Pop Art Culture

First of all, 'uh oh!' . (ssssh... I'm super late) hehe. ooops!.... anyway, here am I writing my first ever blog. I never write blogs but diaries. Well, I have no idea what is socio-psychology all about until I've actually attended the classes.

Alright, during the second week of the class, we've learned about Pop Art Culture; Pop Culture and Pop Art. But we did more studies on Pop Art. Nevertheless, I've did a little research on Pop Culture. It is an interdisplinary study of mass-produced culture such as arts, artifacts, entertainment, beliefs and values. Pop culture can defined as quantitative that it is a much high culture such as television dramatisations of Jane Austen;

Pride and Prejudice (1980 TV serial) , BBC miniseries starring Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as Mr. Darcy.

Pride & Prejudice (2005 film), starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy.

The 2007 film The Jane Austen Book Club is about a group of people who form a Jane Austen discussion group. Much of the dialogue concerns her novels and her personal life.

It is also defined as 'left over' when they have found out the 'high culture'. An authentic culture of the people is also well defined but it is a little complicating as there are many meanings defining the 'people'. There is an argument on political dimension to popular culture on neo-Gramscian hegemony theory. They sees popolar culture as a side of struggle between the resistance of subordinate groups in society and the forces of incorporation operating in the interests of dominant groups in society.

The storey emphasises that popular culture emerges from the urbanisation of the industrial revolution which identifies from the definition of 'mass culture'. In the studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristics vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture. Whereas the modern practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions as for example; the commedia dell'arte.

Commedia dell'Arte troupe Gelosi in a late 16th-century Flemish painting (Musée Carnavalet, Paris)

Popular culture changes constantly and appears uniquely in place and time. It forms current and eddies and represents a complex of mutually-interdependant perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in many ways. Certain current of pop culture may originate from a subculture. It represent the perspectives which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity.

Pop Art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the parallel in the late 1950s in the United States. It is also known in the 1960s that classifies the works of art that use everyday life as their subject matter. Pop art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. It is characterized by themes and techniques drawn from the popular mass-culture; the cinema, advertising, comic books, television and packaging that interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. At times, pop art targeted a broad audience. Pop art in academic consideration, it often make the unconventional organizational practices difficult for some to comprehend.

Pop Art in the United States

During the 1920s, American artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis created paintings from the pop art movement that contained pop culture imagery culled from American commercial products and advertising design.

Examples of Gerald Murphy artworks;

Gerald Murphy. (American, 1888-1964). Wasp and Pear. 1929. Oil on canvas, 36 3/4 x 38 5/8" (93.3 x 97.9 cm). Gift of Archibald MacLeish

Gerald Murphy (American, 1888–1964) Watch, 1925Oil on canvas 78 1/2 x 78 7/8 in. (199.39 x 200.36 cm) Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of the artist, 1963.75.FA

Examples of Charles Demuth artworks;

The Figure 5 in Gold (1928)


Incense of a New Church (1921)

Examples of Stuart Davis artworks;

Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940


Garage No. 1, 1917.

Pop Art in Japan

Pop art in Japan are unique and identifiable of its regular subjects and styles. Many artwork inspiration of the Japanese pop artists are from the anime, sometimes ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art. Currently, the best-known pop artist in Japan is Takashi Murakami. He has a group of artists, Kaikai Kiki, is world-renowned for their own mass-produced but highly abstract and unique superflat art movement. Kaikai Kiki, known as a surrealist, post-modern movement whose inspiration comes from anime and Japanese street culture, is mostly aimed at youth in Japan and has made a large cultural impact.

Examples of Takashi Murakami artworks;

"Army of Mushrooms", Frank Cohen Collection, Manchester

Eye Love SUPERFLAT 2003 painting, acrylic on canvas mounted on panel, signed and dated 'Takashi 03' (on the reverse), Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

Murakami: Jellyfish Eyes - White 5 2006, Prints, Lithograph, Offset, signed, Signed and dated in pencil, lower right, ontemporary (ca. 1945-present)

Mister Wink, Cosmos Ball 2000, Sculpture; Colored Plastic Object, Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

Anthology 1998 painting, Acrylic on Canvas on Board, Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

Hospital 2002 painting, acrylic on canvas, Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

All of those are my own extra research. I was embraced with Takashi Murakami's artwork. It is unique and unbelievable. Although he creates weird shapes and designs but that is what proofs his uniqueness. Hmmph....I better keep track on his latest artwork...hehe.

During the 'Pop Art Culture' class, Ms.Teresa explained to us more on Andy Warhol's work. He is also known as the American artist. Besides being a successful commercial illustrator, he also became famous as a painter, an avant-garde filmmaker, a record producer, an author and a public figure. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. During the 1960s, Andy Warhol did some paintings on famous American products such as 'Campbells Soup Cans' from the Campbell Soup Company and Coca-Cola, as well as paintings of famous celebraties like Marilyn Monroe, Troy Donahue, and Elizabeth Taylor.

'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.'

– The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4

Campbell's Soup I (1968)

After the class, Ms Teresa gave us a class exercise on a Cut-up technique from the magazines that we brought. We were asked to form a group of five but I only have three, including me, Deane and Ryan. We are supposed to find any advertisement and do a collage of it. We need to come out a creation of our own and here it is;

Global Warming and Green Earth

In this piece of artwork, we were trying to create a Global Warming and Green Earth cut-out. The reason is because of its recent 'issue-alert'. We find advertisements that contain several textures on sand, tree, bright and dark clouds. It was pretty hard and lots of work with cuttings and stickings. Luckily, it is just an A4 size. haha! The fresh and bright side shows the green leaves with clear clouds whereas the darker side shows the tree branches and dirty clouds. Although it doesn't turned out that nice or 'whether is it even look like Global Warming' but overall I think it is a good work. Thanks to all my team-mates.