Post impressionism, pop art, tracey emin, julian opie.....

[nianacw]

I've been given the essay question;-

Portraits:How has post impressionism and pop art influenced the work of tracey emin and julian opie.

I have to write a 2000 word essay on this. I know nothing about art really, I'm doing a multimedia course. And I've never been one for writing essays. I'm not trying to cheat or anything, but I actualy have no idea how to even start this thing, I have no points or arguments, I have nothing!
How on earth has post impressionism and pop art influenced the work of tracey emin and julian opie?!?!

Thanks.

[jake-the-peg]

Quick couple of thoughts - Tracey Emmin has used "found objects" in a number of cases like the famous bed or the beach hut from Whitstable.

Compare and contrast with Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal "fountain" that started it all

Pop art uses techniques from mass culture, compare for example Wharhol's marilyn munroe

http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs024/images/c anon/25.jpg

With Opie's cover for the Blur album
http://www.barbarakrakowgallery.com/stuff/cont entmgr/files/01ba8239aab9673819208ae31cf27fe0/ img_two/lp_opie.bestofblur.jpg

Check out all of these on Wikipedia - it should give you a good start

[jno]

erm, hang on, jake, Duchamp was a surrealist, nothing to do with post-impressionism or pop? I think you could say Emin's work is conceptual, as Duchamp's often was, but I'm not sure that answers the question. Besides, it specifies portraits. I think Roy Lichtenstein would count as pop art, though, and you could trace a line from his gigantic reproductions of comic book frames to the simple outlines of Opie's painting of Blur (and others).

None too sure I can see any reflection of post-impressionism in either of them, but perhaps someone else can come up with a better answer; I don't know enough about Emin's portraits and all I can google is portraits of her.

[jake-the-peg]

Duh just noticed the portait bit in the question so you can remove the first bit of that anyway.