Art 318: 19th & 20th Century Art
Ticket # 11538
Fall 2015
An Inspiration
Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising and comic books. One of its aims was to emphasize the elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. Jack Kirby a forerunner of comic book illustration was a resounding artist who led much of what pop artists drew their inspiration from. Revolutionizing the styles and techniques used by comic artists of the time, Kirby took a more coloristic and surreal approach to his art, this change in nature led to an access of pop artists wanting …show more content…
The orientation has been flipped and the images have been cleaned up but the similarities between these two are astounding, especially when pieced together with the other circumstances by other comic artists. Molotiu explains that “ for Kirby, his visual imagination by that point was certainly rich enough that he didn't need to swipe. I'm pretty sure that the "Takka takka" comparison was intentional, while some of the other comparisons were, rather, between the overall aesthetics of late Kirby and of Pop Art, without a specific image borrowing.”(tribune) The correlation between pop artists to comic artists are apparent but there seems to be a similarity between how some comics were illustrated and abstract expressionists from the previous decades. Kandinsky’s Campbell, no.2 and Kirby’s A Space Odyssey from 1977 are also very similar. When looking at the color and shapes of the two pieces you can see a clear comparison on Kirby’s part. The general flows of these are very similar indeed. Very interesting to see that the comic artists used partial abstract expressionism as inspiration and then the pop artists used the comic