new. In this respect, Italian Pop Art takes the same ideological path as that of the International scene; the only thing that changes is the iconography and, in some cases, the presence of a more critical attitude to it. Even in this case, the prototypes can be traced back to the works of Rotella and Baj, both far from neutral in their relationship with society. Yet this is not an exclusive element; there is a long line of artists, from Gianni Ruffi to Roberto Barni, from Silvio Pasotti to Umberto Bignardi and Claudio Cintoli who take on reality as a toy, as a great pool of imagery from which to draw material with disenchantment and frivolity, questioning the traditional linguistic role models with a renewed spirit of "let me have fun" la Aldo Palazzeschi. Japan In Japan, Pop Art would evolve from the nations prominent avant-garde scene. The work of Yayoi Kusama contributed to the development of Pop art itself and influenced many other artists, including Andy Warhol. In the mid-1960s graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo would become one of the most successful pop artists and an international symbol for Japanese Pop art. He is well known for his advertisements and creating artwork for pop culture itself, such as commissions from The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor amongst many others. Another leading pop artist at the time was Keiichi Tanaami. Iconic characters from Japanese manga and anime have also become symbols for Pop art such as Speed Racer and Astro Boy. Japanese manga and anime would also influence future pop artists such as Takashi Murakami and his superflat movement.

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad Comic books, commercials, packages, television shows or cinematography were key elements of the iconography promoted by this movement, both in Great Britain and in the United States. Another key feature of Pop art was the rejection of any distinguishment between tasteful and gaudy. This came as a consequence of the dissolution of the frontiers between great art and popular culture and the introduction of the last one in artistic creations as a method of ironically criticizing modern society. Pop art is the artistic expression of the prosperity era which came after the second World War. America became a greedy consumer society, categorizing art as any other ordinary product, indulging in all sorts of commercial manipulation, encouraging exhibitionism, self-publicity and immediate success. (Jonathan Law).

Chapter II Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as Pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in is native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad Warhol's art encompassed many forms of media, including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was also a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1984, two years before his death. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. His studio, The Factory was a famous gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market". Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. 1928 1949 Andy Warhol (Andrej Varhola, Jr.) was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth child of Andrej Varhola (Americanized as Andrew Warhola, Sr., 18891942) and Jlia ( Zavack, 18921972), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S. Andy had two older brothers, Paul, born in 1923, and John, born in 1925. His parents were working class Lemko emigrants from Mik (now called Mikov), located in today's northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the United States in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothersPavol (Paul), the oldest, was born in Slovakia; Jn was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator. In third grade, Warhol had Sydenham's chorea (also known as St. Vitus' Dance), the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever which causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bedridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident. As a teenager, Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in 1945. After graduating from high school, his intentions were to study art education at the University of

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad Pittsburgh in the hope of becoming an art teacher, but his plans changed and he enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology in pursuit of an art career as a commercial illustrator. In 1949, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Warhol was an early adopter of the silk screen printmaking process as a technique for making paintings. His earliest silkscreening in painting involved hand-drawn images though this soon progressed to the use of photographically derived silkscreening in paintings. Prior to entering the field of fine art, Warhol's commercial art background also involved innovative techniques for image making that were somewhat related to printmaking techniques. When rendering commercial objects for advertising Warhol devised a technique that resulted in a characteristic image. His imagery used in advertising was often executed by means of applying ink to paper and then blotting the ink while still wet. This was akin to a printmaking process on the most rudimentary scale. Warhol's work both as a commercial artist and later a fine artist displays a casual approach to image making, in which chance plays a role and mistakes and unintentional marks are tolerated. The resulting imagery in both Warhol's commercial art and later in his fine art endeavors is often replete with imperfection smudges and smears can often be found. In his book "POPism" Warhol says, "... when you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something." 1960s He began exhibiting his work during the 1950s. He held exhibitions at the Hugo Gallery, and the Bodley Gallery in New York City and in California his first West Coast gallery exhibition was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked his West Coast debut of Pop art. Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop art exhibition was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 624, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time poet John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963. It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, mushroom clouds, electric chairs, Campbell's Soup Cans, Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines or photographs of police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. During these years, he founded his studio, The Factory and gathered about him a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. His work became popular and controversial. Warhol had this to say about Coca Cola: What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on Pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for capitulating to consumerism. Critics 9

