Pop art is an art movement that took place in the post-cold war era of the late 1950s and the 1960s. It began earlier in Britain than the United States, and from then on “pop art endured and became the art movement of the 1960s.” (Mamiya, C (1992). Pop Art & Consumer Culture. Texas: University of Texas Press. 2.) Pop art stood out from other art movements of the last century, not entirely from its popularity but as it was different, new and challenging.
Pop art does not always necessarily describe the style of art, but rather the “collective term for the artistic phenomena.” When the term “pop” is applied to art, it is usually in reference to the superficial acts of society that we associate it with. Pop art is thought to be “cheerful, ironic and critical, quick to respond to the slogans of mass media, whose stories make history, whose aesthetics shape our paintings and the image of our era, and whose clichéd ‘models’ determine our behaviour.” (Osterwold, T (2003). Pop Art. Cologne: Taschen. 6.)
Whilst pop art came about in both Britain and North America, they both took different forms early on. It could be said that in Britain the artistic traits were influenced by the distanced American popular culture, whilst the American pop artists took their influence from living and being surrounded by that culture.
Pop art, or popular mass culture took off in the mid to late 1950s, however it “appeared and was acknowledged as a movement in the US at the very beginning of the 1960s.” (Archer, M (1997). Art Since 1960. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.)