Independent Group

The Independent Group was an association of young artists, sculptors, architects, designers and critics that met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the early 1950s. The group was a radical circle that challenged the dominance of modernist aesthetics and high culture, championing instead the value of mass culture: advertising, cinema, science fiction, comics, consumer product design and imagery from American magazines. Its members included the artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, the critics Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham, the architects Alison and Peter Smithson and others. The participants held discussions, lectures and organised exhibitions, the most famous of which was This Is Tomorrow of 1956. It was within the milieu of the Independent Group that the ideas foreshadowing British Pop art took shape: Richard Hamilton's collage Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? of 1956 is regarded as one of the first works of the movement. The critic Lawrence Alloway is credited with helping to popularise the very term Pop art. The Independent Group had a decisive influence on the emergence of Pop art and on the rethinking of the relationship between art and mass culture.