The first large-scale exhibition of Pop Art was held at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1963, featuring works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Astonishment reigned at paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and of dollar bills, very realistically rendered by silk screen process, and of large blow-ups of frames from comic strip cartoons, including even their “thought balloons” – The former by Andy Warhol, the latter by Roy Lichtenstein.
Collectors and the public alike rapidly became fascinated with Pop Art’s representation of everyday objects of life, including advertisements, commercial packaging, electrical appliances, and comic strips.
Artists like Warhol (himself a former commercial artist), John, Tom Wesselmann and Lichtenstein all simultaneously celebrated and sent up the all-pervasive culture of consumerism, blurring the distinction between commercial art and ‘high’ art.
