Impact of Pop Art and Design on British Culture of the 1960s

Impact of Pop Art and Design on British Culture of the 1960s Pop Art is a 20th century art movement and style that had its origins in England in the 1950s and spread across the globe (most notably the US) in the 60s. Pop artists often utilised the techniques and imagery of pop culture, incorporating everyday objects such as comic strips, billboards, supermarket products, pictures of celebrities and magazine advertisements into their work. The most well-known and influential artists were Richard Hamilton and David Hockney (British) and Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg (American). This paper will examine the impact of Pop Art on British culture of the 1960s, with a special emphasis on the movements leading figure, David Hockney. While Pop Art in its earliest incarnation in late 50s Britain had a nostalgic flavour, as it spread, it was consistently linked more to the wealth and prosperity of the post World War II era (Biddington, 2007). The term was first coined by the English critic Lawrence Alloway in a 1958 issue of Architectural Digest to describe the paintings that celebrated post-war consumerism, defied the attributes of Abstract Expressionism, and worshiped at the alter of materialism (Pioch, 2002). Practitioners of Pop Art replaced the epic with the everyday and the unique with the mass-produced, eroding the fixed divide between high and low art, good and bad taste and fine art and commercial art (ibid). Advertising and the media were some of Pop Arts favourite subjects, and the artists seemed to simultaneously celebrate and critique consumer society: Oftentimes the work itself suggested the depersonalized processes of mass production in areas of popular taste and kitsch previously considered outside the limits of fine art. It rejected the attributes associated with art as an expression of personality. Works were close enough to reality and at the same time it was clear that they were not ready-mades but artificial re-creations of real things (Damjanovic, 2006). Considered by many to be the first Pop Art piece is Richard Hamiltons Just What Is It that Makes Todays Home so Different, so Appealing?, which incorporated numerous references to popular culture and materialism (Biddington, 2007). Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg followed his lead and used popular imagery such as the American flag and beer cans in their paintings, collages and prints, while Andy Warhol favoured the use of famous people and everyday objects in his silkscreens (ibid). Alternatively, Roy Lichtenstein utilised a comic strip style in his paintings. However, perhaps the most important artist of them all (and certainly the most famous and highly publicised British artist of his generation) was David Hockney. By age eleven he had already decided that he wanted to be an artist, and years later he attended the royal College of Art in London, where, in his own words, he realised that there were two groups of students there: a traditional group, who carried on as they had done in art school, doing still life, life painting and figure compositions; and then what I thought of as the more adventurous, lively students, the brightest ones, who were involved in the art of their time. They were doing big Abstract Expressionist paintings on hardboard (Lucie-Smith, 1999). Hockney, in turn, tried his hand at abstraction, but found it too bleak. In search of his own style, he rejected figure-painting as anti-modern and experimented by including words in his paintings in order to humanise them; these, however, were soon joined by figures painted in a deliberately rough and rudimentary style which owed a great deal to Jean Dubuffet (ibid). After a prize-winning career at the Royal College of Art, Hockney achieved international success by the time he reached his mid-20s with a show at the Young Contemporaries Exhibition in January, 1961 (Pioch, 2002). This show marked the public emergence of Pop Art in the UK, with Hockney as one of the movements leaders. His paintings of this period were often playful and witty (very much in the vein of Pop Art), although he was also adept at more serious and traditionally representational portraiture, such as Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (Tate, London, 1970) (ibid). Hockney was also a skilled draftsman and graphic artist, and his work in this field including etched illustrations to Cavafys Poems (1967) and Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969). Hockneys success was so rapid that after leaving school he did not have to rely on teaching to make a living, like the majority of his contemporaries (Lucie-Smith, 1999). In the early sixties he travelled to Egypt, Italy, Germany and the United States. He fell in love with Los Angeles, where, in his own words: Within a week of arriving there in this strange big city, not knowing a soul, Id passed the driving test, bought a car, driven to Las Vegas and won some money, got myself a studio, started painting, all within a week. And I thought, its just how I imagined it would be (ibid). Upon his return to England he began to make a series of prints which were an updated version of Hogarths Rakes Progress, and which reflected his American experiences (Gurewitsch, 2006). He also began using acrylics rather than oil paint, which led to five one-man shows in 1966 throughout Europe, and later his first major retrospective exhibition, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (Lucie-Smith, 1999). By this time, Pop Art, with Hockney as its patron and star, was widely popular in Britain, and   coincided with the youth and pop music phenomenon of the 1950s and 60s, and became very much a part of the image of fashionable, swinging London. Peter Blake, for example, designed album covers for Elvis Presley and the Beatles and placed film stars such as Brigitte Bardot in his pictures in the same way that Warhol was immortalizing Marilyn Monroe in the USA (West, 1996). It could be argued that while Hockneys work was the impetus for the growing acceptance and influence of the movement, in many ways he himself was the reason for its success. For Hockney wasnt simply a talented artist; he was a personality. With his bleached hair, his outward homosexuality (the subtext of which was also found in his work), his vocal admiration of Whitman and Cavafy, his eccentricity and gregariousness made him instantly likeable (Lucie-Smith, 1999). There was an even a film about him, his life and his work (Jack Hazans A Bigger Splash) that was widely popular. People saw in Hockney the embodiment of the freedom and newness of the 60s, the tearing down and humanising of the sacred and the revered, along with a newfound openness to sexuality, and it is difficult to say where the work stopped and the person began; that is, was Pop Art the influencer, or was it Hockney himself? Were the widespread effects attributed to the movement (low art rising to the status of high and vice-versa; the pasts powerful icons suddenly relegated to mere products and everyday objects achieving the level of works of art; pop culture supplanting tired, traditional culture; the old art world establishment being turned on its head; etc.) because of his paintings or his personality? Furthermore, was Hockney himself the catalyst for this, or was he merely following the zeitgeist? While it is difficult to say, two things are certain: Hockney was an important figure during this time, and 60s Britain was forever changed. Hockney eventually turned away from Pop Art painting, and branched out into other forms, including photography, set design, costumes, lithographs and even work made using colour photocopiers. As for Pop Art, while it still survived in Britain, thanks to artists such as Hamilton, R.B. Kitaj, Allen Jones, Eduardo Paolozzi and Peter Blake, for the most part it became more associated with its American counterparts, ending up the territory of Warhol and the like. But the movements effects on the artwork and cultural climate lingered for a long time, virtually transforming television, advertising and packaging, not to mention photography (David Bailey, John Cowan, Robert Whitaker) and architecture (Cedric Price, Alison and Peter Smithson). Bibliography Biddington, J. Pop Art: What is it? Pedigree and Provenance, 2007. http://www.biddingtons.com/content/pedigreepop.html Damjanovic, Sasa. Pop Art. HuntFor.com, 2006. http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/popart.htm Dormer, Peter. Design Since 1945. London: Thames Hudson, 1984. Green, Jonathon. All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture. London: Pimlico, 1999. Gurewitsch, Matthew. David Hockney and Friends. The Smithsonian, 2006. Lucie-Smith, E. Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists. London: Thames Hudson, 1999. Pioch, Nicolas. Pop Art. WebMuseum, Paris, 2002. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/tl/20th/pop-art.html West, Shearer (ed.). The Bulfinch Guide to Art History: A Comprehensive Survey and Dictionary of Western Art and Architecture. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1996.

