ABSTRACT
Philip Brophy's call for the maintenance of a rigorous confusion on the part of cultural critics is likely to appeal to anyone who wants to write on Pop but doesn't want to be identified with Indiana's dog-eared malcontents. The conflation of analytically distinct problematics, objects and practices recurs as an asserted objective fait accompli in many of Pop's corporate mission statements. Pop was visual onomatopeia — the revenge of the clunky referent on modernism's aspiration to transcend the mere materiality of things, to purge away the lust for more with less and less and less. The sense of exhilaration that runs through Oldenburg's lists of mundane discoveries made in the early sixties in the streets and garbage cans of new York's Lower East Side reverberates throughout much of the writing produced on US pop culture. The differences in response to US ephemera and commercial signage on the part of Pop artists based in Europe and the States can be overestimated.
