What is pop art?

Pop is an international art movement originating in the 1950s, characterized by the appropriation of advertisement imagery along with an overall aesthetic borrowed from popular culture. The term originated at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London in the mid-1950s. "Pop art" would emerge later in America in the early 1960s.

Early British pop artists included Peter Blake and Joe Smith, who both attended the Royal College of Art in London. American artists included the well-known figures of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein; the former achieved world-wide notoriety for his Campbell's soup can paintings, while the latter was recognized for his appropriations of comic-strip images.