Andy Warhol Pop Art Movement

The Pop Arts' movement began in the late 50's and early 60's. Dubbed, the founding father of the movement, Andy Warhol brought forward society's obsession with mass culture and allowed it to become the subject of art itself. Using many techniques such as isolation, repetition and colour placement, Warhol brought to the world of art his views on materialism, politics, economics and the media. Andy was quick to warn his admirers and critics, ‘do not look any deeper than the surface of my art and my life' (Bockris 21). Andy Warhol produced works that defied the popular notion of what art should be. Warhol's works were meant to be taken at face value, for nothing more than what they portrayed on the surface. While he stressed this superficial
Warhol wanted us to look at the simple image of the can for what it represented to our culture. He challenged "old fashioned" critics to overcome their ideas of art as complex and incomprehensible by using simple, common images. Warhol's selection of the soup can may be the most important part of the work he did with them. He wanted to display his view of America and to him eating Campbell's soup represented being American. Andy wanted to explore these common images that are part of our everyday lives, which we accept without hesitation. In his painting 32 Soup Cans ( Shanes 53 ), one can note his prominent use of repetition. Warhol often used this technique to magnify the appearance of objects produced mechanically in large quantities. By choosing 32 different varieties of cans Warhol was forcing the viewer to look hard and study his painting to see the difference between each can. He made us realize the way in which we looked at art, always carefully examining and looking for a deeper, hidden meaning beneath the surface. On the outside all we see are soup cans, 32 times and to most observers it seems meaningless. Warhol's main goal was to show us that in a world where everyone claims to be searching for universal truths and importance an ordinary object like a soup can, dictates so much about societies' beliefs, values and our views on
Andy decided to analyze and portray the cultural implications of viewing tragic images on a regular basis. Most of Warhol's disaster images show images taken from a newspaper repeated several times a long a blank canvas. By using this technique, once again he shows us his concern with the way society accepts tragedy when viewed through mass media. From a series of paintings called the Electric Chairs, Electric Chair ( Gidal 36 ) the object, the chair is the focal point of the piece. We are in no way confused about the message of the painting. In true Warhol style, it is not necessary to search for a deep meaning. The appearance of emptiness and loneliness is immediately visible. The only words in the picture, ‘silence', are taken in subconsciously. The well chosen image makes a statement in