Pop Art legend passes but leaves influential legacy behind
As with any other artistic medium, from movies to music, the art lover is bound to be attracted to one particular genre more than others.
Each period of art history brings a new aesthetic, a new message and new inspiration to artists either reacting to their social environments or trying to create a new world. 
The late 1950s brought an art style that challenged the tenets of more traditional, classical artforms. With its brightly-colored, celebrity, iconic product-adorned canvases, this new style straddled a fine line between glorifying and criticizing popular culture.
This new movement, referred to as “Pop Art,” stands as one of the most controversial, lasting types of art and, despite the beliefs of some critics, one of the most engaging and complex.
One of the biggest figures in the Pop Art world, Richard Hamilton, passed away last week at the age of 89.
His most famous piece, 1956’s “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” is a skillfully-constructed collage that took magazine images and placed them in the home. Fast-fowarding to Jeff Koon’s current exhibition at LACMA, it is obvious Hamilton’s piece has served as inspiration for a movement that is ever-flexible and ever-intriguing.
Pop Art does not touch upon the usual subjects of art such as personal emotions, but instead features a humor toward society’s fixation on icons and the things that surround us.
Hamilton’s legacy leaves inspiration for new artists to take in these surroundings and address them through art, instead of letting art simply exist as a completely different realm detached from the real world. From Andy Warhol’s classic silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe to Jeff Koons’ piece “Michael Jackson and Bubbles,” Pop artists bring the popular and recognizable into galleries and museums that would normally pride themselves on high-brow artistic achievement.
Naturally, the humor and heavy presence of popular culture in Pop Art has garnered disapproval from some art lovers.
A classic example of the clash of Pop and classic art took place in France in 2008 when traditional art enthusiasts, angered over Jeff Koons’ works being placed in the Chateau de Versailles protested. The lavish walls of the Paris palace featured works such as a giant, bright-pink steel statue of a balloon dog.
To these infuriated art fans, the rooms associated with royalty and classical beauty had become hosts for simplistic works that lacked gravitas.
Yet what they didn’t realize is that what makes Pop Art seem so simple is the same thing that makes it so complex. Yes, you can just stare at the giant steel balloon dog and deem it merely “cute,” but you can also try to deduce a more sophisticated meaning from it.
Koon’s “Quad Elvis,” an image of four semi-naked women with an inflatable lobsters superimposed on them, might seem purely comical, but it could also be taken as criticism. The piece could be trying to reflect on how we present the body of women, almost in the same way as we would an inflatable toy.
Similarly, Roy Lichtenstein’s pieces took familiar images from comic books and tweaked the dialogue to expose the ridiculous attitudes of the characters and the storylines from popular stories like soap operas. And there will probably always be a debate on whether or not Andy Warhol’s pieces are simply echoing the nature of popular culture or criticizing its basic tenets.
Pop Art requires the audience to engage and create its own opinion. Hamilton’s “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” might have its argument in its title, but viewers who see the piece as a projection of their own homes might not sense any underlying, analytical message.
Pop Art reminds us of the images we are surrounded by and gives us the choice to either step into the museum and continue passively taking it in or stop and think more closely about what we see.
From Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s current exhibition at Versailles to less obvious inspiration in popular culture, like Lady Gaga’s silly Kermit the Frog costume, Pop Art is still very much alive.
Hamilton started artists off on the idea that the products, the celebrities and the images of popular culture are a bigger part of our lives than we realize. As is obvious so many decades after his first works, Hamilton has left behind a lasting legacy.
Eva Recinos is a junior majoring in creative writing. Her column “Art Box” runs Thursdays.