George Jay Rogers

Charles Roger Grooms was born in 1937 in Nashville, Tennessee, a city that, with its lively honky-tonk scene and the theatricality of the historic Grand Ole Opry, would later influence much of his work. Nicknamed for his ginger hair, Red enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955. A self-proclaimed “restless and undisciplined student,” Grooms spent the next few years moving between schools and cities, including the New School in New York, Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) in Nashville, and Hans Hofmann’s summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Frustrated with the academic track and anxious to enter the New York art scene, Grooms abandoned formal education to focus exclusively on creating art and securing exhibition opportunities in his Chelsea neighborhood. There, he found quick success and a supportive circle of artists that became close friends and collaborators. From the start of his career, Grooms has worked in multiple media, from painting, printmaking, and sculpture, to installation art, filmmaking, and theatrical experiences known as “Happenings.” Much of his art blurs the boundaries between these different forms, such as his large-scale, carefully-crafted environments he calls “sculpto-pictoramas,” and smaller objects like Dalí Salad. In this example, Grooms combines silkscreened and lithographic elements with a wooden base and acrylic dome to create a three-dimensional portrait of the famous Surrealist artist. Grooms is perhaps best known for his colorful and comedic commentary on the culture, politics, and figures associated with the American urban environment and art historical traditions. Relying on satire and caricature, Grooms’ art has paid homage to a wide range of artists including Rembrandt, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Eakins, and Benjamin West, as well as national icons like Thomas Jefferson and Chuck Berry. Grooms’ disparate output is so difficult to classify that he has been compared to the influential Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp. Like Duchamp, Grooms often deliberately confronts the art world establishment, noting in 1974 that “it’s good to have . . . something to go against.” Despite his affinity for defying the mainstream, Grooms is routinely cited by scholars as one of the leading American artists of his generation and was honored with the National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. The subject of a 1984 mid-career retrospective exhibition held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the artist’s work can be found in public collections across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as well as in many international museums. - The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Perhaps one of the most influential contemporary art movements, Pop art emerged in the 1950s. In stark contrast to traditional artistic practice, its practitioners drew on imagery from popular culture — comic books, advertising, product packaging and other commercial media — to create original Pop art paintings, prints and sculptures that celebrated ordinary life in the most literal way.

ORIGINS OF POP ART

• Started in Britain in the 1950s, flourished in 1960s-era America
• “This is Tomorrow,” at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, was reportedly the first Pop art exhibition
• A reaction to postwar mass consumerism
• Transitioning away from Abstract Expressionism
• Informed by neo-Dada and artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg; influenced postmodernism and Photorealism 

CHARACTERISTICS OF POP ART 

• Bold imagery
• Bright, vivid colors
• Straightforward concepts
• Engagement with popular culture 
• Incorporation of everyday objects from advertisements, cartoons, comic books and other popular mass media

POP ARTISTS TO KNOW

• Richard Hamilton
• Andy Warhol
• Marta Minujín
• Claes Oldenburg
• Eduardo Paolozzi
• Rosalyn Drexler
• James Rosenquist
• Peter Blake
• Roy Lichtenstein

ORIGINAL POP ART ON 1STDIBS

The Pop art movement started in the United Kingdom as a reaction, both positive and critical, to the period’s consumerism. Its goal was to put popular culture on the same level as so-called high culture.

Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? is widely believed to have kickstarted this unconventional new style.

Pop art works are distinguished by their bold imagery, bright colors and seemingly commonplace subject matter. Practitioners sought to challenge the status quo, breaking with the perceived elitism of the previously dominant Abstract Expressionism and making statements about current events. Other key characteristics of Pop art include appropriation of imagery and techniques from popular and commercial culture; use of different media and formats; repetition in imagery and iconography; incorporation of mundane objects from advertisements, cartoons and other popular media; hard edges; and ironic and witty treatment of subject matter.

Although British artists launched the movement, they were soon overshadowed by their American counterparts. Pop art is perhaps most closely identified with American Pop artist Andy Warhol, whose clever appropriation of motifs and images helped to transform the artistic style into a lifestyle. Most of the best-known American artists associated with Pop art started in commercial art (Warhol made whimsical drawings as a hobby during his early years as a commercial illustrator), a background that helped them in merging high and popular culture.

Roy Lichtenstein was another prominent Pop artist that was active in the United States. Much like Warhol, Lichtenstein drew his subjects from print media, particularly comic strips, producing paintings and sculptures characterized by primary colors, bold outlines and halftone dots, elements appropriated from commercial printing. Recontextualizing a lowbrow image by importing it into a fine-art context was a trademark of his style. Neo-Pop artists like Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami further blurred the line between art and popular culture.

Pop art rose to prominence largely through the work of a handful of men creating works that were unemotional and distanced — in other words, stereotypically masculine. However, there were many important female Pop artists, such as Rosalyn Drexler, whose significant contributions to the movement are recognized today. Best known for her work as a playwright and novelist, Drexler also created paintings and collages embodying Pop art themes and stylistic features.

Read more about the history of Pop art and the style’s famous artists, and browse the collection of original Pop art paintings, prints, photography and other works for sale on 1stDibs.