Research on Pop Art

Pop art is a specific art style that originated in the 1950s in both Britain and the
USA. It is known for its use of bright colours, comic style font and use of dots. It is
featured in many forms of media including comic books, advertising, fine art and
cartoons. Pop art is known for borrowing conventions from the original style of
comic books and due to history repeating itself, comic books during the 1960s
came back to using the art pop style in new comic books.

Early pop art artists that shaped the movement were Eduardo Paolozzi
and Richard Hamilton and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and Roy
Lichtenstein.
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein both presented their work of the pop art style
which was both fresh and trendy. For example, Lichtensteins Drowning Girl was
received extremely well as well as Warhols Cheddar Cheese Campbells Soup
Cans canvas. This is when pop art began to rise into the mainstream during the
1960s.
A famous old style example for this includes the reworked Batman comic book
series. During the silver age of comic books, pop art began to feature as a
traditional style in this particular franchise. The Batman comics during the
1940s were known for reciprocating this style of art through not only the
illustrations but also the narrative.

In both of these
examples, you can see
the conventional, bright
and vibrant colours used
in pop art including:
mustard yellow, red,
green and blue as well as using black to outline everything in the strip. This
made the overall appearance appear to be quite camp and comedic which
brought the comic book series to a rise in popularity for adults again. Audiences
found the comic series to be funnier than the original due to its use of
onomatopoeia by using words to describe the sounds of some of the actions. Roy
Lichtenstein being one of the first major influences in the pop art rise was most
known for his Wham painting. In the painting the word: Whaam! uses the
technique of onomatopoeia to show off the sound that is resembles. You can see
this convention in the Batman comic books, in the third image pow is the word
that describes the sound of when Batman punches the Joker.
The Batman comic books were known for being available in comic book form only
as these were the only available sources to read the content. This meant that the
sales for the books sky rocketed which made the overall franchise more popular.

With the influence of pop art, the vibrancy of the new comic book style was also
reflected in the narrative of the books itself. In the snippet of the book shown
below, the content of the narrative also appear to include elements of humour.
With Batmans slightly sexist comment towards women: Theres no telling what
a woman will do gives a slight comedic effect for the audience. This is due to
the main target audience being males so with this slight element makes the

narrative less serious compared to how serious previous Batman comics were.
Whats also interesting to note about the original comic book series was the
materials they used with. They appeared to be hand drawn and painted whilst
using oil and magna paint.
In the image shown above, the viewer can see the use of the Benday dots, a
printing technique that creates small dots throughout the entire picture. This was
first used by the famous pop art artist: Roy Lichtenstein.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm#definitio
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and the late
1950s in the United States. An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a
specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a
restricted period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least,
with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art
movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive
movement was considered as a new avant-garde.
The origins of pop art in North America developed differently from Great Britain .
[2] In the United States, pop art was a response by artists; it marked a return to
hard-edged composition and representational art. They used impersonal,
mundane reality, irony, and parody to "defuse" the personal symbolism and
"painterly looseness" of abstract expressionism.[3][5] In the U.S., some artwork
by Alex Katz and Man Ray anticipated pop art.[6]

The majority of Pop artists began their careers in commercial art: Andy Warhol
was a highly successful magazine illustrator and graphic designer; Ed Ruscha
was also a graphic designer, and James Rosenquist started his career as a
billboard painter. Their background in the commercial art world trained them in
the visual vocabulary of mass culture as well as the techniques to seamlessly
merge the realms of high art and popular culture.
By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the
Pop art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low"
culture. The concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow
from any source has been one of the most influential characteristics of Pop art.
The target audience for pop art is aimed to both genders and any ages. This is
because pop art has a wide range of genres. For example as you can see in the
images I have used throughout this research they include a lot of Batman and
Robin which has a wide target audience which mainly attracts boys of all ages
who enjoy reading comics about superheroes. However some pop art includes a
genre of love which will attract females from teenagers to adults. While there is
also other comics which attract younger audience readers, which contain less
text and more images this is because they find it easier to understand as they
may not be able to understand the text.

My target audience for my production I will be making is aimed at both genders,

however I think it will mainly attract more girls and women than boys this is
because my graphic narrative is about love. Which more women will be attract to
as they like romance and some of the target audience may be able to relate to
the storyline of my graphic narrative as its about a young couple and the
boyfriend cheats on her. The age group of my target audience will be aged
between 16-30 years old this is because young adults experience their first loves
and go out with boys who cheat on them, I believe 16-30 is also a good age
because people begin to settle down and get married in their late 20s. My target
audience is also aimed at social groups E-C1 this is because E is students and D,
C2 and C1 this is because social groups A and B are too high class to read my
graphic narrative, as they would be interested in something else such as politics
than a graphic narrative on love unlike C1 D they are more middle class to
lower class who would prefer reading this type of content.
I will be creating my graphic narrative digitally, this is because I cannot draw and
it is easier to capture the emotions of my characters with a camera than to draw.
Using a camera allows the target audience see the emotions of my characters
more clearly so they understand how they may be feeling in each scene. Having
clear emotions makes the target audience connect more with the narrative of my
graphic narrative so they can relate to it more if they have been through a
similar experience. I also chose to do it digitally as it allows me to have more of a
wider knowledge of how to use Photoshop when it comes to editing my images,
to make it have the pop art effect to it as well as adding colour to my images.
Throughout the years graphic narratives have changed from artists drawing the
graphic narratives to having them in comic books, so people could read them.
This used to the only way people consumed them and was the most popular way
for a long time until technology began to improve. Artists were soon making
graphic narratives by taking images and making them available for people to
consume them online. However some artists carried on drawing them and
scanning them in and then posting them online just as it was more conventional
as graphic narrative is more known to be drawings than anything else. This is
because they preferred being conventional instead of using all these new
improved technologies as it allowed graphic narrative to stay the same as it has
done for many years. Graphic narrative is still consumed through comic books as
well as online.