This list covers twelve pop art paintings that took soup cans, comic panels and movie stills and hung them on gallery walls at full scale. Each one turned something already printed a thousand times into a single object worth looking at twice.
Britain got there first, in the mid 1950s. New York took the idea in the 1960s and pushed it onto a much bigger canvas, in every sense.
Earliest: Richard Hamilton's 1956 collage for the exhibition This Is Tomorrow is widely cited as the first true pop art image.
Priciest debut: Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans first sold for 100 dollars a canvas at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962.
Longest: James Rosenquist's F 111 stretches more than 26 metres end to end, once wrapped around all four walls of a New York gallery.
More stories to fall into
If pop art got you looking twice at ordinary objects, these three go further into what is hiding in plain sight.
1. Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, Richard Hamilton, 1956
Richard Hamilton made this collage in 1956 for the poster and catalogue of the exhibition This Is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. A bodybuilder poses inside a living room stuffed with new appliances, holding an oversized lollipop stamped with the word POP. Historians point to this small collage, now held at the Kunsthalle Tubingen in Germany, as the first true pop art image.
2. Flag, Jasper Johns, 1954 to 1955
Jasper Johns painted Flag between 1954 and 1955, using encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood. He said the idea arrived in a dream about painting an American flag. Strips of collaged newspaper are still visible beneath the wax, on a canvas now held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
3. Retroactive I, Robert Rauschenberg, 1963
Robert Rauschenberg built Retroactive I in 1963 from oil and silkscreen ink on canvas, now at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. The central image, President Kennedy gesturing mid debate, came from a photograph Rauschenberg had ordered before the assassination, and he chose not to shy away from using it afterward. The spacewalking astronaut above comes from a NASA photograph published in Life magazine in September 1963.
4. Campbell's Soup Cans, Andy Warhol, 1962
Andy Warhol painted Campbell's Soup Cans in 1962 using synthetic polymer paint on canvas, now at the Museum of Modern Art. The work first appeared at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, one canvas for every variety Campbell's sold at the time. The gallery originally priced each individual canvas at 100 dollars.
The thirty two canvases were not identical, despite looking that way from across the room. Warhol painted one canvas for every soup variety Campbell's sold in 1962, from Cream of Mushroom to Pepper Pot, so the only difference between most of them is a single word stamped on the label.
5. Look Mickey, Roy Lichtenstein, 1961
Roy Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey in 1961, in oil on canvas, now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. It was his first fully realized Ben Day dot comic painting, copied almost panel for panel from a children's book showing Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse fishing.
Lichtenstein later called Look Mickey the picture that changed everything for him. Before 1961 he painted in an abstract expressionist style. After copying a children's book panel almost exactly, dots and all, he spent the next three decades painting comic strips, adverts and product labels at gallery scale.
6. Whaam!, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963
Lichtenstein followed with Whaam! in 1963, an acrylic and oil diptych now at Tate in London. He based the composition on a panel from the DC war comic All American Men of War. Joined together, the two canvases stretch beyond four metres wide.
I think the joke is entirely in the scale, a single comic panel blown up until the explosion fills two full canvases.
7. F 111, James Rosenquist, 1964 to 1965
James Rosenquist painted F 111 across 1964 and 1965, in oil on canvas with aluminum panels, now at the Museum of Modern Art. The finished work originally wrapped around all four walls of Leo Castelli's gallery in New York, stretching more than 26 metres end to end. Rosenquist wove a fighter jet together with a beach umbrella, a plate of spaghetti and a mushroom cloud.
I find the mushroom cloud sitting next to a plate of spaghetti the strangest pairing in the whole painting, and I think that was the point.
8. Still Life #30, Tom Wesselmann, 1963
Tom Wesselmann built Still Life #30 in April 1963 from oil, enamel and synthetic polymer paint on composition board, collaged with printed advertisements, plastic flowers and plastic replica 7Up bottles, plus an actual refrigerator door. The Museum of Modern Art received the work as a gift from the architect Philip Johnson.
Wesselmann built this picture like a collage artist, gluing real objects onto painted ground. The refrigerator door is salvaged and bolted to the board. The 7Up bottles are plastic replicas rather than painted illusions. Only the fruit and the window view are actually painted, so the eye keeps switching between object and image without ever settling.
9. Standard Station, Ed Ruscha, 1966
Ed Ruscha based Standard Station on a photograph he took while driving Route 66 from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, working the image into paintings between 1963 and 1966 and into this 1966 screenprint. The plunging diagonal perspective, the station roof cutting hard across the frame, became one of Ruscha's signature devices.
10. A Bigger Splash, David Hockney, 1967
David Hockney painted A Bigger Splash in 1967, in acrylic on canvas, now at Tate in London. He worked from a Polaroid and a magazine photograph of a swimming pool in Los Angeles. The house front, the diving board and the palm trees went down quickly, flat and precise.
Hockney spent close to two weeks painting the splash itself, using small brushes to build up the white spray drop by drop. That single detail took longer than the rest of the canvas combined, a flat house front and an empty diving board finished by comparison in a matter of days.
11. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, 1967
Peter Blake and Jann Haworth built the photographic collage for the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover in 1967, surrounding The Beatles with more than 60 life size cutouts of celebrities and historical figures. Blake and Haworth were paid a flat fee of 200 pounds each, with no royalties, on an album that has since sold more than 30 million copies.
I still find it strange that the two people who built one of the most recognized covers in music history were paid a flat fee and nothing more.
12. Marilyn Diptych, Andy Warhol, 1962
Andy Warhol made Marilyn Diptych within weeks of Marilyn Monroe's death in August 1962, using acrylic, silkscreen ink and graphite on canvas, now at Tate. He worked from a single publicity photograph taken for the 1953 film Niagara. The left half runs in color, then fades into black, white and increasingly worn silkscreen across the right half.
Where to go next
These three go past the caption and into what actually happened on the canvas.
Quick answers about pop art paintings
What makes a painting pop art?
Pop art borrows its subjects directly from advertising, comic books and mass produced packaging, then presents them at gallery scale and with the seriousness usually reserved for history painting.
Where did pop art start?
Pop art started in Britain in the mid 1950s, with artists like Richard Hamilton working from advertising clippings and product photography. It grew into a much larger movement in New York through the 1960s.
Who is considered the founder of pop art?
Richard Hamilton's 1956 collage for the exhibition This Is Tomorrow is usually credited as the first true pop art image, though a group of British artists had been discussing mass culture as art material for several years before that.
Why did Andy Warhol paint soup cans?
Warhol used Campbell's Soup Cans to apply the repetition and packaging of mass production directly to painting, showing one canvas for every soup variety Campbell's sold at the time.
What is the most famous pop art painting?
Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych are usually named first, alongside Lichtenstein's Whaam!, all three now among the most reproduced images from the movement.
Is pop art still being made today?
The original pop art painters worked mainly from the mid 1950s through the 1960s, but the movement's method, borrowing directly from advertising and mass media, still shows up across contemporary art and design.