WHY WE HAVE PEREZ HILTON TODAY...

Although only one of the most famous group of Pop artists was gay (Warhol), the new art's connection with the work of earlier gay artists such as Rauschenberg and Johns is clear.

Furthermore, during the early 1960s the straight world was beginning to discover the camp sensibility (exemplified by the 1964 publication of Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp"). Because camp was seen as the triumph of style over substance, when the Pop artists elevated their reviled media images to the arena of "high art," they paralleled the camp celebration of and commitment to the marginal. Pop's self-consciousness about style in both "low" and "high" art inextricably linked it to camp, and resulted in numerous homophobic attacks on Pop and its practitioners.

This resistance by the art world establishment did not prevent the public from enjoying and collecting Pop Art. The Pop artists achieved quick financial success (much to the dismay of the staunchly heterosexual Abstract Expressionists) and soon assumed canonical status in art history.

Its affinities with the camp sensibility have always provided Pop with a substantial gay audience. Pop has subsequently had a significant influence on later art and artists, opening the doors for everything from Photorealism in the 1970s to the ironic examination of the mundane that has dominated much contemporary art.

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