Pop art (popular art) is an artistic movement that rejected abstract expressionism, returning to figurative inspirations while incorporating themes and techniques drawn from mass culture. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to incorporate popular as opposed to elitist culture into art and targeted a broad audience.
The term was coined in 1956 by British critic Laurence Alloway , but didn't stick until well into the 1960s. In the meantime, the movement was being called Neo-Dada, a name which reveals some of the thinking behind this type of art. There is a strong influence of Dada in Pop art.
Pop art is arguably, to some extent, a satire of the philistine acquisitiveness demonstrated by patrons of art, and by official art institutions of that time – for example, early pop artists induced important museums to invest large sums of money in paintings of mundane subjects, done with acrylic paint on plywood, which relatively quickly deteriorated.
The movement gained strength in the 1960s and was centered in England and the United States early on.
Andy Warhol, sometimes called the Pope of Pop, became by far the most notable pop artist, but others include:
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