Pop Art:

While the term Pop Art is widely known nowadays, its artistic scope and the issues it raises are nonetheless frequently misunderstood. Pop Art in Britain refers to a group of artists who began appearing on the scene in the mid-1950s. This identity was formed around The Independent Group, an intellectual circle consisting of the painters Eduardo Palazzo and Richard Hamilton, the architectural partnership of Alison and Peter Smithson, and the art critic Lawrence Alloway. In its theoretical explorations, The Independent Group focused on a theoretical exploration of technology, hence the recurring references to science-fiction in British Pop Art. 

American Pop Art had no explicit linkups with British Pop Art and refers to a tendency that arose from individual initiatives. Though it was not a structured movement in the sense of a group putting on collective shows, it does however have certain coherence. In general terms, it emerged from the work of Robert Rauschenberg and, chiefly, Jasper Johns, and is characterized by an interest in ordinary objects, irony, and a faith in the potency of images. American Pop Art has its home specifically in New York, where at the outset artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol exhibited, then James Rosenquist, George Segal and Tom Wesselman... 

Abbreviation of Popular Art, the Pop Art movement used common everyday objects to portray elements of popular culture, primarily images in advertising and television. The term Pop art was first used by English critic, Lawrence Allow in 1958 in an edition of Architectural Digest. He was describing all post-war work centered on consumerism and materialism, and that rejected the psychological allusions of Abstract Expressionism. An attempt to bring art back into American daily life, it rejected abstract painting because of its sophisticated and elite nature. Pop Art shattered the divide between the commercial arts and the fine arts.

The Pop Art movement originated in England in the 1950s and traveled overseas to the United States during the 1960s. Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, both members of the Independent Group, pioneered the movement in London in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the movement was carried by Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Peter Phillips. In the early sixties, Pop art found its way to the United States, seen in the work of Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. It developed in the United States as a response to the wealth of the post World War II era and the growing materialism and consumerism in society. The most recognized Pop Artist, Andy Warhol, used a photo-realistic, mass production printmaking technique called seriagraphy to produce his commentaries on media, fame, and advertising.

Pop Art made commentary on contemporary society and culture, particularly consumerism, by using popular images and icons and incorporating and re-defining them in the art world. Often subjects were derived from advertising and product packaging, celebrities, and comic strips. The images are presented with a combination of humor, criticism and irony. In doing this, the movement put art into terms of everyday, contemporary life. It also helped to decrease the gap between "high art" and "low art" and eliminated the distinction between fine art and commercial art methods.