pop art

American  

Or Pop Art

noun

1. an art movement that began in the U.S. in the 1950s and reached its peak of activity in the 1960s, chose as its subject matter the anonymous, everyday, standardized, and banal iconography in American life, as comic strips, billboards, commercial products, and celebrity images, and dealt with them typically in such forms as outsize commercially smooth paintings, mechanically reproduced silkscreens, large-scale facsimiles, and soft sculptures.

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pop art British  

noun

1. a movement in modern art that imitates the methods, styles, and themes of popular culture and mass media, such as comic strips, advertising, and science fiction

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pop art Cultural  

1. Art that uses elements of popular culture, such as magazines, movies, popular music, and even bottles and cans. (See also Andy Warhol.)

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Other Word Forms

• pop artist noun

Etymology

Origin of pop art

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

His eventual move was a fortuitous one: Samaras was able to attend Rutgers University from 1955 to 1959, and to study with Pop Art’s best sculptor, George Segal, as well as Allan Kaprow, the originator of those inchoate versions of improv theater and performance art called “happenings.”

From The Wall Street Journal

“So there was a feeling in the air where you don’t have to talk about Pop Art, Simulationism or all these isms and movements, and it’s actually better not to talk about those things. And so I myself felt like I started to lose sight of themes and had nothing really concrete to pursue as a theme for a while.”

From Los Angeles Times

They lure you in with pop art, then offer you more.

From Los Angeles Times

It operates at the intersections of pop art and high-ish art, of the sacred and profane, of radicalism and die-hardism.

From Los Angeles Times

For instance, the first section of the exhibition frames this movement as one that “looked underneath the slick surfaces of consumer culture and Pop Art to expose the strange, alienating effect of the American Dream.”

From The Wall Street Journal