Includes bibliographical references (p. 77) and index.

"Mass culture, popular taste and kitsch, previously considered outside the limits of fine art, were the inspiration and provocative themes of Pop art, a movement that enjoyed great prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s. Rejecting the idea that art and life could be separated, artists in both Britain and the United States - among them Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol - used mass-produced objects and photographic images to make a blatant connection between art and the post-war world of consumerism. This study follows the development of Pop, from its roots in the irreverence of Dada and Surrealism, to its rise in popularity as an art form that celebrated the glamour and hedonism of the newly commercialised Western world, whilst acknowledging its superficiality and transience."--BOOK JACKET.