Flavia Frigeri

Pop Art refers to a post-war movement connecting art with popular culture. Billboard signs, comic books, and movie stars were just some of the subjects chosen by pop artists, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, to name a few, to illustrate the contemporary world in which they lived. Largely characterized by bold and strident colors combined with a cool-eyed appropriation of contemporary imagery, pop art sought to highlight both the negative and positive facets of modern culture. The newest installment in the Art Essentials series explores this phenomenon, which had its roots in post-war British and American consumerism before spreading and capturing the imagination of young artists. After establishing the origins of the form, the book delves into subjects like the role of stardom and glamor in pop art and how pop art vocabulary grew to include political figures and even war imagery. As written by Flavia Frigeri, an authority on the subject, this book is an essential guide for anyone fascinated by the pop art movement.

Focusing on fifty diverse women artists, from Lavinia Fontana and Artemisia Gentileschi through Judy Chicago, Ana Mendieta and the Guerrilla Girls to Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Louise Bourgeois, this book equips the reader with a general understanding of the history of art by women, as well as an appreciation of its most outstanding figures. Traditionally women have been among art's favoured objects of representation, while their contributions as art producers have been subordinated to those of men. This book documents women artists in context to offer readers an accessible but rich understanding of key female artists from the Baroque to the present day.