Who Named Pop Art?

Art|Pop Art

Pop Art was a movement in modern art that developed in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. The movement presented a challenge to traditional fine art by including imagery from popular culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. Pop Art often used mechanical means of rendering techniques to give the work a “mechanical” look.

Pop Art was first named by British art critic Lawrence Alloway, who wrote a 1958 essay titled “The Arts and the Mass Media”. In this essay, he argued that pop art was a way of understanding popular culture and using it to create art.

He coined the term “Pop Art” based on his observation that much of what he saw was postmodern, or derived from commercial or popular sources. Alloway’s essay is credited with being one of the first critical attempts to analyze and understand Pop Art.

In addition to Alloway’s essay, Pop Art also owes its name to American artist Richard Hamilton. In 1957, Hamilton wrote an article titled “The Meaning of Pop Art,” which began with the sentence “Popular (designed for a mass audience) culture is normally contrasted with elitist culture.” This article helped to further define the term and provide an expanded definition for what today is known as Pop Art.

Pop Art is often associated with its most famous practitioners such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein who embraced popular imagery and used it as their primary source material for their artwork. However, it was Lawrence Alloway who initially coined the term “Pop Art” in his 1958 essay and Richard Hamilton who provided an expanded definition of what it meant.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Lawrence Alloway is credited with initially coining the phrase ‘Pop Art’ while Richard Hamilton provided an expanded definition through his 1957 article titled “The Meaning of Pop Art”. Both men’s work helped to shape this modern movement of art which has become increasingly popular over time.