
POP BEFORE POP: WELLES, SIRK, HITCHCOCK
The communication system of the twentieth century is, in a special sense, Pop Art’s subject.
Lawrence Alloway,
“Popular Culture and Pop Art” (1969)
“THE VIRUS OF ARTISTIC AMBITION”
There was always in twentieth-century cinema an implicit promise of inclusion: the sense that the same movies might hold both the mass audience and the avant-garde cognoscenti spellbound, if not always at the same time.¹
For some, mainly European, early filmmakers, the motion picture was a medium; for others, mostly American, the motion picture was a mass mediumthe mass medium. The latter filmmakers, including