It illustrates the work of more than 130 artists, much of which was unpublished before the hardcover edition. Pop Art offers a great overview from the precursors of Pop Art to contemporary artists. But for the rest, the author offers a very complete picture. Although, as the author clearly states, artists do not work very programmatically, he gives a series of elements of a theoretical definition. Pop generally involves the use of existing imagery from mass culture already processed into two dimensions, preferably borrowed from advertising, photography, comic strips and other mass media sources.
Pop emphasizes flatness and frontal presentation.
Pop artists, especially in America, have a preference for centralized composition and for flat areas of unmodulated and unmixed color bound by hard edges. They use mechanical and other deliberately inexpressive techniques that imply the removal of the artist's hand and suggest the depersonalized processes of mass production. Pop Art is characterized by an unapologetic decorativeness. It delves into areas of popular taste and kitsch previously considered outside the limits of fine art. Among the Pop Art precursors mentioned by Livingstone are Dadaists like the French artist Marcel Duchamp and the German Kurt Schwitters.