Pop Art Analysis

This paper deals, in broadest terms, with the questions of how artwork is connected to the changes and dynamics that prevail in a society. To describe these changes, I will investigate how a specific type of art reflects its social content in contemporary societies. My analysis is carried out by closely looking at the Pop Art movement, especially with Andy Warhol, who has come to be known as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. It will be argued that Pop Art managed to successfully articulate its time, and in so doing, it became a widely influential art movement whose effect is still very much existent in today’s world of art. In order to prove its claim, this paper relies on the theory of “the field of cultural production” by Pierre

In his text, Bourdieu writes about his concept of the “habitus,” or the physical embodiment of cultural capital to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences (Bourdieu, 1996). Bourdieu extended this to the “taste” of cultural objects that people surround themselves with, as he explains that what one finds to be aesthetically pleasurable is stemmed from upbringing. His theory also creates distinctions among social classes and describes how some people are more comfortable when recognizing what art is. He says that “taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier,” creating a system of high, middle, and lower classes (Bourdieu, 1976). Bourdieu points out that people may be born to like certain things and dislike others, which is telling of their social standing. In the case of art, this classification of people can affect the judgement of quality and what is understood to be necessary to surround themselves with. Though people make conscious decisions about what is beautiful or not based on their aesthetic emotions, class fractions play a prominent role in shaping this distinction on a subconscious level. Bourdieu claims that these aesthetic preferences that are obtained at an early age are what drive them to their social classes. As a result, it is concluded that there is no such thing as pure aesthetic experience in the world of art; cultural lessons of class have a major influence on it. Bourdieu’s idea that the culture of social class holds a decisive factor in the types of art being created leads to the notion that almost anything in culture can be considered to be