Pop Art and Popular Culture
Pop Art was essentially an American phenomenon that included European responses to the imagery of the post-war consumer culture pioneered in New York ad agencies. Like Neo-Dada, Pop Art exposed the limits of Modernism and the prevailing discourse on the aesthetics of painting. These two movements supported mixed media, mass media, hybrid objects and anti-art gestures, employing sources from popular culture, low art and advertising. Perhaps more interesting than the art was the new attitude of the artists–irreverent and business-minded, they thumbed their collective noses at the high-minded, humanist based Abstract Expressionism. But the biggest change wrought by the post Ab Ex movements was the return of representation, upending the dominance of abstract art.