The Different Styles of Pop Art Artists

A lot of us love Pop Art. The Pop Art movement has been ever-evolving, perpetually bridging the different styles and themes of art on its way. It has traveled through interesting styles to reach today’s more contemporary forms. Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Jasper Johns – these are a few names that stand out in the Pop Art world. The styles of these Pop Artists are highly varied and their works continue to inspire Pop Art artists even today. Here is a listing of some of the most famous classic and modern Pop Art artists and their styles.

Tom Wesselmann

Together with other eminent Pop Artists of his time, Tom Wesselmann defined one of the most progressive movements in the history of American art. He was always highly productive, experimented with techniques and materials and ventured into sculpting too. This prominent Pop Artist is best known for his unique style that modernized the classic female nude into a billboard-friendly, enigmatic, and flat silhouette. Inspired by the bright and attractive images of advertising, he developed a style that represented a modern day culture influenced by a society obsessed with mass media and objects. He used clean lines and flat colors, and gave a seemingly bold yet anonymous representation of female figures.

Roy Lichtenstein

The works of Roy Lichtenstein are instantly recognizable through the characteristic comic strip style painting. He mixed and matched a lot of different styles and often included text that said “Whaam” or similar phrases to represent the intensity of the situation.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was a key figure who was involved in the transition of art from abstract expressionism to later Pop Art movements. He used found objects on his paintings and created a new style called the ‘combines’ which combined painting and sculpture into an interesting new hybrid. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture and he resisted the traditional idea that an artist must stick to one style or medium. He moved from style to style and often, re-conceptualized all the mediums he worked on. Combining both sculpture and painting, he would for instance, cover a canvas with wall paint or ink a car wheel and run it over paper to create a drawing.

Jasper Johns

The early artworks of Jasper John question the way we look at, perceive, and create art. His work is characterized by an absence of distinction between art and life or subject and object, reflecting his belief that paintings must not be looked upon as an illusion or representation but as an object with its own reality. Johns used found images such as numbers, letters, targets, and flags to name a few, as his subject and viewed them as factual, depersonalized, conventional, exterior, and pre-formed elements. John painted in an archaic medium that fuses pigment in hot wax. He combined newspaper collage with encaustic to develop an attractive expanse of paint. His art revolves around visual ideas that communicate on various levels and have layers of meaning. In simple terms, it is both cerebral and sensual art.

Claes Oldenburg

Best known for his large scale, public works that have been setup in the urban surroundings of United States, Europe, Asia etc., Claes Oldenburg was one of the greatest sculptors of the art movement. His art works generally involved magnified representations of everyday objects. Using sculpture as the medium, he made oversized reproductions of inanimate objects with realism as his style.

Andy Warhol

Considered to be one of the key figures of Pop Art, Andy Warhol was one of the first Pop Art artists to employ the ‘repetition’ style. He is best known for his painting of the Campbell soup. Warhol discovered silk screen printing, a style that can be used to create similar patterns multiple times. Warhol is known for his monochromatic style Pop Art that consisted of only one hue or color, including shades and tints of the color. He made a darker version by adding black and lighter version by adding white. A number of artists today use repetitive patterns set off in blocks of different colors to remake Andy Warhol’s style.

Sandy is a blogger and photography enthusiast. She loves writing photography and photo restoration blogs. She at present blogs for wowapic, a picture restoration services website that specializes in photo editing, touch up, restoration, pop art portraits, personalized photo gifts and more.