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.

---

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

---

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.)

---

Other Word Forms

• pop artist
  noun

Etymology

Origin of pop art

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

But now Peter Philips, a "key figure" in the international pop art movement who died in June 2025, is to be celebrated with an exhibition to showcase his work.

From BBC • May 17, 2026

It’s sort of like if Andy Warhol slapped his name on a can of Campbell’s soup — Warhol x Campbell’s Chicken & Stars — instead of painting them as pop art.

From Salon • Apr. 20, 2026

Her daughter Amy Goodman said her mother crisscrossed Europe looking for overlooked artists to champion in New York at a time when most local galleries remained devoted to homegrown pop art and minimalism.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 9, 2026

It’s easily the best piece of page-turning trash Hollywood since Joyce Haber’s “The Users,” and like all great works of pop art, it’s had many, many imitators.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 19, 2024

“I hope it’ll raise up Seattle University,” he said, sitting in his living room near a massive, collagelike painting by pop art icon Roy Lichtenstein and a lithe, limestone Max Ernst statue.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 13, 2024