POP art
The term pop art was first used in the 1950s in London by the critic Lawrence Alloway to describe works by artists who combined bits and pieces of mass-produced graphic materials to enshrine contemporary cultural values. The materials and techniques long used by abstract, or action, painters--acrylic paints, stencils, silk screens, spray guns--were applied to figurative uses by pop artists. These artists emphasized contemporary social values: the sprawl of urban life, the transitory, the vulgar, the superficial, and the flashy--the very opposites of the values cherished by artists of the past. Seeking cultural resources, pop artists reworked such industrial products as soup and beer cans, American flags, and automobile wrecks. They turned images of hot dogs and hamburgers into gigantic blowups or outsize vinyl monsters.