What 1956 London exhibition is often credited as the starting point of Pop Art?
Answer
This Is Tomorrow
The 1956 London exhibition often credited as a starting point of Pop Art was This Is Tomorrow.
Held at Whitechapel Art Gallery, the exhibition opened on 9 August 1956 and brought together artists, architects, sculptors, graphic designers, and writers. Its 12 collaborating groups explored modern life through environments built around ideas of habitation and the human senses.
The show is especially important because Group 2 included Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and John Voelcker. Their display used advertising, film imagery, consumer products, a jukebox, and other mass-media references. Hamilton’s collage Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? was also produced for the exhibition and became a landmark of British Pop Art.
This Is Tomorrow was not literally the first Pop Art event, and the Independent Group was the broader circle that supplied much of its intellectual background. The exhibition is credited because it made consumer culture, popular imagery, and interdisciplinary installation central to a major public art event.