Pop-Cultured Currency - Technically, defacing US currency is a crime – but artist James Charles doesn’t seem to be in any legal trouble for his awesome series of Pop Culture Cash. His portraits, created on real money using ink, turn dead presidents into colorfully amusing pop culture icons. Alternate site with larger pics.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Jul 21, 2011 - 22 comments

A Survey of Western Painting with Song Attached (SLYT)
posted by tigrefacile on Feb 28, 2010 - 16 comments

Michael Jackson heals the world
posted by Artw on Dec 10, 2009 - 41 comments

Tomokazu Matsuyama was born in Japan. He moved to the US when he was around ten years old, not speaking any English, and being overwhelmed by the culture shock of 1980s Los Angeles. His artistic work is a reflection of this upbringing. Matsuyama’s paintings envision traditional Japanese imagery through the lens of American pop art, creating a unique and beautiful hybrid. He strives to portray this global melee through a conscious “appropriation” of all of his influences: cultural, artistic, and personal. Matsuyama’s unconflicted and positively ebullient works do not ask, “What am I?,” but assert, “I am everybody.” (via) [more inside]
posted by netbros on Nov 29, 2009 - 14 comments

Pop up shops have been popping up, well, pretty much everywhere. And pop up restaurants. And pop up art galleries. While the trend started long before the current retail downturn, and looks set to continue as companies strive to create interest in their products and services, will creative spontaneity start to look a little bit too planned and evolve into a mainstream retail channel?
posted by MuffinMan on May 6, 2009 - 10 comments

Madonna is pop art
posted by Artw on Oct 28, 2008 - 40 comments

The Guardian has compiled a list of their top fifty arts videos, the majority being from either rare or obscure sources and uploaded onto YouTube.
posted by djgh on Aug 30, 2008 - 13 comments

The Art of Chris Turnham. Vivid, highly-stylized illustrations. The first four 2D images are part of a series that depict scenes from Decemberists songs.
posted by ludwig_van on Jan 16, 2006 - 7 comments

PopExperiment

"Anyway, the idea behind this site is similar to stumble: provide links and representations to (of) artists that I love. To that end I've already started populating the music, photography, visual arts and motion arts sections with some art I hope you really enjoy (and real links to the amazing artists responsible)."

[And check: via via via]
posted by peacay on Aug 6, 2005 - 2 comments

Page after page of late 50s/early 60s pop posters, advertisements and more, designed by the studio of Lefor-Openo, which consisted of Marie-Claire Lefort and Marie-Francine Oppeneau. Via Papel Continuo
posted by iconomy on Jun 29, 2005 - 6 comments

Nick Hornby discusses pop music in this NY Times essay: "Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, 'that high-low fork in the road' is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off? In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool - a stranger to all notions of postmodernism - but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well."
posted by grumblebee on May 26, 2004 - 28 comments

Mark Ryden is to the iconic saucer-eyed urchins of the '60s as Salvador Dali is to Hickory Dickory Dock. His delicate palette, fine details and classical references offer compelling counterpoint to the deliciously disturbing imagery of les tykes terrible in collections such as "Blood: Miniature Paintings of Sorrow & Fear"; "Bunnies and Bees: Paintings Created to Illustrate DIVINE TRUTH in Accordance with the Secret Principles of SCIENCE AND SOUL"; and "The Meat Show: Paintings about Childen, God, and USDA Grade A Beef". Plus, they're kids - with big eyes!
posted by taz on Sep 8, 2003 - 25 comments