Pop Art

The Pop Art artists bridged the gulf between consumerism and art by raising the everyday, banal and trivial to the rank of artwork and drawing their pictorial components from the formal language of mass media. Pop Art also brought a return to representationalism which had actually seemed out of the question after the emergence of Abstraction.

• What is Pop Art?
• Pop Art as a synthesis of ‘serious’ and ‘light’ art
• The most important Pop Art artists: Warhol, Lichtenstein, Haring
• Pop Art pictures - sought-after collector’s pieces
• Upcoming Auctions - Pop Art
• Our passed Pop Art-Auctions
• Pop Art prices
• Sell Pop Art - Object evaluation & Consignment

Pop Art viewed the light of the artworld as an unwanted stepchild: The acknowledged Father of Pop Art painting, the English painter and graphic artist Richard Hamilton, stubbornly refused to accept this high honour his whole life. However, his small collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, made in 1956, already contained all the characteristics that made up Pop Art according to its common definition – and, in addition, prominently featured the letter sequence POP, which gave the new movement its name. Pop Art’s characteristic features are clear lines, the almost exclusive use of achromatic and primary colours, the flat, striking depiction without depth, the use of representational everyday motifs, but also the deliberate renunciation of a subjective depiction of the artistic self in favour of an objective working of trivial themes suitable for the masses. Pop Art = popular art, folk art, ie., art for the masses, rummaged through the rubbish heaps of affluent society, drawing on the possibilities of mass production, the unprecedented reach of the emerging mass media and the new mass iconology that accompanied it. According to its forerunner, Hamilton, Pop Art was a short-lived mass product for a young audience, intended for quick consumption and deliberately tailored to economic viability. 

After the end of the Second World War, Pop Art painters initially celebrated the regained paradise of prosperity and peace, but the colourful jubilation was soon mixed with critical, ironic undertones that led to a refraction of the depicted motifs and pushed their increasingly illusory character to the fore. Although clothing, household objects, soup cans and ready-made food from the supermarket shelves, advertising posters, comics and films formed the basis for numerous Pop Art artworks, they also served as a foil for an ever more prominent criticism of dull modern consumer society with its fast pace and superficiality. In addition, social developments and political events were increasingly used as Pop Art motifs: the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the increase of drug consumption and the spread of AIDS, which also affected many Pop Art representatives personally. The interplay of light form and heavy content is one of Pop Arts most important characteristics and makes it an unprecedented synthesis of entertaining and serious art.

Pop Art emerged at around the same time in England and the USA, with the movement reaching its high point in the 1960s. Andy Warhol was considered one of the most enigmatic and influential representatives of American Pop Art already during his lifetime. With his ‘Factory’, he produced a counterpart to the artist’s studio where works were produced as if on a conveyor belt, and, at least In the early years, Warhol’s followers gathered to take drugs and experiment with performance. After Warhol was seriously injured by several gunshot wounds in an assassination attempt by the radical feminist Valerie Solana, anarchy gave way to a businesslike order. Warhol flirted with being an anti-artist who was concerned with business rather than high art, and thus undermined the judgement of the art critic who soon saw him as the most important Pop Art artist. Warhol's workshop also produced what is probably the most famous work of Pop Art, the Marilyn Diptych, which depicted the American film star Marilyn Monroe, who had already died under tragic circumstances by that time. A scene photograph from the 1953 film Niagara served Warhol as a model for his iconic picture, which he himself varied and reproduced countless times. Warhol's death as a result of a gall bladder operation is still shrouded in mystery today and contributes to the myth of the most famous of all Pop Art representatives.

Roy Lichtenstein was the first to choose the medium of comics as the subject of his Pop Art pictures. In doing so, he not only adopted the style and motifs, but also the phonetic language - for example in his 1964 offset print Whaam!, - but it was precisely this strong reference and similarity that earned him the dubious reputation of an imitator in the early years. He undoubtedly showed his own unmistakable style with a preference for the colours blue, yellow and red, a virtuoso use of screen dots, as used in industrial printing, and a focus on cut-outs, as is common in comic panels. Critics now celebrate Lichtenstein as a great interpreter of pop culture who succeeded in placing the profane visual language of comics in an artistic context. Lichtenstein also owed his breakthrough to a comic figure: with the picture Look Mickey, he made the Disney icon Mickey Mouse acceptable for the museum.

With his ‘pop icons’, Keith Haring produced fast-food art to take away, with the intention of mass distribution and the widest possible use. As one of the most important representatives of graffiti art alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, he painted the Berlin Wall and was involved in anti-drug campaigns. He also cultivated intensive collaborations with black artists and thus set an early example for diversity. His Subway Drawings, where he painted unused advertising boards in the extensive corridors of the New York underground, became very well known. Created spontaneously and without preparation using white blackboard chalk on black waste paper, this way of working enabled Haring to achieve an immensely high level of productivity - experts estimate that by 1985 he had created around 10,000 Pop Art pictures in the New York underground system.

Pop Art artworks reliably attract great interest at auctions and repeatedly achieve results far above their estimated price. Even a simple colour screen print of Warhol's Marilyn fetched a result of 132,000 euros at the Lempertz auction, many times the expected 30,000 euros. Warhol's interpretation of the comic book hero Superman flew up to a proud 186,000 euros, whilst the picture with the unofficial title Mrs B and Yucca was worth a full 270,000 euros to its buyer. Claes Oldenburg, who had a divisive relationship with Pop Art, but is nevertheless considered one of its great masters, was able to more than double the original estimate of 30,000 euros for an untitled gouache on chamois-coloured vellum, selling for 68,400 euros. The enduring popularity of Pop Art and its representatives, including artists such as Tom Wesselman and Werner Berges, is also fueled by its timelessness, which makes it attractive across the boundaries of generations and classes. Its proven suitability for mass media such as the poster has enabled Pop Art to continue even today its unbroken triumphal march far beyond museums, galleries and private art collections.

• Auction 1234 - Day Sale - Modern Art
• Auction 1234 - Day Sale - Contemporary Art
• Auction 1233 - Evening Sale - Modern Art and Contemporary Art
• Auction 1239 - Contemporary Art Online

A few examples of Pop Art prices auctioned in Lempertz auctions:

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