Pop Art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late 1950s in the United States. Livingstone, M., Pop Art: A Continuing History, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990 Pop Art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of Fine Art since Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. Livingstone, M., Pop Art: A Continuing History, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990 de la Croix, H.; Tansey, R., Gardners Art Through the Ages, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980. The concept of Pop Art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.

Pop Art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising,comic books and mundane cultural objects, Pop Art is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of Abstract Expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. Pop Art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It has also been defined by the artists use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Much of Pop Art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop Art and Minimalism are considered to be the last Modern Art movements and thus the precursors to Postmodern Art, or some of the earliest examples of Postmodern Art themselves.

:For the song by David Bowie, see Andy Warhol (song).

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 - February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American artist and a central figure in the movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films since his death in 1987.

Warhol coined the phrase 15 minutes of fame, which refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that attaches to an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as the public's attention span is exhausted.

Robert Rauschenberg (born Milton Ernst Rauschenberg; October 22 1925 ? May 12 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950's transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.

Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg picked up trash and found objects that interested him on the streets of New York City and brought these back to his studio where they could become integrated into his work. He claimed he "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."

In 1953 in a famously cited incident, Rauschenberg erased a drawing by de Kooning. In 1964 Rauschenberg was the first American artist to win the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale (Mark Tobey and James Whistler had previously won the Painting Prize). After that time, he enjoyed a rare degree of institutional support. Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida until his death on May 12, 2008, from heart failure.

Gerhard Richter (born February 9, 1932) is a German artist. Richter is considered by some critics as one of the most important German artists of the post-World War II period and is also one of the world's most expensive, with his paintings often selling for several million dollars apiece.

Jasper Johns, Jr. (born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is a contemporary American artist who primarily works in painting and printmaking. He is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.

Martin Kippenberger (b. 25 February 1953 in Dortmund- d. 7 March 1997 in Vienna) was a German artist known for his extremely prolific output in a dizzying range of styles and media as well as his provocative, jocular and hard-drinking public persona.

Kippenberger was "widely regarded as one of the most talented German artists of his generation," according to Roberta Smith of the New York Times. He was at the center of a generation of German enfants terribles including Albert Oehlen, Werner Büttner, Georg Herold[http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/3583], Dieter Göls, and Günther Förg. He collected and commissioned work by many of his peers: some of his exhibition posters were designed by such prominent artists as Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Rosemary Trockel and Mike Kelley.

Kippenberger's artistic reputation and influence has grown since his death. He has been the subject of a several large retrospective exhibitions, including at the Tate Modern in 2006 and "the Problem Perspective" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2008; the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2009.

In 2008 his sculpture of a toad being crucified called Zuerste die Füsse ("First the Feet") was allegedly condemned by Pope Benedict as blasphemous.

He was a member of the Lord Jim Lodge.

is a contemporary Japanese Pop artist. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Nara received his B.F.A. (1985) and an M.F.A. (1987) from the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Between 1988 and 1993, Nara studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, in Germany. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. He is represented in New York City by Marianne Boesky Gallery and in Los Angeles by Blum & Poe. San Jose Museum of Art | UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Roy Fox Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 - September 29, 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, his work heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He himself described Pop art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".