Inside the dark heart of pop art

Andy Warhol’s shooting is often taken as the end point of pop art, which emerged in London during the Fifties, before blossoming in New York at the outset of the Sixties. That same year, 1968, The New York Times declared pop art to be officially dead. It was six years since pop had first stormed New York’s cutting-edge galleries, back in 1962, but now the movement had gone mainstream and felt as though it was becoming stale. Influencing the appearance of everything from fashion and furniture to movie posters and record covers, pop art was suffering from overkill. Yet in retrospect, Warhol’s shooting seems less like an unfortunate aberration metaphorically marking pop art’s “death”, and more like an emblematic moment exposing the movement’s dark heart.