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by Dan Burnstein, Staff Writer
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History
By the 1950s, images from the world around us were largely absent from fine art, relegated to advertising, photography, and illustration. A few artists and intellectuals began to recognize the powerful impact of the mass media on contemporary American culture. By the early 1960s, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns were creating fine art based on elements of commercial and graphic arts imagery.
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Subject
If only three words could be used to describe the subject of pop art, they would be Americana, entertainment, and commerce. The baseball player in Vincent Scilla's Pope Sun Ripened Tomatoes represents Americana and entertainment, while the billboard and factory invoke the influence of commerce on pop art.
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Common Motifs
Scilla's choice of Pope Tomatoes for his backdrop is clever for several reasons. The prominent inclusion of text and reference to an everyday object immediately marks the painting as a work of pop art (and the word "POP" is even contained within Scilla's text)! Also, the painting's title is the product's actual slogan, which describes the painting while emphasizing the text motif. Finally, the ad for canned tomatoes is clearly a nod to pop artist Andy Warhol, whose Campbell's Tomato Soup paintings are among the most recognizable icons of the twentieth century.
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Composition
The size and placement of the few forms in this painting are logical and suggestive. The advertisement of products is literally and figuratively behind the athletics, as the factory is behind the mass production of the goods being advertised. By making the baseball player appear to be part of the larger billboard, Scilla comments on how mass media can subsume individuality and subordinate the entertainment industry.
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Color
Bold, bright colors often represent festivity and optimism, qualities that are found in pop and folk art, but are conspicuously absent from the "highbrow" genres. Also, pop artists borrow from advertisements, which boast intense color to draw attention to a product.
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Brushstrokes
Visible brushstrokes are difficult to find in pure pop art. The influence of commercial art has lead to images rendered with the crisp, machined look of graphics, as opposed to
the handmade, painterly quality found in works created in other art styles.
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See more Pop art on PaintingsDIRECT.
Other QuickSketches:
Naïve/folk art,
Realism,
Impressionism,
Expressionism,
Cubism,
Surrealism,
Minimalism, and
Abstract Art
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