Art pop | |
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Stylistic origins | |
Cultural origins | Mid 1960s, United Kingdom and United States |
Derivative forms | |
Other topics | |
Art pop is a loosely defined style of pop music which draws from practices in non-musical art, such as fine art, fashion, cinema, avant-garde literature, and art school studies. Influenced by pop art and postmodernism's integration of high and low culture, art pop artists deviate from both traditional rock music conventions and typical pop audiences. Central to the work of some art pop artists are explorations of artifice, the self as a construction, historical authenticity, and notions of pop as commercial art.
Starting in the mid 1960s, British and American pop musicians began incorporating the ideas of the pop art movement and pseudo-symphonic textures to their recordings. English art pop musicians drew from their art school studies, while in America the style intersected with the Beat Generation and folk music's subsequent singer-songwriter movement. After its "golden age" in the 1970s, art pop's traditions would be continued in post-punk, industrial music, synthpop, and the British New Romantic scene of the 1980s. The genre further developed with artists who rejected conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles and the synthesizer. The 2010s saw new art pop trends develop, such as hip hop artists drawing on visual art and vaporwave artists exploring elements of contemporary capitalism.