50 Fun Facts About Pop Art

In which two countries did pop art emerge in the mid-to-late 1950s?

The UK and the US: British artists studied American consumer imagery from afar while New York became the hotbed almost simultaneously.

Which London circle, founded in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to pop art?

The Independent Group, meeting at London's ICA from 1952, brought Paolozzi, Hamilton and Alloway together to debate advertising, movies, comics and science fiction.

Whose 1947 collage I was a Rich Man's Plaything holds the first use of 'pop' in art?

Eduardo Paolozzi's 1947 collage I was a Rich Man's Plaything shows the word 'Pop!' bursting from a revolver's smoke cloud, the earliest appearance of the word in art.

Which British critic is usually credited with coining the term 'pop art'?

Lawrence Alloway, the British critic behind the 1958 essay 'The Arts and the Mass Media', is usually credited with coining 'pop art', though he said he meant mass-media products, not art about them.

Who made the 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different...?

Richard Hamilton made the collage for the catalogue and poster of the 1956 This Is Tomorrow exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery; it is counted among the earliest pop works.

Which earlier movement's use of found imagery did pop art draw on and extend?

Pop swapped Dada's anarchic satire for a detached affirmation of mass culture.

Pop art is widely seen as a reaction against which dominant American movement?

Abstract expressionism's painterly looseness was what pop artists set out to defuse with impersonal, mundane reality and parody, though pop is also seen as an extension of it.

Whose December 1962 'Symposium on Pop Art' officially introduced the term?

The Museum of Modern Art staged its 'Symposium on Pop Art' in December 1962, moderated by curator Peter Selz, which gave the term official currency in America.

Which 1962 Pasadena show is regarded as the first museum exhibition of American pop art?

New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum in autumn 1962, showed Lichtenstein, Warhol, Dine, Thiebaud and Ruscha.

How many paintings make up Andy Warhol's original Campbell's Soup Cans series?

Warhol's 1962 series comprises 32 canvases, one for each soup variety Campbell's then sold, each 20 by 16 inches.

Which gallery first exhibited Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans in July 1962?

Irving Blum showed the 32 canvases at his Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in July 1962; only about five sold, so he bought them back to keep the set together.

Which actor reserved Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato) before the 1962 show even opened?

Blum later persuaded the early buyers to sell back so the 32 could stay together.

Warhol's Marilyn silkscreens are based on a publicity still from which 1953 film?

Gene Kornman took the photograph.

What did Dorothy Podber do to a stack of Warhol's Marilyn canvases in 1964?

Warhol thought she wanted to photograph them; the repaired works became the Shot Marilyns.

How much did Shot Sage Blue Marilyn fetch in 2022, an auction record for an American artist?

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold at Christie's New York in May 2022 for $195 million, beating the $105 million paid for Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) in 2013.

What covered the walls of Warhol's first Factory studio on East 47th Street?

Billy Name covered the walls in silver paint and aluminium foil in 1964, earning the East 47th Street studio the nickname the Silver Factory.

Who shot Andy Warhol at the Factory in June 1968?

Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto and a bit player in Warhol's film I, a Man, shot him at the Factory on 3 June 1968.

Which experimental rock band did Warhol manage and let rehearse at the Factory?

The Velvet Underground's debut was 'produced' by Warhol in the sense that he paid for the studio time, and he drew its banana cover.

Warhol designed the cover of which 1971 Rolling Stones album?

Warhol conceived the Sticky Fingers cover: a close-up of a jeans-clad crotch fitted with a real working zipper, with the package designed by Craig Braun.

Which magazine did Warhol found after the Factory became a business enterprise?

Warhol founded Interview in 1969 with British journalist John Wilcock; it became known for long, lightly edited celebrity-to-celebrity conversations.

Warhol's best-known sculptures are silkscreened wooden replicas of the shipping cartons for which product?

Brillo soap pads came 24 to a box, and Warhol's Brillo Boxes copied the carton, itself designed by commercial artist James Harvey, in silkscreen ink on wood.

How long is Warhol's 1965 film Empire, a static shot of the Empire State Building?

Empire runs just over eight hours: Warhol filmed the Empire State Building for six and a half hours in July 1964 and projected the footage at a slowed 16 frames per second.

In which city was Andy Warhol born, to Rusyn immigrant parents?

Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928 and studied at the city's Carnegie Institute of Technology before moving to New York in 1949.

With which younger artist did Warhol make more than 50 collaborative works in 1984–85?

Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat painted more than 50 joint canvases in 1984–85; their September 1985 show at Tony Shafrazi's gallery drew reviews that soured the friendship.

What operation did Warhol undergo the day before he died in February 1987?

Gallbladder surgery on February 21; his surgeon found the organ 'on the verge of perforating', and Warhol died the next day in New York Hospital.

What printing technique did Roy Lichtenstein painstakingly replicate by hand?

Lichtenstein hand-painted Ben-Day dots, the uniform dot screens of cheap comic-book printing, through perforated metal stencils, mimicking mechanical reproduction at monumental scale.

