Existing comment:
Pop and Politics:
In the 1950s and 1960s, Pop artists began experimenting with new ways of making work, mixing high and low culture, and bringing elements of mass production into the realm of fine art. With its charged subject matter, whimsical colors, and commercial silkscreen aesthetic, Andy Warhol's 1973 portrait of Mao Zedong represents the ultimate union of politics and popular culture.
Although artists such as Warhol typically stressed style over content, many who followed used Pop Art techniques for politically and socially engaged ends. Robert Colescott's Auvers-sur-Oise (Crow in the Wheat Field), 1981, ixes references to Vincent van Gogh with racial stereotypes to make an irrelevant comment on the role of African-Americans in art history. Kerry James Marshall draws from folk art and popular culture to construct of contemporary history painting about the slave trade, one of the darkest episodes in American history. In Hand Held, 1996, Jane Hammond layers images from newspapers and magazines across a map of the United States, creating a painting that suggests the diversity and complexity of American life. |