A Research on the Issue of Representation in Pop Art

This article intends to study the issue of representation in Pop Art. Here we define representation as a process through which the audience identifies an external reality in the heart of the pictorial elements of a tableau which is exterior to the pictorial world or rather only familiar to his mind. For this purpose, we would examine “representation” from cave art to art of the middle 20th century i.e. when the representational elements in artistic work wane for different reasons. But representation regained its importance no sooner than the emergence of Pop Art in 60s and consequently representational pictorial elements has so far turned into one of the critical issues of postmodern events in art. This article would analyze the fundamental artistic and social reasons for such attention to representation in Pop Art while remaining focused on works of the distinguished artists of the movement, those like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Hamilton and James Rosenquist.