Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, the role of the artist, and of what constituted an artwork.

Focusing in on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art drew on mass-market sources, from advertising imagery to comic books, from Hollywood's most famous faces to the packaging of consumer products, the latter epitomized by Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. As well as challenging the establishment with the elevation of such popular, banal, and kitschy images, Pop Art also deployed methods of mass-production, reducing the role of the singular artist with mechanized techniques such as screen printing.

With featured artists including Andy Warhol, Allan Jones, Ed Ruscha, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein, this book introduces the full reach and influence of a defining modernist movement.

波普艺术是流行艺术（popularart)的简称，又称新写实主义，因为波普艺术（Pop Art）的POP通常被视为“流行的、时髦的”一词（popular）的缩写。它代表着一种流行文化。在美国现代文明的影响下而产生的一种国际性艺术运动，多以社会上流的形象或戏剧中的偶然事件作为表现内容。

20世纪50年代初萌发于英国，50年代中期鼎盛于美国。波普为Popular的缩写，意即流行艺术、通俗艺术。波普艺术一词最早出现于1952～1955年间，由伦敦当代艺术研究所一批青年艺术家举行的独立者社团讨论会上首创，批评家L.阿洛维酌定。他们认为公众创造的都市文化是现代艺术创作的绝好材料，面对消费社会商业文明的冲击，艺术家不仅要正视它，而且应该成为通俗文化的歌手。在实践中有力地推动这一思潮发展的艺术家是R.汉密尔顿。