ON POP ART:

ON POP ART:

It has been an approximate half century since Pop art was in it’s prime, what Princeton Art Professor, Hal Foster called “The First Pop Age” in the title of his 2012 book on the subject. The influence of Pop Art has endured since then, leap-frogging a number of art movements in it’s path. In 1989 Critic Paul Taylor wrote, “Two and a half decades after the event, Pop Art has re-emerged as the most influential movement in the contemporary art world.”  In 2012 several major museums, including MOCA in Las Angeles and the Metropolitan in New York, mounted major shows around the influence of Andy Warhol alone.

Richard Hamilton said, “If the artist is not to lose much of his ancient purpose he may have to plunder the popular arts to recover the imagery which is his rightful inheritance.” Artists continue to mine popular culture and advertising for inspiration’ mediators, traversing the line between high and low culture, continuing what might now be considered a new tradition. Some do works betraying affection for their subject or utilize humor, while others create works seriously critical of our consumer society. Still others harbor an ambiguous relationship with popular culture having a sort of love/hate relationship with it. Robert Rauschenberg Said, "The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history." Today more than ever popular culture and advertising permeate our society.

 Artists in Phoenix and its surrounding cities are not immune to this influence. Many work in a vein that is a continuation of Pop Art themes, while others may only occasionally create a piece that might be considered Pop Art Yet not totally unable to avoid what permeates the air.