Pop Art and Design

Anne Massey, Alex Seago

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781474226189
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474226219
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

This book offers the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between art and design, which led to the creation of 'pop'. Challenging accepted boundaries and definitions, the authors seek out various commonalities and points of connection between these two exciting areas.

Confronting the all-pervasive 'high art / low culture' divide, Pop Art and Design brings a fresh understanding of visual culture during the vibrant 1950s and 60s. This was an era when commercial art became graphic design, illustration was superseded by photography and high fashion became street fashion, all against the backdrop of a rapidly-evolving economic and political landscape, a glamorous youth scene and an effervescent popular culture. The book's central argument is that pop art relied on and drew inspiration from pop design, and vice versa. Massey and Seago assert that this relationship was articulated through the artwork, design, publications and exhibitions of a network of key practitioners. Pop Art and Design provides a case study in the broader inter-relationship between art and design, and constitutes the first interdisciplinary publication on the subject.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Editors’ Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Popular Art, Pop Art, and “the Boys who Turn out the Fine Arts”
• 2 Cecil Beaton, Richard Hamilton and the Queer, Transatlantic Origins of Pop Art
• 3 Althea McNish and the British-African Diaspora
• 4 Programming Pop Art and Design
• 5 ARK Magazine: The Royal College of Art and Early British Art School Pop
• 6 Prologue to Edward Wright, ‘Chad, Kilroy, the Cannibal’s Footprint and the Mona Lisa’, First Published in ARK 19 (Spring 1957)
• Facsimile of article
• 7 Pauline Boty: Pop Artist, Pop Persona, Performing Across the ‘Long Front of Culture’
• 8 A Dedicated Follower of Fashion
• 9 Where is this Pop? In Search of the British Pop Poster
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• eCopyright