British Pop Art
Started: 1947
Ended: 1969
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THE ART STORY
 | Pop Art Movement Page |
 | Capitalist Realism Movement Page |
KEY ARTISTS
 | Eduardo Paolozzi Quick View Artist Page |
| Eduardo Paolozzi |  |
| Eduardo Paolozzi was a Scottish sculptor, printmaker and multi-media artist, and a pioneer in the early development of Pop art. His 1947 print 'I Was a Rich Man's Plaything' is considered the very first work of the movement. He was also a founder of the Independent Group in 1952. Art Story: Eduardo Paolozzi Artist Page | ||
 | Richard Hamilton Quick View Artist Page |
| Richard Hamilton | |
| Richard Hamilton is an English painter and collage artist, and is best known as a founding member of the British Independent Group, which launched the mid-century Pop art movement. Hamilton's 1956 collage 'Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?' is widely considered one of the first works of Pop art. Art Story: Richard Hamilton Artist Page | ||
 | David Hockney Quick View Artist Page |
| David Hockney | |
| David Hockney is an English painter, photographer, collagist and designer. Hockney's influence was particularly felt during the Pop art movement on the 1960s, yet his work has also suggested mixed media and expressionistic tendencies. Although based in London for most of his career, Hockney's most famous paintings occurred during an extended trip to Los Angeles, in which he painted a series of scenes inspired by swimming pools. Art Story: David Hockney Artist Page | ||
 | Peter Blake Quick View Artist Page |
| Peter Blake | |
| Peter Blake is a British Pop artist that has made many iconic images including the cover for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Art Story: Peter Blake Artist Page | ||
 | Patrick Caulfield Quick View Further External Info  |
| Patrick Caulfield | |
| Patrick Caulfield's work resembles a simplified realism where some objects in his paintings are more detailed than others, but are colored in bright and strong colors. Some objects are outlined in thick black lines and others have more realistic form. This contrast makes his works seems 'stripped down' or flat - a direction taken by postmodernist artists after him. Further External Info | ||
 | Pauline Boty Quick View Artist Page |
| Pauline Boty | |
| Pauline Boty's artistic practice was innovative, engaging and essential to the development of British Pop Art. Art Story: Pauline Boty Artist Page | ||
"Pop art is: Popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business."
Summary of British Pop Art
Although the term Pop art is usually associated with the work of artists working in New York in the 1960s such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the movement actually found its earliest voice in Britain a decade earlier. Still recovering from World War II, with a bankrupt population dependent on rations, the nation's artists looked west to the new consumerist paradise being advertised in the prospering United States. British Pop art rose out of a strong outsider's perspective as it looked both longingly and critically, yet with a healthy sense of irony, at the new visual imagery arising from this far off dream where everything from toasters to cars to beauty creams were placed on colorful pedestals in the glossy pages of magazines or touted on television in the hands of long legged beauty queens.
As early British Pop artists like Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake began to borrow heavily from this marketing language of post-War Americana, they initiated a significant movement away from the traditional parameters of what constituted art. This departure from tradition also extended to new techniques such as collage and commercial screen printing - breaking down previous orthodox distinctions between art and design, popular culture and high culture, and between mass production and individuality. The work also complemented, and often was intricately connected to, the energetic pop music scene, which originated around the same time in Britain marked by bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Key Ideas
Saying, “I can't bear to throw things away - a nice wine bottle, a nice box. Sometimes I feel like a wizard in Toytown, transforming a bunch of carrots into pomegranates,” Eduardo Paolozzi began making collages in 1947. Using cutouts from American advertising images and comic strips he pioneered Pop Art.
Important Art and Artists of British Pop Art | |
 Artwork Images | I was a rich man's plaything (1947)Artist: Eduardo Paolozzi Artwork description & Analysis: This collage, composed of a selection of images from American magazines given to Paolozzi by American ex-soldiers in Paris, was created as part of a series noted for prompting the beginnings of the Pop art movement. The work is credited for being the first to use American advertising toward creating a new visual language for a post-War world. Collage - Tate Modern, London |
  | Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956)Artist: Richard Hamilton Artwork description & Analysis: For this collage, Hamilton uses images cut from American magazines to create a contemporary interior featuring fashionable furniture and modern domestic products such as a television, tape recorder, and vacuum cleaner. In the room are a muscleman holding a suggestive lollipop, which bears the word "POP", and a naked woman who is perched provocatively on the couch. The man and woman are posited as a modern day Adam and Eve, surrounded by the temptations of the American post-War consumer boom. Collage - Kunsthalle Tubingen, Tubingen |
 Artwork Images | On the Balcony (1956-7)Artist: Peter Blake Artwork description & Analysis: In this piece, Blake combines images of ordinary, everyday people with a plethora of references to the theme "On the Balcony." These range from ephemeral magazines and snapshots to consumer goods to the art found in museums and galleries. For example, the figure on the left-hand side holds a copy of Eduard Manet's The Balcony (1868), while a copy of LIFE magazine obscures another figure's head. The youthful subjects appear to be teenagers and can be seen as tokens of a fresh generation receptive to Pop art's key principles, which were the breakdown of traditional understandings of the art object and sources, and the breakdown of the boundaries between art and popular culture. Oil on canvas - Tate Modern, London |
More British Pop Art Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Kimberly Nichols
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Anna Souter
Edited and revised, with Synopsis and Key Ideas added by Kimberly Nichols
Available from:
First published on 18 Oct 2016. Updated and modified regularly. 
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