Why is pop art so important as an art movement?

Most people see the pop art movement as the beginning of post modernism. (Warhol's Brillo boxes have been named as the first piece of post modern art) It's also so appealing to everyone - go to any art college summer show and you will see at least 20 pieces in pop art style. It crosses the lines with graphics and art too, so it was a challenging movement. But a fun one

You mean the art of Peter Max and Andy Warhol, I assume. That sort of stuff. Well, it all goes back to 1900 and the Futurists. They felt that "narrative art" was not doing the job and that the audiences had become passive and not engaged. The audience just wanted to be entertained. The Futurists led to the Dadaist led to Surrealism and so on. Each wave of a new art movement would reject the codifying of it's previous wave and yet embrace some of the elements they felt was still working. The Post-Modern era hatched out of the Modern era (duh) and it included elements of satire, parody and humor along with other elements like improvisation (think jazz music and jazz dancing). Pop Art is a facet of the Post-Modern movement and embraces the ridiculous and satires our commercial culture. Almost a political commentary on how Art is perceived. Certainly part of the strategy is to kinda of 'shock' the audience to make them increasingly receptive to a new voice or way of seeing and defining art. In this context, Pop Art is very important as it is another step in the art world as it struggles to continually re-invent itself.

aww Shaniya, Bless!

It all started with the africans beeting on the homemade drums that had a catchy jingle to it called pop and into jazz and then into hip-hop and now rap and others.