The term "Pop Art" emerged from the pen of English critic Lawrence Alloway in the late 1950s to describe what he viewed as a contemporary attitudinal shift in subject matter and techniques of art. Instead of rarefied content like Bible stories, myths, or legends that had traditionally been the subjects of Fine Art, Pop Art saw the increasing spread of corporate marketing through western culture as inspiration to take commerce itself as the subject of artistic scrutiny — and that it was every bit as artistically worthy.

Beginning in England in the mid-1950s and America in early 1960s, Pop Art focused on everyday objects rendered through an adoption of commercial art techniques. In so doing, artists availed themselves of images and ideas culled from popular culture — i.e., movies, comic books, advertising, and especially, television — faithfully reproduced in all their mass produced glory. By making use of what had been dismissed as "kitsch" by the art establishment, Pop artists whose works were displayed in museums effectively thumbed their collective noses at the distinctions between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" art.

Although Andy Warhol was not the first artist to mine advertising for art, he remains the best known practitioner. In paintings like "200 Campbell's Soup Cans" (1962) and "Marilyn Monroe Diptych" (1962), Warhol tried to elevate mechanical reproduction to Fine Art status, enraging some critics even as buyers eagerly bought up his work. Similarly, Roy Lichtenstein turned to the comic strips of his youth to inspire his garishly bright art depicting sensational action or drama formed by the same kind of enlarged printer's dots used by cheap newsprint, reaping great success in the process.

Other artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Richard Hamilton formed collages out of pre-existing print images which took on added subtexts of ironic or sardonic meaning when assembled together. Muralist James Rosenquist created billboard-sized works crammed with consumer goods as a comment on media overload, and sculptor Claes Oldenburg sought to deprive everyday objects of their function, crafting soft vinyl toilets and humongous hot water bottles that could have no practical use.

Designed of and for the masses, though executed by an elite, Pop Art saw its design aesthetic dissolve after the late 1960s. It was at once eclipsed by Abstract Expressionism and assimilated by the same corporate marketing sources it had used for creative fuel.