Pop Art: the Era, the Artists, and the Comparisons

In this investigation I plan to conduct an investigation into the similarities and differences between American and British pop art. Pop art started in the late 1950's in England, and grew in the United States in the early 1960's. English art critic Lawrence Holloway first used the term Pop 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. The term referred to the interest of a number of artists in the images of mass media, advertising, comics and consumer products. The 1950s were a period of optimism in Britain following the end of wartime rationing, and a consumer boom took place. 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.…