“Pop Art: Can’t Buy My Love” examines Pop Art and its relation to commerce over more than four decades. From its origins in the 1960s to its influences on Contemporary Art, the exhibition traces the movements origins and developments through key artists including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, James Rosenquist, Mel Ramos, Claes Oldenburg and more.

Pop Art emerged in the decades after World War II. In the immediate aftermath, Abstract Expressionism became the dominant style but with the war fading in the rearview mirror, artists began to question AbEx’s supremacy and the homogenizing culture of consumption in the United States. Although Pop Art started in the United Kingdom, it was the mass marketing and commercialism of the United States that provided fertile ground for Pop artists.

While artists of other movements channeled their angst and emotions, Pop Artists took the shiny surface of consumption and conformity to reflect it back at an unsuspecting audience.

Some artists created a cool irony in their works such as Roy Lichtenstein appropriating comic art. The power of his work lay in the tension between “low” and “high” art. Others, like Claes Oldenburg, utilized humor to analyze the propagation of images and mass production.

Not all Pop Artists utilized a detached irony. Jim Dine mined his own personal experience and Jewish identity. In particular, Dine drew on his childhood memories of growing up in his grandfather’s hardware store. The work in the exhibition subtly hints at these memories with the use of the plumb bob.

For James Rosenquist, Pop Art could also be a vehicle to honor and mourn a close friend. The painting in the exhibition employed everyday objects to touch on topics of life, death, and friendship.

However, artists like LeRoy Neiman created Pop Art in bright and beautiful silhouettes, celebrating the color of life in all shapes. Neiman often drew on sporting events and figures. During his life, Neiman was one of the most popular artists leading Warhol to quip, “I want to be successful like Neiman.” Warhol saw in Neiman an artist that could tap into popular tastes to become a financial bestseller. Warhol even hoped that his photographs and paintings of Muhammad Ali would turn out as well as Neiman’s nine-foot-tall painting of the boxing legend. The lack of irony or seriousness can be a shock in today’s world but the bright world he created with his paintings fills us with an optimism that Pop Art often scrutinized.