History of Pop Art

What exactly is ‘Pop Art’?

Pop Art is an abbreviation for Popular Art, and represents an art movement that became famous for taking common, everyday objects and turning them into artwork. Images from Television and Advertising were most commonly used, such as Warhol’s beans tins and the famous work featuring the icon that was Marilyn Monroe.

Lawrence Alloway, an English art critic, first coined the phrase ‘Pop Art’ in 1958 in the Architectural Digest. He was referring to post-war work that use commercialism as its subject matter.

Pop Art started as a movement in the Fifties, in England. It didn’t reach the United States until the Sixties.

London pioneers of Pop Art included the artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. In the Sixties the movement was joined by artists such as Peter Blake and David Hockney.

The development of Pop Art in the Sixties in the USA was aided by the backlash against consumerism and wealth after the Second World War.

It was at this stage that Andy Warhol, the most known Pop Artist, used a technique called seriagraphy, which was a mass production printing technique, to make his commentary on advertising and culture.