Pop Art defined the look of the 1960s and turned the tables on high art. By reacting against the post-war trend for abstract art, Pop Art asserted itself as a brash, bold figurative art. With its groundbreaking use of familiar imagery from the world of advertising, magazines, pop music, cinema and comics, Pop Art blurred the boundaries between high and low culture. Although seen as subversive, Pop Art rapidly gained widespread appeal and its fascination with instantly recognisable medi a celebrities placed portraiture at the centre of the Pop Art movement. In his latest book, curator Paul Moorhouse explores the vital role portraiture played in the parallel development of Pop in Britain and the USA.
Pop Art Portraits traces Pop Art's complex and creative engagement with portraiture from the early 1950s to its heyday and maturity in the 1960s. This strikingly illustrated book shows how British and American Pop artists interconnected and differed. Key examples of British and American Pop are arranged as a visual conversation: for example, Tom Wesselman's Great American Nude 30 (1962) and Richard Hamilton's Pin-up (1961) are intriguingly juxtaposed. One chapter focuses on the way both British and American artists interpreted images of Marilyn Monroe - transforming a popular icon to produce works of art of great technical virtuosity, originality and enduring fascination. Dominic Sandbrook's essay gives the wider historical and cultural context in which Pop Art flourished.