Pop Culture: Pop Art

By: Susan Denney

During this semester in our Christian Worldview class with Dr. Barnard, we read All God's Children And Blue Suede Shoes by Kenneth A. Myers. In response to reading the book our assignment was to take an aspect of popular culture that Myers discusses and find an example of this aspect in the world to analyze. Here is my response paper.

In today’s world, pop culture is in every corner of our society. One area that has been affected and changed by pop culture is art. While timeless pieces of art that fall into the high culture realm are still appreciated and admired, up and coming artists in today’s art scene are very much have emerged and are continuing to emerge into focusing on what is new and what is now. They are pushing the envelope of their art to be new and now with not only techniques, but subject matter as well. From the fifties to the sixties there were many charges that happened in culture and society. The change that came forth in the art world was pop art. In All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes Christians & Popular Culture by Kenneth A. Myers, Myers said, “Since the 1960s, the aesthetics of popular culture have effectively displaced those of high culture” (72). Pop art played a great role in the displacement of high culture.
One of the most influential artists of pop art was Andy Warhol. Warhol’s art centered on subjects that were known by the populous. Some of his subjects included a Campbell’s soup can, Coca cola, and even famous people like Jackie Onassis and Marilyn Monroe. He took what was prominent and popular in his culture during the time and plugged into it using his art.
Warhol’s piece that consists of duplicates of Marilyn Monroe’s photograph speaks to the desire for what is new and now in pop culture. The way Warhol took a photograph and put it on a canvas was a new way in art. Photography was already an area of the arts but, Warhol took it a step further combining the area of photography with silk screen printing. According to The Color Vision and Art, a virtual exhibit developed by the WebExhibits Museum, Warhol was inspired to work with silk screen printing because of its wide usage in mass production (2). He took a widely used, new technique of silk screen printing and turned it into a piece of art work. Color Vision and Art quotes Warhol when he said, “When Marilyn Monroe happen to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face the first Marilyns.” (3). Marilyn Monroe is a pop icon. When Warhol got the idea to do the first Marilyns, she was what was, “hott”, in Hollywood and after her death she was one of the biggest headlines. She was the “now”. When you think of movie stars and the Sixties, Marilyn Monroe is one of the most popular ones. Myers said, “The television or record producer, the paperback editor or the movie production company is interested in discovering successful formulas and repeating them, not because they will better explore the content, but because the market is already there for such a production” (80). This is the case with Warhol’s pieces of Marilyn Monroe. He took someone who was already in the market of Hollywood and made her photograph into art. With a movie star such as Marilyn Monroe there was a market for anything and everything that had her name and or face on it.
Warhol made a career out of the new and the now of pop culture. He took people and products he knew people were into and made a commodity pass as art. As an artist he focused more on what the people wanted rather than the art itself. Warhol’s pieces of art including the Marilyn Monroe pieces have influenced and changed not only the art world but, the world entirely. Pop Culture has taken the place in today’s world where high culture once stood.