© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Currently not on view
Pepper Pot,
1968
Printed at Salvatore Silkscreen Co., Inc.
Published by Factory Additions
In the 1960s, in a period of American economic prosperity, Pop artist Andy Warhol drew on imagery from popular culture to celebrate everyday objects and break down barriers between art and audience. "Pop art is for everyone," the artist said. "I don’t think art should be only for the select few, I think it should be for the mass of American people." A parallel might be drawn between artists who claim to represent common people in the face of the elite art world and populist political leaders who purport to speak for an entire community. However, far from stifling democracy, Warhol’s work embodied radical artistic expression. In transforming an ordinary pantry staple into art, the artist scrutinized postwar consumerism and dismantled the hierarchy of high and low art. Warhol’s commercial success, though, made his art exorbitantly expensive. Is there a relationship between Pop art and populism?
Information
1968
North America, United States, New York, New York
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1986," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 46, no. 1 (1987): p. 18–52, p. 44
- Johanna Burton et al., Pop art: contemporary perspectives, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT: distributed by Yale University Press, 2007), p. 143 (color illus.)
