'Father of Pop Art' Dead at 89

Richard Hamilton, the “Father of Pop Art” who designed the Beatles’ White Album cover, has died in Britain at 89, Billboard reports. Hamilton, who coined the term "pop art" to describe the movement that made heavy use of commercial and pop-culture images, came to prominence in the 1950s with “Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?”—a collage of a couple in a house full of products. The Guardian says he was "the most influential British artist of the 20th century.”

Hamilton met the Beatles in the 1960s and designed the landmark album and its accompanying poster, for which he recalled using “three tea chests full of photographs” given to him by Paul McCartney. Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Jones calls Hamilton’s body of work “the most important and enduring” of “any British modern painter,” adding that “he did not go for the guts, but the brain.” (More Beatles stories.)