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Pop art became a significant movement in the 1950's and 60's, but its origins can be traced back to Marcel Duchamp's art made during WWI. Duchamp exhibited ready-made factory articles in an artistic gallery setting, as if the thousands of identical commercial goods coming off a production line could be a source of art.

In the 1950's Pop Art became more clearly defined as an artistic phenomena seeking to understand modern popular culture, especially the effects of mass production. Commercial posters, packaged foods, traffic signs, advertising, factory goods were all inspiration for Pop Art.

In many Pop Art works it is often unclear if the artist is criticising popular culture or celebrating it. Some of the art works depict the seemingly endless supply of characterless factory goods as a depressing aspect of modern life; they believed that mass production was taking away emotion and individuality from life. Other Pop artists show popular culture in a comic light, as an absurd and almost surreal part of life.

Pop Art became a large movement in the United States during the 1960's. One famous image is "Hot Dog", by Roy Lichtenstein, and was first exhibited in 1963. "Hot Dog" is an oversized and very stylised image of the perfect hotdog, a mass produced food that was part of the American way of life.

The essence of Pop Art is the link between gallery-type art and mass commercial production. The art tries to explain popular culture.

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