History.

Pop art was a visual artistic movement that emerged in the early 1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late 1950's in the United States. Pop art is one of the major art movements of the Twentieth Century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture. Pop art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so. However, much of pop art is considered very academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult for some to comprehend. Pop art and Minimalism are considered to be the last Modern art movements and thus the precursors to Contemporary art or Postmodern art.

Pop art in America.

Temporally, the British pop art movement predated the American one. However, American pop art is said to have its own origins that are separate from the British. The movement was a response to Abstract Expressionism. It marked a return to sharp paintwork and representational art. It was an appreciation of theretofore unappreciated objects and images of mass culture and ordinary commerce. In the American pop art movement the groundbreakers, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, were not actually path setters. Roy Lichtenstein was the most popular and one of the most consistent pop art practitioners using stencil-like dots to represent comics or later the simplification/parody of fine art from the vivid pop art perspective. Andy Warhol became the most famous American pop artist using a pseudo-industrial silkscreen process for painting commercial objects such as Campbell's Soup Cans, Coca-cola bottles, for portraying raging celebrity such as Liz Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe and for portraying the deadpan and banal. Warhol extended his artistic contribution to film direction yet managed to avoid social commentary in his art. James Rosenquist brought pop art to enormous billboard painting. Lichtenstein at times extended his dotwork to this grand scale where the artist's skill is challenged by limitations on visualizing a gigantic work while attending to a small section of it. Wayne Thiebaud attended to similar subject matter (common food) as Warhol and Lichtenstein touched upon, but with the meticulous detail.

(source: Wikipedia)