The 1960s bore witness to a complete change in post-war society, as mass media and consumerism forced itself into popular culture, even spreading it’s influence spread as far as the art scene. ‘Pop Art’ was a celebration of this newfound consumerism and love of media, as America with it’s post-war prosperity emerged as the capitalist capital of the world. Popular culture made up all that was ‘pop art’, providing the subject matter, philosophy, perception and techniques to which defined the movement. This ‘once radical’ movement quickly adopted into the mainstream, as its complete disregard for high and low art meant it could appeal to the masses. The utterly cool and witty styles of pop art changed not only the way people precieved artworks, but also the way people looked at their new changed ‘reality’.
Pop Art’s origins lie in the grim realms of the depression, where ironically for many familes consumer products were scarce, as they felt the burn of severe economic hardship. Englishman Richard Hamilton, the unofficial father of Pop Art, was concerned with the modern age of mass media and popular culture, as he took a sarcastic look at this new obsession with the superficial pleasures of consumerism. He sparked the novement in the 1950s, as ‘noveau Realisme’ then spread throughout Europe and ‘Pop Art’ developed in America. In America, Pop Art grew in confidence to break away from the European domination of the art world, in particularly Abstract Expressionsim. The 1960s were a time of freedom and defiance, as people broke away from traditional expectations to delve in the plesaures of Rock ‘n Roll, movies and sexual liberation. The American “fathers of Pop Art” Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns made the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, and were largely influenced by John Cage and Marcel Dumcahmp. Duchamp’s ‘attempts to demistify art’ in Dadaism saw him use commonplace objects to challange the modern conception of art, for example...