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One of the common themes in LGBT art is eliminating the distinction between high art and popular culture.  After being rejected from the abstract expressionist movement for not being masculine enough, pop artists created art that contradicted abstract expressionism's ideologies. Pop art was representational, incorporated pop culture, and looked mass produced, as if made by machine. As Gavin Butt explains, "Pop Art also demonstrates an uneasy relationship with the heterosexual values of Abstract Expressionism but, rather than manifesting themselves in a Cagean silence, Pop's queer values tend to reside in its 'camp' approach to seriousness and significant meaning." Pop art embraced the idea of 'camp,' cultural appreciation or performance that is non-serious, over-the-top, and theatrical. Pop artists made careers out of embracing camp and pop culture. Facing homophobia and preceding the Gay Rights Movement, the pop artists made art that was accessible, dismissed hierarchies, and therefore represented equity. ​"As the left-wing film maker Emile de Antonio puts it, Warhol was just 'to swish,' too effete and obviously gay to be accepted in the world of avant-garde at that time. 'Too swish,' that is, not only for the macho Abstract Expressionists, but also for closeted artists like Johns and Rauschenberg..." Andy Warhol's work, particularly his many silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities, display the use of 'campiness' in Pop Art.  Warhol's work depicting commercial objects, such as his 32 Campbell's Soup Cans (Fig. 2), eliminated the hierarchy of popular culture and fine art. They deal with the queer approach to the seriousness of fine art. The pop art approach was not to create 'serious' art that only those in the art world would understand, but to provide images that were familiar and accessible to everyone. The use of "camp" and pop culture in LGBT art has prevailed across decades. 

jasper JOHNS

Jasper Johns began by painting common objects like flags and eventually cast objects like beer cans in bronze. His artwork is known as a precursor to pop art.

johns

andy WARHOL

Andy Warhol is the epitome of camp and pop culture in gay art- the use of celebrities, elevating common objects, and garish decorations like diamond dust glitter.

warhol

robert RAUSCHENBERG

Rauschenberg's "combines" included pop culture imagery - JFK, the moon landing, and even campy figures like Judy Garland as a secret reference to gay culture. 

rauschenberg

CAMP +

POP CULTURE

gilbert & george

Gilbert & George include pop culture imagery in their photo manipulations.

gilbert &george

berenice ABBOTT

Rauschenberg's "combines" included pop culture imagery - JFK, the moon landing, and even campy figures like Judy Garland as a secret reference to gay culture. 

abbott

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