The renowned British Pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1957 noted what he considered to be the ‘characteristics of pop art’ in a letter to his friends: ‘Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at Youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business.’
Pop Art encompasses a diverse body of work, but what unites the movement is its challenge to the dominance of abstraction in the mid-20th century. Also recognisable across the Pop Art movement is its play on visual tropes from the mass media like saturated colour palettes, simplified shapes and the mechanical reproduction of images. Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup series captures the essence of Pop Art. This famous group of works acknowledges the commodification of art by taking the label of a Campbell’s Soup can directly from consumer culture, flattening it into block colours and obsessively reproducing variations on the same subject.
American pop vs. British pop
Despite sharing subject matter and wider political aims, American Pop Art is largely viewed as distinct from its counterpart in Britain. Pop Art in Britain was influenced from afar by mass-media and popular culture in America, while the cult of celebrity and the ‘American Dream’ that dominated everyday life in the United States directly inspired artists living there. Subsequently, British Pop is more academic, using irony and parody through the appropriation of popular imagery. American Pop on the other hand emphasises the mundanity of mass media to reject the emotive, visual language of Abstract Expressionism.