Review on youtube video; Introduction to Pop Art.

The video explains the pop art movement during 1950s and 1960s in Britain and the US. Pop art began to inspire artists in Britain in 1950s when consumer boom, mass-produced products, and entertainments exploded. It celebrates the new consumer dominated era. Artists’ works are based in everyday environment such as adverts, comics, slogans and media, bold flat arrangements of colour. Some of the well know pop artists are- Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, and Keith Haring.

This video was made in 2004 and although the image of pop art being of young, glamorous, and popular stays pretty much the same, I think the intendment has changed. Pop art intended to communicate the viewers through accessible manner, similar to television and pop music and this had made people question whether pop art was high or low art. Nowadays, I feel pop art is in favour of high art as you see many of them in museums and pop art artists are making fortune out of it but also I think they are making a blurred boundary between commercial art and fine art. Such as Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama both considered as pioneer/guru of Pop Art movement. They both work with a wide range of medias including corroboration with Louis Vuitton, which is highly commercialised field. Louis Vuitton and Kusama Yayoi’s collaboration collection overtook all the 24 show windows in Selfridges in August 2012.

Pop art is not about the celebration of the booming mass products after the Second World War anymore. We’re in the constant explosion of mass-produced goods and entertainment that pop art itself became a somewhat transient product.

I found this interesting article on online guardian articles, I thought was relevant to what is going on in pop art at the moment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/feb/09/warhol-murakami-pop-art

Review on a youtube video: How Pop Culture Is Making Us Smarter

Review on a youtube video: How  Pop Culture Is Making Us Smarter Steven Johnson’s book, “Everything Bad Is Good For You.”

The video does not show all his speech but from what I have seen, he has made a very interesting point. He was not focusing on value, violence, or obscenity and sexual content, though these aspects raise many arguments and questions in popular culture, he was purely focusing on how much mental work was required in media culture (games and TV). I was not surprised to hear the content of both complexity and engagements have gone up over the last 30years. As a result of high technology, our culture and society have expanded significantly. Therefore, increase in complexity and engagement in media culture seemed natural progression to me. My concern is how far this complexity and engagement would go. We live in a society bombarded with information, how would media culture keep entertainment, increase the amount of mental work, and still be in a part of popular culture?

Also, I was intrigued that one of the main purposes of high technology is making our lives easier and less engaging to others such as calculation and prediction computer software which does all the work for you however media culture seems to be going the opposite direction. This may be because we feel the need to learn something from it, or it could be because more participation means more commitment. Therefore you feel attached to a particular game or a TV show that catalyse the sales figure.

Pop(ular) Culture

My first blog post will be why I chose Pop(ular) Culture for The Territories Of Practice (TOPs). TOPs is part of my university course unit and I had to choose from 8 different programs. 

My first thought of Popular culture was things that begins with “pop” such as pop art, pop music, pop fashion, etc.. or anything that claims to be modern so I had pretty much no idea of what it was. Then when I looked at the program description it said 

“This option explores popular culture allied to social theory and its relationship to market structure and the creative process. Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time and forms currents and eddies that represent a complex of mutually interdependent perspectives and values. The unit will include a broad range of case studies and examples from a range of design and media disciplines including visual communication, fashion, music and print and broadcast media.”

I like how it describes popular culture as a constant and transformative movement. I realised I am unconsciously living in mass popular culture, I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the term popular culture. I always wondered how things get accepted and spread across in mass and gradually fades away. How does it all start and what’s so special about this word?(or is this just a word that categorises any complex social theory?) I thought it would be very interesting to explore case studies and approach from the academic perspective. 

 

When I thought about Popular culture image, I came up with Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Can. I guess that is partly because he was (and still is) one of the best pop artists in the world and the way he created a huge business by mass producing his work. The main reason why I came up with this image is because I see this pretty much everywhere; printed on mugs, T-shirs, notepads, fridge magnets, posters, etc… and this reputation and popularity becomes somehow expendable yet witty and glamorous. Also, I think Andy Warhol was a popular culture icon himself.