Pop Art

Art cannot be defined as it is the imagination of the artist to create images and paintings in his own style. The beginning of art is from the stick paintings of the stone age man whose imagination was only of the animals, birds and nature that he saw in his everyday life. With the evolution of man, art also evolved into a more complex projection of man's idea of what he saw around him. Art evolved from painting, images and sculptures found in the temples and churches of yesterday to the modern advertising images that of today make us think of the product. Thus the modern day trend in art is Pop Art.

Pop Art is a contemporary style of art which uses images of mass media, advertising comics and consumer products at large. It can also be called the art culture of the twentieth century. The movement started in Britain in the early 1950's and it slowly moved towards United States in 1960's. This form of art coincided with the pop culture phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s. "Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?" is one of the first images of Pop art which is famous even today.

The most famous artists of Pop Art style in US are Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis. These artists used imagery culled out from American commercial products and advertisements. Warhol another popular Pop Artist immortalized Marlyn Monroe in his paintings.

The Pop Art culture in Britain has several artists like Joe Trilson, Richard Smith, Peter Phillips, David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj. Similar to Warhol in United States, Peter Blake of United Kingdom was known for using images of Elvis Presley and Brigitte Bardot in his pictures.

Though Pop Art was famous in Britain and United States it had its influence in other countries like Japan and Spain also. Spanish artists like Eduardo Arroyo used images from mass media and also from history of painting in his creations. Manolo Valdés and Rafael Solbes are a team who were popular in Spanish Pop Art from 1961 to 1980s. They use comic images and photographs very widely in their compositions.

Japanese Pop Art is very unique in its own way as they use traditional Japanese art forms in their paintings. Takashi Murakami is the famous Japanese artists. He has formed a group of artists called Kaikai Kiki.. This groups produces paintings which are highly abstract and unique super flat art. Many other pop artists of Japan use surreal and obscene images in their paintings. But these art forms are not taken offensively in Japan as they are though provoking and appeal to the young and old alike. Nara and Aya Takano use images of children and nude girls in their paintings and art forms. These images project vulnerability and innocence of children.

The use of abstract and the nude forms an integral part of Pop Art which seems to have kindled the imagination of all the artists of the Pop Art period.