Pop Art

As always, Taschen books are a great deal for the price. This is a good survey of Pop Art mostly through the images. This isn't a scholarly monograph, and no one buying it is likely to be looking for that. Rather we have a representative collection of Pop Art both canonical and obscure.

This is a really good book! Not only is it a great over view and introduction to the origins and pioneers of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, but it covers the philosophies of what Pop Art is all about, which is something most art historians don't delve into too deeply. As this books puts it, Pop art is about "the myths of everyday life". Centuries ago artists painted images of Greek Goddesses, but Pop Artists painted images of Marilyn Monroe, and many artist have painted "bowls of fruits", pop artists paint "cans of soup". Whether it's images of movie stars or corporate logos, Pop art is about focusing your attention on all the things that effect and shape modern society. My only complaint is that this book was published in 1990, an expanded edition probably wouldn't be a bad idea, because over the passed 40 years the Pop art philosophy has become one of the most dominate forces in modern art. But if your someone who's interested in understanding what goes on in art galleries of today, this book is an excellent guide and a "must read".

Yet another great addition to the Taschen 25th Anniversary series. As one would expect, there are many beautifully reproduced works representing some of the finest works of the pop art era. Most of the chapters cover a certain theme (e.g. Media and Art, Origins of Pop Art), while four or five chapters at the end concentrate on specific artists. You get some good commentary on Warhol, Hamilton, Lichtenstein, and a couple others. Finally, the book includes a biographical dictionary of some of the most important pop art figures. I have two criticisms. First, the book feels slightly wordy. I'm no stranger to academic and scholarly writing, and I can usually tell when someone is posturing. The content is fine, but the style is excessive. When you start seeing "objectivize" where "objective" would perfectly suffice, you know something is up. It's not a huge criticism, but it keeps the text from reading as well as it could. The second criticism deals with the synchronization of image and text. When you're reading, you are often required to flip forwards or backwards up to three or four pages to find the work under discussion. In a book where the text so clearly aligns with the images, this is an announce. However, this probably isn't the larger point. I'd recommend buying it for the wonderful reproductions alone. There are certainly better books on pop art - the text isn't anything profound - but there aren't many available for this price. High-quality reproductions along with some helpful commentary make for an excellent book.

This book was great! I really enjoyed it. It has a diverse selection of pieces in it, sculptures and paintings. It also had great explanations of the artists intent. I highly suggest this one.