Pop Art Celebrity Portraits

Portraits of famous people made in the Pop Art movement, usually working from a publicity photograph or press image and repeating, cropping or recoloring it with silkscreen printing and other mechanical means of reproduction. These works treat a celebrity public image as the subject, so the sitter is an actor, singer, politician or other media figure known mainly through the wide circulation of that image rather than a private commission from a person who sat for the artist. Repetition, flat bright color and the contrast between a glamorous surface and a faded or fragmented impression are common features. The group does not include traditional commissioned portraits, self-portraits or family portraits, which sit in other groups under Portraits, and it does not include Pop Art paintings whose subject is a comic book panel or a consumer product.