Book Description
From the late 1950s to the late 1960s, Pop emerged as a vital cultural language responding to the profound social changes of the postwar era. Confronted with the rapid rise of mass production, consumer culture, and mass media, art, film, photography, and architecture no longer operated in isolation but collectively engaged with the realities of contemporary life. Set against this historical backdrop, this book offers a comprehensive examination of how Pop culture developed across different media and regions, tracing its interconnected yet distinct expressions in the United States, Britain, and Europe.
Unlike many publications that focus solely on Pop art within the framework of art history, this book adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective, bringing together painting, sculpture, photography, avant-garde film, and architectural design within a single cultural narrative. Featuring key works by influential artists, it reveals how everyday imagery, commercial symbols, and popular visual culture were transformed into new artistic languages that redefined the relationship between art and reality, while also highlighting the critical and experimental dimensions underlying Pop aesthetics.
Beyond the visual arts, the book explores the impact of Pop thinking on architecture and urban imagination. From experimental housing concepts that reimagined future lifestyles, to visionary mobile cities and critical reflections on commercial landscapes, these case studies demonstrate that Pop was not merely a stylistic movement, but a way of rethinking how architecture could respond to a media-driven, consumer-oriented society.
Edited by a curator with extensive experience in both exhibition-making and research, and featuring essays by a leading art historian, the book combines rigorous scholarship with rich visual documentation to construct a vivid and multidimensional panorama of Pop culture. More than a study of Pop art, it is an essential reference for understanding postwar visual culture and the foundations of contemporary art, design, and architectural thought.
Details
Author: Hal Foster
Editor: Mark Francis
Designer: Adam Hooper
Publisher: PHAIDON
Format: Hardcover
Size: 29 × 26 cm
Pages: 304 pages