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

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

In Central California last week, the CHP stopped a Nissan Sentra that didn’t have a state-issued license plate but instead had a piece of homemade pop art on the back of the car.

From Los Angeles Times

Like his Kitchen Video, film themes extend throughout the apartment, for which he pays $2,060 a month, including a Pop Art painting of David Byrne from “True Stories” and a print of Brandon Bird’s oil painting “No One Wants to Play Sega With Harrison Ford” in the living room.

From Los Angeles Times

An estimated 17 million people come to Disneyland annually to dream, to play and to admire American pop art at its most optimistic.

From Los Angeles Times