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became increasingly clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift. A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in itfrom the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. was created by six prominent Pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both Pop art and the perennial question of what art is. As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; this was particularly true in the 1960s. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with the production of silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at The Factory, Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov,Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations). During the 1960s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation Superstars, including Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn,Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some, like Berlin, remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.

1968 On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and Mario Amaya, art critic and curator, at Warhol's studio. Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on males. Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, a Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script had apparently been misplaced. Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol, however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived: surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again.

10

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life, including being required to wear a surgical corset. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art. Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol had too much control over my life. She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many the Factory 60s ended. Warhol had this to say about the attack: Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there. I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television, you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television. Death Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 am on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.

Chapter III Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 September 29, 1997) was an American Pop artist. During the 1960s, his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, and others. He became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the basic premise of Pop art better than any other through parody. Favoring the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-cheek humorous manner. His work was heavily

11

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He described Pop art as, not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting. Early years Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City, into an upper-middle class Jewish family. His father, Milton, was a real estate broker, his mother, Beatrice (Werner), a homemaker. He was raised on the Upper West Side and attended public school until the age of twelve. He then enrolled at New York's Franklin School for Boys, remaining there for his secondary education. Lichtenstein first became interested in art and design as a hobby, and through school. He was an avid jazz fan, often attending concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He frequently drew portraits of the musicians playing their instruments. In his last year of high school, 1939, Lichtenstein enrolled in summer classes at the Art Students League of New York, where he worked under the tutelage of Reginald Marsh. Career Lichtenstein then left New York to study at the Ohio State University, which offered studio courses and a degree in fine arts. His studies were interrupted by a three-year stint in the army during and after World War II between 1943 and 1946. After being in training programs for languages, engineering, and pilot training, all of which were cancelled, he served as an orderly, draftsman, and artist. He returned home to visit his dying father and was discharged from the army with eligibility for the G.I. Bill. He returned to studies in Ohio under the supervision of one of his teachers, Hoyt L. Sherman, who is widely regarded to have had a significant impact on his future work (Lichtenstein would later name a new studio he funded at OSU as the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center). He then entered the graduate program at Ohio State and was hired as an art instructor, a post he held on and off for the next ten years. In 1949 Lichtenstein received an M.F.A. degree from the Ohio State University. In 1951 Lichtenstein had his first solo exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in New York. He moved to Cleveland in the same year, where he remained for six years, although he frequently traveled back to New York. During this time he undertook jobs as varied as a draftsman to a window decorator in between periods of painting. His work at this time fluctuated between Cubism and Expressionism. In 1954, his first son, David Hoyt Lichtenstein, now a songwriter, was born. His second son, Mitchell Lichtenstein, was born in 1956. In 1957, he moved back to upstate New York and began teaching again. It was at this time that he adopted the Abstract Expressionism style, being a late convert to this style of painting. Lichtenstein began teaching in upstate New York at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958. Rise to fame In 1960, he started teaching at Rutgers University where he was heavily influenced by Allan Kaprow, who was also a teacher at the university. This environment helped reignite his interest in Proto-pop imagery. In 1961, Lichtenstein began his first pop 12

