Pop Art Screen prints
The name most associated with pop art is Andy Warhol. His Brillo boxes are well known and look exactly like real Brillo boxes, but made out of plywood with silk screened sides in the exact Brillo design and color.
With the Brillo boxes, Warhol went much further toward copying a well known popular object than Johns did. Even the surface texture of the replica looks like the original. Some critics think this went beyond being a parody and instead is a celebration of consumerism.
At last we come to Warhol’s celebrity images, like the one of Mao shown.
After Marilyn Monroe died Warhol made multiple silkscreen images of her aligned in a grid form. Objects appearing together in multiples gain graphic strength.
Remember the twin towers in Manhattan. After they were destroyed, the New York Times newspaper had an article showing other twin structures in New York City. Multiple images really do make an impression of strength and unity. They belong together.
In Warhol’s own words: “In August 62 I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple, quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face, the first Marilyns.”
Please look at the grid of nine Marilyns. Each image of Marilyn starts as a photo made with so much contrast as to only show black shadows, eyebrows, eyelashes, and lipsticked lips, A screen is made from the photo from which to print the blacks. Then a screen is made to print the background shape. Another screen is made to only print the face, another to only print the hair, and so on. Using those, you can apply a color for the background, then apply with next screen, color for hair, etc., and finally print the black for the shadows, eyebrows, and lips.
Since you control all the colors independently, you can print many variations. You would aim to have all the screens be in registration ‒ so every feature is in exactly the right place. But Warhol found that if the registration was a little off or there was a slight paint spillover across a boundary, the effect actually looked good – a bit of irregularity for interest and authenticity showing a piece being handmade. This effect is similar to the irregularity of handmade oriental rugs having more esthetic interest than the regularity of machine made rugs.
Warhol also made a grid of flowers using the same silkscreen method beginning with a photograph. Although each cell looks different, notice each is identical in shape except rotated. The colors of the flowers and background are varied in each cell, hence you get variety together with unity.
Comic books were another source of inspiration for pop artists. See Roy Lichtenstein’s painting from 1963: “Oh Jeff I love you too, but ...” .
I like the “Oh Jeff” painting because it leaves you in doubt and you speculate that all human relations have a ‒ but.
Lichtenstein made another iconic painting, called Wham, of a jet fighter plane shooting and exploding another plane ‒ a symbol of violence and nationalism ‒ or perhaps poking fun at the same.