Free College Admissions Essays: The FIRST Engineering Competition :: College Admissions Essays

The FIRST Engineering Competition    It was just the second week of school, and I had mustered up all my courage to venture to the nether regions of our school known as the basement to attend the first meeting of the newly forming FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team. When I walked into room one, the newly proclaimed FIRST headquarters, I looked around with apprehension, and I noticed that I did not recognize a single face in the room. Nervously, I took a seat, and Mr. Mothersele, the advisor for the program began describing the program. FIRST is a national engineering competition in which partnerships are formed between local businesses and high schools to design and build a robot-like machine from identical kits of parts supplied by FIRST. The team has about six weeks to build the machine which must be able to compete in a timed sporting event. As soon as I saw the video of the students working and competing with the robots, I was hooked. The program seemed tailored to my int erest in math in science and to my competitive spirit. I couldn't resist the opportunity.    As a shy and relatively inexperienced freshman, I signed up for the program as the only underclassmen on the team of ten students. I bumbled along, learning about design and how to use the machines. I made my full share of mistakes and then some, but by the end of the program, I was gaining some real experience. Although our robot did not fare very well in the competition our first year, my learning process was underway, and I knew that I had found my place.    The second year of the competition, I was only one of two returning students. I took an active role in recruiting new students, and our membership doubled. It was a complete role reversal for me because all of a sudden I was the experienced team member. We finished fifth out of forty teams at the regional competition, and at the national tournament, we placed in the top third.    This past year, was the golden year of my FIRST career. In September, I was voted team captain. It was my job to ensure that our team was well organized and that we stayed on task. Our team advanced to the semifinals, where we lost to the eventual National Champion.

