How did pop art challenge beleifs in consumerism Essay

How did pop art challenge beleifs in consumerism Introduction: In order to discuss pop art I have chosen to examine the work and to some extent lives of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol who were two of the main forces behind the American movement. I intend to reflect the attitudes of the public and artists in America at this time, while examining the growing popularity of pop art from its rocky, abstract expressionist start in the 1950s through the height of consumer culture in the 60s and 70s to the present day. Roy Liechtenstein, (fig 1) was born in 1923 into to a middle class Hungarian family living in New York, there was no artists on either side of his family and throughout Liechtenstein’s schooling there were no art†¦show more content†¦He continued his education at the Carnegie Institute in Pennsylvania graduating with a BA in Fine Art. Warhol moved to New York in 1948-49 where he started work as a graphic designer, creating adverts for fashion magazines such as Glamour, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Andy Warhol shot to fame and soon became highly respected as a commercial artist. †Tina Fredrick, then art director of Glamour† says â€Å"She was thrilled by Andy’s drawings but could not find a commercial use for them. She told him his drawings were good, but Glamour could only use drawings of shoes at the moment. The next day Warhol came back with 50 drawings of shoes† footwear being an important part of his advertising career until the mid 1960s. In 1949 Harvey J Earl of General Motors pioneered ‘Planned Obsolescence’. He realised that by adding fashionable products when new trends come in older products would be discarded in favour of the latest fashion. This realisation changed consumerism forever and was the start of a consumer culture, which was to spread rapidly. In the 50s it was for the most part an American phenomenon due to the fact that they had the money and manufacturing productivity to make it possible, for example, â€Å"the affluence of America meant that almost every family owned a car† and food rationing was unthinkable while in Briton the opposite was