Women In Pop Art

Allen Jones and the Nude Pop Art is an art movement that started in the mid-1950s and presented a challenge to the traditional expectations of art. Artists who were involved focused on various themes such as mass production and sexuality in the hope of making references to contemporary society. In this essay I am going to discuss how sexuality and women are presented in Pop Art by analysing Allen Jones’ works in relation to John Berger’s argument on how women are depicted in western paintings. The representation of women in Pop Art can be seen as a continuation of an age old artistic genre as the nude has been around for centuries in many different cultures. In the 1950s, pin-up girls were considered a part of popular culture and therefore
Rather than using women as a subject matter to flatter men, Jones uses them to emphasize the fact that they are being treated as objects. In regards to Berger’s arguments, we can see that they cannot only be applied to the works of the past but also in relation to more recent depictions of women. This supports Jones’ idea of eroticism being accessible to everyone on some level as even though the nude is such an old genre, it can still be seen as one of the most popular subject matters in today’s world. In Jones’ work sexuality and women are presented rather differently in comparison to older paintings. They mainly differ in the sense that the works of the past do not objectify women on purpose whereas Jones focuses on this particular topic and is aware of the way he presents women. On the other hand both Jones’ works and works of the past are about the female body and nude which have always been considered a popular genre. This suggests that artists of the past also aimed to make a reference to popular