Nearly seventy works included in the major touring exhibition Pop Culture: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation explore the development of Pop Art from the time it emerged in the 1950s and 60s through contemporary times. The show includes an extraordinary array of media, including sculpture, paintings, drawings, assemblages, photography, ceramics, and prints. Iconic innovators of the style — Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann — intermingle with more contemporary works by Richard Artschwager, Jim Dine, Gilbert & George, Red Grooms, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama, Nam June Paik, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, among others.

When the Pop Art movement first developed in the mid-1950s, artists sought to challenge traditional concepts of art-making by incorporating consumer culture and everyday objects into their works. Artists during this period transformed icons associated with mass media, comic books, and popular culture into visual expressions that often reflected a growing consumerism in society at large. Pop artists and their successors abandoned traditional “high art” in favor of creating one that was based on conventional imagery of commercial graphics. Pop Culture demonstrates how the movement’s extensive history has influenced artistic production in our present cultural movement.

Famous faces like Marilyn Monroe, Pinocchio, Superman, Super Girl, and Little Richard are among the figures drawn from popular culture. Consumer Pop Culture — one of the abiding principles of the style — is represented by works featuring familiar corporate branding such as Coca-Cola, 7-Up, and Orange Crush soda, Oreo cookies, and Bob’s Big Boy.  Works in the exhibition come from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, and is curated by Billie Milam Weisman.