‘I Was a Rich Man’s Plaything’: Pop Art in Britain

The earliest manifestations of what came to be called Pop Art were felt not in America but in Britain at the very beginning of the 1950s. Artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and Nigel Henderson spearheaded a new approach to popular culture in visual art. Later, artists such as Pauline Boty, Peter Blake, Jann Haworth, Colin Self, David Hockney and Derek Boshier helped develop this approach in works that provide a different version of Pop Art to that practiced in the USA. This lecture will consider this difference and discuss these artists’ relationship to contemporary music and film.