Following the Industrial Revolution, in the post-World War II era, mass communication media proliferated immensely with the media eventually becoming a means of materialising the goals of the capitalist system. The capitalist system was thus able to pull in all social classes into its market and it eventually gave rise to a common lifestyle and a common culture, namely the popular culture. What we today call Pop Art is an artistic reflection upon the deep changes that took place in the years that followed 1945. In this period, which saw the rise of advertising, coloured posters, picture magazines and picture novels in order to stimulate consumption, Pop Art emerged and developed as just another form of advertisement to fuel consumption, enticing a rich field of discussion thereon.

One of the biggest art movements of the 20^th Century, Pop Art has been shaped by the demands of consumer society. In contrast to the elitist conception of art, postmodernism used popular images and became the art of consumer society. Employing images from the popular culture, it sought to elevate its objects to highbrow clientele.

In this context, some saw Pop Art as a field whereby popular culture, which essentially belonged to common people, was utilised by the dominant classes to penetrate into the emotions and thoughts of people, eventually aiming to fortify their hegemony. Pop Art was defined as kitsch, decadent or banal for using the popular images from mass culture. Debates over popular culture versus high culture have started to set the tune in art theory.

This research explores the directions into which Pop Art has drawn the theory of art and the challenges it has presented through an analysis of commonalities and differences between popular culture and art.