Pop art
An art movement that drew on mass media, advertising, consumer goods, and popular culture, often using bold colors and mechanical reproduction.
Independent Group: A British group of artists, architects, and critics who explored contemporary popular culture after World War II. Its discussions of advertising, technology, and mass culture helped prepare the ground for British Pop art.
Appropriation (art): The use of existing images, objects, or styles within a new artwork. Pop artists recast commercial images as art without hiding their borrowed origins.
Andy Warhol: An American artist whose paintings, prints, films, and sculptures examined celebrity and consumer culture. His repeated images of products and public figures became Pop art's most widely recognized emblems.
Abstract expressionism: A postwar art movement emphasizing gestural abstraction, expressive brushwork, and large-scale painting. Pop art redirected attention from personal gesture toward recognizable images circulating in public life.
Album cover: A visual design made to package and identify a music recording. Pop art's bold imagery and celebrity culture shaped how popular music presented itself visually.
Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?: Richard Hamilton's 1956 collage assembled consumer products and media imagery into a modern living room. This early British collage became a defining image of Pop art's engagement with consumer culture.
Screen printing: A printing process that transfers ink through a mesh screen onto a surface. Its repeatable layers of color made serial, mechanically inflected imagery possible.
Roy Lichtenstein: An American painter known for enlarging comic-book imagery and commercial printing conventions. His paintings made the visual language of comics a subject of fine art.
Neo-Dada: A mid-twentieth-century tendency that revived Dada-like use of everyday objects, chance, and popular materials. Its overlap with early Pop art makes the boundary between the movements contested.
Advertising: Paid communication designed to promote products, services, or ideas. Pop art borrowed advertising's visual language and changed how artists and advertisers viewed it.