Which 1961 painting was Lichtenstein's first pop work based on a cartoon character?

Look Mickey (1961), showing Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse fishing, was Lichtenstein's first pop painting; he began the cartoon works after teaching beside Allan Kaprow at Rutgers.

Which London institution bought Lichtenstein's diptych Whaam! in 1966?

The Tate Gallery bought Whaam! in 1966, three years after Lichtenstein painted the 1.7 by 4 metre diptych; the work passed to Tate Modern's collection.

What does the left panel of Whaam! show?

The left panel shows a fighter plane firing a rocket; the right panel shows the target plane exploding in flames beneath the giant 'WHAAM!' lettering.

Whose comic-book panel from a 1962 war comic was the primary source for Whaam!?

Lichtenstein turned the single panel into a diptych.

Which absent man does the woman in Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl refuse to call for help?

The thought bubble reads 'I don't care! I'd rather sink — than call Brad for help!'; the image came from a 1962 DC romance-comic panel by Tony Abruzzo.

For roughly how much did Lichtenstein's Masterpiece (1962) sell privately in 2017?

Masterpiece (1962) was sold by collector Agnes Gund to hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen in January 2017 for about $165 million, then the highest price paid for a Lichtenstein.

Which Swedish-born sculptor is famous for giant versions of everyday objects?

Claes Oldenburg, Swedish-born and American, made many of those large replicas with his wife Coosje van Bruggen.

In which city does Spoonbridge and Cherry stand?

Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–88), by Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, anchors the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden beside the Walker Art Center.

At which university was Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks first installed in 1969?

Oldenburg's Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks went up in Yale's Beinecke Plaza in May 1969, was removed in 1970, and was reinstalled at the university's Morse College in 1974.

Which artist painted the encaustic Flag (1954–55) after dreaming of it?

Jasper Johns said the idea came to him in a dream; Flag, in encaustic, oil and collage on fabric, began the flags, targets and numbers that made his name at Castelli in 1958.

Whose drawing did Robert Rauschenberg famously erase in 1953, with the artist's consent?

The result was titled Erased de Kooning Drawing.

What did Rauschenberg call his 1954–64 works that mixed painting with everyday objects?

Rauschenberg called them Combines; Monogram (1955–59), a stuffed angora goat wearing a tyre, blurs the line between painting and sculpture.

Which former sign painter made the room-scale painting F-111 in 1965?

James Rosenquist, who had painted Times Square billboards, made F-111 in 1964–65; it spans about twenty-six metres across twenty-three canvases.

Which series, begun in 1961, first brought Tom Wesselmann to the art world's attention?

Great American Nude, begun in 1961 after Wesselmann dreamt of the words 'red, white and blue', paired flat nudes with stars-and-stripes colours and collaged household items.

Which English pop artist co-created the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's sleeve?

He and Jann Haworth won a Grammy for it; he also designed the Live Aid poster.

Where did Keith Haring first gain public attention with white chalk drawings?

From 1980 Haring chalked on the black paper pasted over expired ads in New York subway stations, making thousands of drawings and calling the subway his laboratory.

Nouveau réalisme was founded in 1960 by critic Pierre Restany and which artist?

Yves Klein hosted the signing of the Nouveau Réalisme declaration at his Paris apartment on 27 October 1960; Saint Phalle and César joined in 1961, Christo in 1963; the group dissolved in 1970.

What was Russia's Soviet-themed answer to pop art called?

Sots Art, coined by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid in 1972, turned Socialist Realist slogans and imagery into pop-style parody of state-approved art.

New Zealand pop art is often connected to what idealised set of Kiwi icons?

Kiwiana is the affectionate name for New Zealand's everyday icons, such as meat pies, kiwifruit, jandals and the Buzzy Bee toy, which New Zealand pop artists have mined for imagery.

Which Spanish filmmaker was dubbed 'the Andy Warhol of Spain' for his super 8 pop films?

Pedro Almodóvar came out of Madrid's La Movida making low-budget super 8 films in the 1970s; he later slipped fake commercials into features such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Which Belgian pop artist's sculpture Fallen Astronaut was left on the Moon?

Paul Van Hoeydonck's 8.5 cm aluminium figure Fallen Astronaut was placed on the Moon by the Apollo 15 crew in August 1971, beside a plaque naming 14 dead astronauts and cosmonauts.

Which husband-and-wife architects wrote the 1956 Ark article 'But Today We Collect Ads'?

Alison and Peter Smithson, Brutalist architects and Independent Group members, wrote 'But Today We Collect Ads' for the Royal College of Art magazine Ark in 1956, arguing that mass advertising now set the pattern of everyday life.

Which New Zealand pop artist designed the posters for the 1961 and 1962 Young Contemporaries shows?

Billy Apple, born Barrie Bates in Auckland in 1935, studied at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and took his new name in 1962; he moved to New York in 1964.

Italian pop art in 1960s Rome gathered under what name, after a city square?

The Scuola di Piazza del Popolo took its name from the square near the galleries and cafés its artists frequented; Mario Schifano, Franco Angeli and Tano Festa were its leading painters.