«POP ART IS FOR EVERYONE»

How did the world manage to live without the phrase "popular culture" until the late 1960s, when an American literature professor, who died last week, began to propagate it? Ray Browne was a scholar who studied accepted classics such as Moby Dick, but in 1967 he founded the Journal of Popular Culture and the Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.At that time, comic strips had existed for at least six decades, and television and rock 'n' roll had come to stay, but somehow a term for all that was lacking. Though the phrase "pop art" may go back as far as 1961, it was itself an encounter between mass-media images and the fine-art tradition, rather than strictly of, by or for the people. Prof. Browne, who may or may not have first coined "popular culture," saw that the curriculum was neglecting large swaths of the contemporary, not-so-fine arts, but he came to include in popular culture "the fast food...we eat, the clothes we wear, the things we spend our money for...virtually our whole world."

-Globe and Mail
Oct 31 2009