The Pop Art movement has always been closely scrutinized for its legitimacy in the mainstream art world. The concept of Pop Art, in the 1960s, seemed to some critics to be simple appropriation, taking an idea from someone else and then making it your own by altering or decontextualizing it. Traditional artists, collectors and art appreciators, found this new challenge of separating high art from low culture difficult with the avant-garde approach adopted by pop artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. This essay will explore the origins of Pop Art and its clashes with High Art and its stereotypes. Looking to the pioneers of Pop Art, Andy Warhol with his works “Campbell's Soup Cans” and “Untitled from Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn)” and Claes Oldenburg with his exaggerated fabrications of everyday objects. This will highlight how the clash between high art and low culture has changed the world's view of what is classified as art. Pop Art is believed to have first appeared in the mid-1930s, however it was brought to the forefront of the art world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “It was quite surprising at first: the first representational reaction to post-World War II abstract art that was not primarily conservative (or anti-modernist) in spirit.” He challenged people to think about what was classified or defined as art. Dick Hebdige identifies; “… the contemptuous critical response [to Pop] limits itself to reproducing unchanged the ideological distinctions between, on the one hand, the 'serious', the 'artistic', the 'political'”, being High Art, “and on the other, the 'ephemeral', the 'commercial' the 'pleasant' which is considered Low or Popular Culture. This notion can be... halfway... In other words bringing High Art to Low Culture. The Pop Art movement helped blur the distinctions and stereotypes of art. Art is a paradigm that is judged on an individual level, like beauty; Art is judged by the eyes of the beholder. Works Cited Collins, Jim, Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age (New York: Routledge, 1995) Kostelanetz, Richard, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, 2nd Ed., Schirmer Books, 2000. 'Mom and Pop Art ', The Simpsons, Season 10, Episode 19, DVD, directed by Steven Dean Moore 20th Century Fox: USA, 1999Scherman, Tony & Helman, Robin, “When pop turned the art world upside down,” American Heritage 52, n 1 (February/March 2001): 68-81.Wolf, Reva, "Homer Simpson as Outsider Artist: How I Learned to Accept Ambivalence," Art Journal 65, no 2006): 100-11.