POP ETC.

The starting point is 1964, the year Norwegian visual artists first came in contact with American Pop Art and New Realism through exhibitions in Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. These encounters inspired a great number of young Norwegian artists to begin working within the framework of Pop.

It has been asserted, however, that these artists were not creating Pop Art per se, insofar as the Norwegian incarnation was not as slick or glamorous as its American counterpart; inspired by French and British Pop Art, it was grittier and political. Norwegian Pop Art displayed a new and different realism, in opposition to France’s abstract dominance in the Norwegian art world at the time. Norwegian Pop artists found inspiration both in the glossy and seamier aspects of consumer culture as well as the gravity of international politics in order to describe a new reality.