Rate of Violence Essay

Describe the rates of violence (murder, aggravated assault, rape, robbery) in the United States, and compare them to at least 2 other industrialized countries. When it comes to †Homicides/murder† and †Rape† there still is a difference when you compare Sweden and Albania. â€Å"Homicides/murder† happened most infrequent in Finland and England, but about six times as often in Sweden compared with that. â€Å"Theft totally† was about twice as frequent in Sweden, when you compare to the other Nordic countries, and also more frequently than in England. Narco-criminality in Norway is about three times as frequent, when you compare with the other Nordic countries. The long coastline play an important role. Here is no available registrations for USA. Robberies during the period were down 10. 7%, motor vehicle thefts and arson declined 9. 7%, rapes were down 6. 2%, aggravated assaults were down 3. 9%, and burglaries dropped 1. 4%. The FBI report does not give reasons for the drop in crime, but criminologists have recently indicated an aging population, along with ramped-up law enforcement, have contributed to the decline in recent years. The trend has surprised experts who have historically seen crime increase during difficult economic periods Discuss some of the difficulties of comparing crime rates across countries. Different definitions for specific crime types in different countries: The category in which any incident of victimization is recorded relies on the legal definition of crime in any country. Should that definition be different, and indeed this is often the case, comparisons will not in fact be made of exactly the same crime type. This is particularly the case in crimes that require some discretion from a police officer or relevant authority when they are identified. For example, the definitional difference between serious or common assault in different legal jurisdictions may be different, and this will be reflected in the total number of incidents recorded. Different levels of reporting and traditions of policing: Different societies across the globe have been shown to have different levels of reporting of criminal incidents. This relates closely to levels of development in any society, most clearly reflected in accessibility to the police. Thus factors such as the number of police stations or telephones in any society impact upon reporting levels. The level of insurance coverage in any community is also a key indicator of the likelihood of citizens approaching the police as their claim for compensation may require such notification. In addition, in societies where the police are or have been mistrusted by the population, most specifically during periods of authoritarian rule, reporting levels are likely to be lower than in cases where the police are regarded as important members of the community. Different social, economic and political contexts: Comparing crime data from societies that are fundamentally different may ignore key issues present in the society that impact upon levels of reporting. For example, different social norms in some societies may make it almost impossible for women to report cases of rape or sexual abuse, while in others, women are encouraged to come forward.

Machiavelli The Father of Modern Political Science

During the time 1469, a child by the name of Niccolo Di Bernardo Del Machiavelli was born .Some may know him as an Italian philosopher, humanist, or a evil minded fellow associated with the corruptness of totalitarian government. In Machiavelli’s home state Florence, he introduces the modern political theory. Hoping to gain influence with the ruling Medici family Niccolo wrote a pamphlet call The Prince (Prezzolini). Niccolo lived a nondescript childhood and his main political experience in his youth was watching Savonarola from afar. When Savonarola was executed Niccolo entered the Florentine government as a secretary. Niccolo position soon rose and he became engage in diplomatic missions, it was here he met Powerful people like the†¦show more content†¦The Prince was addressed to Lorenzo De Medici, the ruling family in Florence. The book was an attempt to gain Lorenzo’s favor promising to show him his method to gain power. He demonstrates how powerful kings behaved in and out history; the most proven way to govern his people. Machiavelli assures the prince should indeed stay humble; he wanted the prince to benefit from his experience while at the same time avoiding the appearance of losing control of his ideal image (Sullivan, V.B). The Prince was a book of advice to politicians regarding how gain power and keep that power. The meaning of Prince in the title does not mean someone who inherits land and is a decedent to a king. In Machiavelli’s perspective a prince was a man of the citizens. Machiavelli wanted to share his knowledge, his ways of thinking with the leaders to keep public support and these methods are just as relevant for today’s elected officials just as they were in the sixteenth century (Sparknotes). The Prince was addressed to Lorenzo De Medici- the ruling family in Florence. 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