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Pop art was a visual artistic movement that emerged in the late 1950s in England and the United States. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so. However, much pop art is considered very academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult to comprehend.
The term was coined in 1954 by John McHale. A "pop" movement was widely recognized by the mid-1960s. In the meantime, the movement was sometimes called Neo-Dada, a name which reveals some of the thinking behind this type of art, and the strong influence of dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp on such seminal pop figures as Hamilton, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. Richard Hamilton's definition of Pop Art - "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressed its everyday, commonplace values.
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