Neo-pop

Last updated

Neo-pop (also known as new pop) is a postmodern art movement that surged in the 1980s and 1990s. It is a resurgent, evolved, and modern version of the ideas of pop art artists from the 50s, capturing some of its commercial ideas and kitsch aspects. However, unlike in pop art, Neo-pop takes inspiration from a wider amount of sources and techniques. [1]

Contents

Context

Neo-pop art's visuals don't retain many aspects of traditional pop art but rather convey its ideas into modern times. Neo-pop takes elements from pop art like its emphasis on popular culture, consumerism, and mass media and its bright color palette. The visuals are mainly rooted in vibrant colors, diverse patterns (like polka dots, flowers, hearts, stars, lines, etc.), and a mix of imagery from everyday life, like advertisements and pop culture. Neo-pop artists often took inspiration from celebrities, cartoons, and iconic trademarks to make their artworks. Defined as a resurgence of the aesthetics and ideas from the mid-20th century movement capturing the characteristics of pop art like intentional kitsch and interest in commercialism. [2]

Notable artists

The term (which was originated in 1992 by Japanese critic Noi Sawaragi) [3] refers to artists influenced by pop art and popular culture imagery, such as Jeff Koons, Romero Britto, Damien Hirst, but also artists working in graffiti and cartoon art, such as Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf. [4] [5]

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is described as the first of the Japanese neo-pop artists to "break the ice in terms of recycling Japanese pop culture". [6] Japanese neo-pop known as Superflat is associated with the otaku subculture and the obsessive interests in anime, manga and other forms of pop culture. Artist Kenji Yanobe exemplifies this approach to art and fandom. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pop art</span> Art movement

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern art</span> Art movement

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

Neo-expressionism is a style of late modernist or early-postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called Transavantgarde, Junge Wilde or Neue Wilden. It is characterized by intense subjectivity and rough handling of materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superflat</span> Art movement

Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. However, superflat does not have an explicit definition because Takashi Murakami does not want to limit the movement, but rather leave room for it to grow and evolve over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takashi Murakami</span> Japanese artist

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts as well as commercial media and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts. His influential work draws from the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of postwar Japanese culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lowbrow (art movement)</span> Underground visual art movement

Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, is an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California area in the late 1960s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, tiki culture, graffiti, and hot-rod cultures of the street. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor – sometimes the humor is gleeful, impish, or a sarcastic comment.

Aya Takano is a Japanese painter, Superflat artist, manga artist, and science fiction essayist. Aya Takano is represented by Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami.

Chiho Aoshima is a Japanese pop artist and member of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Collective. Aoshima graduated from the Department of Economics, Hosei University, Tokyo. She held a residency at Art Pace, San Antonio, United States in 2006.

Twentieth-century art—and what it became as modern art—began with modernism in the late nineteenth century.

In the visual arts, late modernism encompasses the overall production of most recent art made between the aftermath of World War II and the early years of the 21st century. The terminology often points to similarities between late modernism and post-modernism although there are differences. The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is contemporary art. Not all art labelled as contemporary art is modernist or post-modern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modern and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject modernism for post-modernism or other reasons. Arthur Danto argues explicitly in After the End of Art that contemporaneity was the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a subsector of the contemporary movement which replaced modernity and modernism, while other notable critics: Hilton Kramer, Robert C. Morgan, Kirk Varnedoe, Jean-François Lyotard and others have argued that postmodern objects are at best relative to modernist works.

<i>Little Boy: The Arts of Japans Exploding Subculture</i>

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture is the companion catalogue to the exhibition "Little Boy" curated by artist Takashi Murakami. The book is about the aesthetics of postwar culture in Japan.

Mr. is a Japanese contemporary artist, based in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. A former protégé of Takashi Murakami, Mr.'s work debuted in both solo and group exhibitions in 1996, and has since been seen in museum and gallery exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Seoul, Daegu, Paris, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and London.

Superstroke is a term used for a contemporary art movement with its origins in South Africa. Superstroke is one of the influential art movements regarding African modernism and abstraction. The word "Superstroke" implies the super expressive brush stroke. The Superstroke art movement was initially founded as a reaction to the impact that the Superflat art movement, founded by Takashi Murakami had on modern contemporary art.

SoFlo Superflat describes an art genre started in Miami in the 1990s. It is an urban pop art movement in South Florida that combines super bright colors and ultra flat images. The subject matters are very diverse. It is an outcrop of the Japanese Superflat movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erina Matsui</span> Japanese artist

Erina Matsui is a Japanese contemporary artist. She is known for her surreal self-portraits, mostly done as oil paintings. Her work has been praised for its jarring visual impact as it defies normal representations of childhood being cute and innocent.

My Lonesome Cowboy is a sculpture created in 1998 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" period, the 9.45 ft-tall (288 cm) statue depicts an anime-inspired figure ejaculating a large strand of semen. Like its companion piece Hiropon, My Lonesome Cowboy is an example of superflat art, an art movement founded by Murakami in the 1990s to criticize Japanese consumer culture. The sculpture is noted as among Murakami's most famous works.

Hiropon is a sculpture created in 1997 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" period, the 7.33 ft tall statue depicts an anime-inspired figure expelling streams of breast milk from her nipples. Like its companion piece My Lonesome Cowboy, it is an example of superflat art, an art movement founded by Murakami in the 1990s to criticize Japanese consumer culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dropout Bear</span> Mascot and Fictional character by Kanye West

The Dropout Bear, also referred to as the Kanye bear, is an anthropomorphic symbol, character, and mascot for American rapper Kanye West. The bear was originally designed by graphic designer Sam Hansen, and was used in the album cover art, promotion, and music videos for West's first three studio albums, The College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), and Graduation (2007).

An Internet aesthetic, also simply referred to as an aesthetic, is a visual art style, sometimes accompanied by a fashion style, subculture, or music genre, that usually originates from the Internet or is popularized thereon. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, online aesthetics gained increasing popularity, specifically on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok. The term aesthetic has been described as being "totally divorced from its academic origins", and is commonly used as an adjective.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, the 1987 debut work of Gainax written and directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga, has attracted academic analysis of its themes in various formats, including dissertations, scholarly journals, university press books, and installations.

References

  1. Fred S. Kleiner, Helen Gardner, Christin J. Mamiya, Richard G. Tansey, Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Chapters 19–34, Thomson Wadsworth, 2004, pp. 1068. ISBN   0-534-64091-5
  2. Contemporary Pop Artists Who Keep the Movement Alive Today — My Modern Met
  3. The Kings of Neo Pop
  4. Peter Childs, Mike Storry, Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture, Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 413. ISBN   0-415-14726-3
  5. "Index of /arts". www.glbtqarchive.com. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  6. Smith, Roberta. "From a mushroom cloud, a burst of art reflecting Japan's psyche". The New York Times 8, no. 04 (2005): B28.
  7. Munroe, Alexandra. "Introducing Little Boy". In Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subcultures, edited by Takashi Murakami. pp. 241–61. Exh. cat. New York: Japan Society; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.