Pop Art: A Continuing History

Pop art brilliantly blended the banal and the mythic to become the most genuinely popular movement in modern art. Marco Livingstone charts the international development of Pop from its origins in the 1950s to the present day, exploring the work of more than 130 artists in this lavishly illustrated and comprehensive survey.

Pop’s total openness of attitude to subject matter, style and technique overturned the traditional dichotomies between high and low art, just as it questioned the idea that representation and abstraction were necessarily at odds with each other. Pop Art shows how the major artists of the movement – including Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rosenquist and Warhol – sustained great inventiveness in their work and assesses how Pop inspired a younger generation of artists, including Haring, Koons, Opie and Salle.

Pop Art is both a sparkling celebration and the most authoritative, complete account of one of the wittiest and most appealing movements in 20th-century art.

Marco Livingstone was the organizer of the acclaimed exhibitions on Pop Art at the Royal Academy in 1991 and in Lisbon in 1997. He has written extensively on contemporary art and photography, including David Hockney in the World of Art series.