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965, and included the use of advertising imagery suggesting consumerism and homemaking. His first work to feature the large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Ben-Day dots was Look Mickey (1961, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). This piece came from a challenge from one of his sons, who pointed to a Mickey Mouse comic book and said; "I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad?" In the same year he produced six other works with recognizable characters from gum wrappers and cartoons. In 1961, Leo Castelli started displaying Lichtenstein's work at his gallery in New York. Lichtenstein had his first one-man show at the Castelli gallery in 1962; the entire collection was bought by influential collectors before the show even opened. A group of paintings produced between 1961-1962 focused on solitary household objects such as sneakers, hot dogs, and golf balls. In September 1963 he took a leave of absence from his teaching position at Douglass College at Rutgers. Fame It was at this time, that Lichtenstein began to find fame not just in America but worldwide. He moved back to New York to be at the center of the art scene and resigned from Rutgers University in 1964 to concentrate on his painting. Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963), which was appropriated from the lead story in DC Comics' Secret Hearts #83. (Drowning Girl now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art, New York). Drowning Girl also features thick outlines, bold colors and Ben-Day dots, as if created by photographic reproduction. Of his own work Lichtenstein would say that Abstract Expressionists put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's. Rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects, his work tackled the way mass media portrays them. Lichtenstein would never take himself too seriously however: I think my work is different from comic strips- but I wouldn't call it transformation; I don't think that whatever is meant by it is important to art. When his work was first released, many art critics of the time challenged its originality. His work was harshly criticized as vulgar and empty. The title of a Life magazine article in 1964 asked, Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.? Lichtenstein responded to such claims by offering responses such as the following: The closer my work is to the original, the more threatening and critical the content. However, my work is entirely transformed in that my purpose and perception are entirely different. I think my paintings are critically transformed, but it would be difficult to prove it by any rational line of argument. He discussed experiencing this heavy criticism in interview with April Bernard and Mimi Thompson in 1986. Suggesting that it was at times difficult to be criticized, Lichtenstein said, I dont doubt when Im actually painting, its the criticism that makes you wonder, it does. His most famous image is arguably Whaam! (1963, Tate Modern, London), one of the earliest known examples of Pop art, adapted a comic-book panel from a 1962 issue 13

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad of DC Comics' All-American Men of War. The painting depicts a fighter aircraft firing a rocket into an enemy plane, with a red-and-yellow explosion. The cartoon style is heightened by the use of the onomatopoeic lettering Whaam! and the boxed caption I pressed the fire control... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky.... This diptych is large in scale, measuring 1.7 x 4.0 m (5 ft 7 in x 13 ft 4 in). Whaam! is widely regarded as one of his finest and most notable works. It follows the comic strip-based themes of some of his previous paintings and is part of a body of war-themed work created between 1962 and 1964. It is one of his two notable large warthemed paintings. It was purchased by the Tate Modern in 1966, after being exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1963, and has remained in their collection since. Lichtenstein began experimenting with sculpture around 1964, demonstrating a knack for the form that was at odds with the insistent flatness of his paintings. For Head of Girl (1964), and Head with Red Shadow (1965), he collaborated with a ceramicist who sculpted the form of the head out of clay. Lichtenstein then applied a glaze to create the same sort of graphic motifs that he used in his paintings; the application of black lines and Ben-day dots to three-dimensional objects resulted in a flattening of the form. Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies of comic book panels, a subject he largely abandoned in 1965. (He would occasionally incorporate comics into his work in different ways in later decades.) These panels were originally drawn by such comics artists as Jack Kirby and DC Comics artists Russ Heath, Tony Abruzzo, Irv Novick, and Jerry Grandenetti, who rarely received any credit. Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, contests the notion that Lichtenstein was a copyist, saying: Roy's work was a wonderment of the graphic formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by others. The panels were changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact copy. However, some have been critical of Lichtenstein's use of comic-book imagery and art pieces, especially in so far as that use has been seen as endorsement of a patronizing view of comics by the art mainstream; noted comics author Art Spiegelman commented that Lichtenstein did no more or less for comics than Andy Warhol did for soup. In 1966, Lichtenstein moved on from his much-celebrated imagery of the early 1960s, and began his Modern Paintings series, including over 60 paintings and accompanying drawings. Using his characteristic Ben Day dots and geometric shapes and lines, he rendered incongruous, challenging images out of familiar architectural structures, patterns borrowed from Art Dco. Later work In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein reproduced masterpieces by Czanne, Mondrian and Picasso before embarking on the Brushstroke series in 1965. Lichtenstein continued to revisit this theme later in his career with works such as Bedroom at Arles that derived from Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles. In 1970, Lichtenstein was commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (within its Art and Technology program developed between 1967 and 1971) to make a film. With the help of Universal Film Studios, the artist conceived of, and produced, Three Landscapes, a film of marine landscapes, directly related to a series of collages with landscape themes he created between 1964 and 1966. Although 14

