What is Pop Art? The British curator Lawrence Alloway invented the term Pop Art in 1955 to describe a new form of Popular art a movement characterized by the imagery of consumerism, mass reproduction, the media and popular culture from which its name derives. In 1957 English Pop Artist Richard Hamilton listed the characteristics of Pop Art in a letter to architects Peter and Alison Smithson.
The list read as follows: 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. The Pop Art artists took inspiration from advertising, pulp magazines, billboards, movies, television, comic strips, and shop windows for their humorous, witty and ironic works, which both can be seen as a celebration and a critique of popular culture.