What to know

An Intro To Pop Surrealism

Rebelling against the aesthetic constraints of fine art and with a novel take on pop culture, a new trend in contemporary art has emerged over the past years: Pop Surrealism, also known as Lowbrow Art.

It’s hard not to have an opinion on this unusual and peculiar art expression, as people absolutely hate it or completely love it. It is also hard to define for even today, 40 years after it first emerged in South California in the late 1970s, the art movement is still struggling to find its own structure and identity

Pop Surrealism stems from the underground pop-culture-infused art scene and aims to break the frontiers between fine art and low art. You can also say that Pop Surrealism is the meeting of two art movements: Pop Culture, meaning what is mainstream in Western culture, and Surrealism, which emerged in the early 1920s and expressed the works of the imagination as revealed in dreams, moving away from what is conventionally expressed in art paintings.

Pop surreal artists like to go beneath the surface of pop cultural identity and what is common to explore magical themes and a darker reality. Their expression may be “comical, carnal, kitschy, colorful and queer”, although their intention is much deeper and plainly serious.

As the perfect example of this art movement is the atypical Mark Ryden, considered the Godfather of Pop Surrealism, who takes inspiration from modern culture but also from old masters and fairytales, and infuses his work with a lot of symbolism, a characteristic of this art movement.

Although some art critics still snub Pop Surrealism, it has managed to establish itself as a genre and has a big number of supporters. Many pop surreal artists exhibit their works today in galleries specialized in pop culture art.

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