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad Lichtenstein had planned on producing 15 short films, the three-screen installation made with New York-based independent filmmaker Joel Freedman, turned out to be the artist's only venture into the medium. In the late 1970s, this style was replaced with more surreal works such as Pow Wow (1979). A major series of Surrealist-Pop paintings from 19791981 is based on Native American themes. These works range Amerind Figure (1981), a stylized lifesize sculpture reminiscent of a streamlined totem pole in black-patinated bronze, to the monumental wool tapestry Amerind Landscape (1979). The "Indian" works took their themes, like the other parts of the Surrealist series, from contemporary art and other sources, including books on American Indian design from Lichtenstein's small library. Lichtenstein's Still Life paintings, sculptures and drawings, which span from 1972 through the early 1980s, cover a variety of motifs and themes, including the most traditional such as fruit, flowers, and vases. In his Reflection series, produced between 1988 and 1990, Lichtenstein reused his own motifs from previous works. Interiors (19911992) is a series of works depicting banal domestic environments inspired by furniture ads the artist found in telephone books or on billboards. Having garnered inspiration from the monochromatic prints of Edgar Degas featured in a 1994 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the motifs of his Landscapes in the Chinese Style series are formed with simulated Benday dots and block contours, rendered in hard, vivid color, with all traces of the hand removed. The nude is a recurring element in Lichtenstein's work of the 1990s, such as in Collage for Nude with Red Shirt (1995). In addition to paintings and sculptures, Lichtenstein also made over 300 prints, mostly in screenprinting. The artist died of pneumonia in 1997 at New York University Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several weeks. He was survived by his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.

Summary
Pop art represented a great financial success, reaching the people in ways that very few movements of modern art have managed to; and has managed to draw the attention of rich collectors. Despite all this, many critics have recorded reserves towards Pop art. Harold Rosenberg describes it as : humorless joke, repeated until it sounds like a threat. Warhol explained : Pop art wants to give things names, without any illusion. Daily object becomes aesthetic object through graphic advertising, the comic strip, the graffiti, fashion and design. It 15

Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad surpasses the superficiality of the usual look by the use of enlargement, styling and indirect transformation, which can make an usual object a true piece of art worth showing in a museum or an art gallery. I consider Pop art as a representative movement for the philosophy of the second half of the 20th century. Art for everybody and understood by everybody, everything is consumer related, nothing is for the chosen ones. Democratization, consumerism, the obsoletion of the concept of general education and the elite one found their expression in this movement. Pop Art is representative of the era and the people of that era. Even more, Pop art is not pure technique, but instead it is based on a concept, which can be either accepted or denied, but which cannot be ignored.

Bibliography
-ALLOY, Lawrence American Pop Art, New Yok, Collier Books, 1974 -ASHTON, Dore A View of Contemporary Art, Boston, Little, Brown, 1962 -CROW, Thomas E. The Rise of the Sixties : American and European Art in the Era of Dissent 1955-1969, London, George Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1996 -FRONTISI, Claude (ed) Istoria vizual a artei, Bucureti, Enciclopedia RAO, 2003 -LAW, Jonathan European Culture. A Contenmporary Companion , Cassel, 1993

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Colegiul National Elena Ghiba-Birta Arad

-LIVINGSTONE, Marco Pop Art : A Continuing History, New York, Thames and Hudson,

2000

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