Celebrating Art that Pops

Since its emergence in the mid-20th century, pop art has engaged the layered context of popular mass media and consumer culture that lies beneath its iconic look and feel, often sharpened by irony.

It draws meaning from the images and objects that surround everyday life, moving the familiar into a site of reflection and critique. One of my favorite pop artists is Claes Oldenburg (SAIC 1951–54, HON 1979), whose work can be described as “non-heroic,” rooted in daily experience rather than classical subjects, and often expressed through soft materials and exaggerated scale applied to ordinary objects. In studying pop artists, I’ve come to see how their influential work—which mirrors our habits and desires, revealing the belief systems, economic forces, and cultural values embedded in the visual world around us—paves the way for today’s artists to easily traverse once uncrossable boundaries between fine art and everyday culture.

This issue of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago magazine explores that fertile ground where art and popular culture cross-pollinate, revealing how our community thrives at that intersection. For example, a number of SAIC artists have found success in the field that inspired pop artists like Roy Lichtenstein: comics. Our cover story profiles Eisner Award–winner Caroline Cash (BFA 2019), who recently became the cartoonist for the long-running strip Nancy. Also featured is Amy Lawson Smeed (BFA 1997), who became the first woman head of animation in Disney history when she led the team for the motion picture Moana.

This issue also highlights artists who reference popular forms and symbols while working in more traditional modes. Aaron Curry (BFA 2002) draws on science fiction, video games, and modernist art in his large-scale sculptures and paintings, while Assistant Professor Delano Dunn explores racial identity and perception through mixed media, collage, and painting.

Our alums likewise find success in fields situated between traditional and popular arts. This issue features SAIC graduates working as toy designers, retail entrepreneurs, stand-up comics, and drag performers. They cross boundaries so fluidly because interdisciplinarity was at the heart of their education. Just as pop artists have drawn from both fine art and popular culture since the late 1950s, SAIC artists continue to reach across disciplines and fields to create relevant, vital work that speaks to us today.

Jiseon Lee Isbara
President ■