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British Pop Art and the High/Low Divide

This book chapter considers the appropriation of imagery from the field of popular culture by British artists during the early 1960s. These acts of appropriation involved the relocation of this imagery into the institutional context of art. Rather than constituting a transgression of the high/low cultural divide, it is argued that the translocation of images from popular culture into Pop Art involved an affirmation of this division and of the long-standing honorific practice of painting. This argument is contextualised through a consideration of academic writings on the high/low divide and class culture as well as a critical reading of writings by commentators such as Richard Hoggart and Lawrence Alloway who were contemporaneous to the development of Pop Art. The discussion is further developed through readings of paintings by Richard Hamilton, Peter Phillips, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, and Richard Smith as a means of arguing that the agency of the British Pop artists involved a reconfiguration of painting as a means of representing contemporary popular culture as opposed to acts of cultural boundary breaking. The final section of the chapter involves a close and original reading of Boshier’s 1962 painting The Identi-Kit Man in relation to his understanding of contemporaneous writing on the media and advertising, especially Vance Packard’s 1958 book The Hidden Persuaders. This is followed by a close reading of a number of paintings by Smith made and displayed in London in 1963.

The chapter makes a significant and original contribution to debates on Pop Art by challenging the received idea that these artists were rebels who broke with high cultural concerns. It also contributes detailed historical readings of works that are often mentioned in generic histories of British Pop, but never given sustained art historical attention.