Pop Art Was a Mirror Held Up to Contemporary Life

Roy Lichtenstein leaves it up to the viewers to decide what has but transpired in his 1964 painting of a tense phone call titled Ohhh ... Alright ... Estate of Roy Lichtenstein hide caption

toggle caption

Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein leaves it upwardly to the viewers to decide what has only transpired in his 1964 painting of a tense phone call titled Ohhh ... Alright ...

Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Whaam! Varoom! R-rrring-k! The canvases of painter Roy Lichtenstein look as if they're lifted from the pages of comic books. Comics were a big inspiration for this pop artist, who was rich and famous when died in 1997 at age 73. But at a major Lichtenstein retrospective at Washington's National Gallery of Fine art, you can run across that the creative person found inspiration beyond comic books; he too paid his respects to the masters — Picasso, Monet and more.

Lichtenstein'due south 1960s works were comic-inspired — they're angsty frames, often featuring ladies in distress. In one iconic image, a beautiful, fraught woman with a furrowed brow grasps a telephone in both easily as she says "Ohh ... Alright ..." You lot just know she's talking to a fellow.

"What I like well-nigh it is the way she's property the phone," says National Gallery curator Harry Cooper. "She's caressing the phone, and I call back in a fashion she would rather have a relationship with the receiver than with whoever is on the other end of the line."

"I don't intendance! I'd rather sink — than telephone call Brad for help!" laments Lichtenstein'due south 1963 Drowning Daughter. The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein hide explanation

toggle caption

The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

"I don't care! I'd rather sink — than call Brad for assistance!" laments Lichtenstein's 1963 Drowning Girl.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Who knows what he's saying to her and what she'due south reluctantly agreeing to. Lichtenstein lets us imagine the back story — and what might happen side by side. Cooper says the creative person "really looked hard for these comics that had a kind of crux of the story in them."

It's interesting that he managed to evoke such potent emotions using such a cold, mechanical process of dots — he was really painting digital pixels before at that place were pixels. Lichtenstein didn't paint each and every dot by manus. Instead, he used various kinds of stencils with perforated dot patterns. He'd brush his paint across the elevation of the stencil, and the colors dropped through, as perfect circles. In doing then, he was elevating commercial images from comics, and ads into art.

In the 1960s, young American artists were looking for means to make their marks. Andy Warhol did it with soup cans. Roy Lichtenstein did it with dots. Inventing pop fine art, comic-book frames were his starting signal — simply he wasn't making exact reproductions.

"He'south ever making these alterations," Cooper says. "He did it because he felt these things could be improved ... they weren't quite art, but he could make them art."

Lichtenstein said of his series Brushstrokes: "Information technology has that built-in applesauce, and that's the reason I like it." Estate of Roy Lichtenstein hide caption

toggle caption

Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein said of his series Brushstrokes: "Information technology has that built-in absurdity, and that's the reason I like it."

Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

By irresolute a hue, widening a line, expanding the dots, Lichtenstein changed "tiny things that would help make an iconic paradigm," Cooper says. "An image that would stand up, would final on the wall, terminal in our memories."

You can always tell a Lichtenstein — his work speaks in a vocabulary of dots. And he makes yous express mirth. (Another fraught woman, this one drowning, thinks: "I don't care! I'd rather sink — than call Brad for help!") The fraughts are from a series on romance.

In some other series, Brushstrokes, he addresses that basic element of art. In 1993, he told WHYY'due south Fresh Air that he was painting the idea of a brush stroke. The point wasn't to make people recollect it's a real brush stroke. "You think it'southward a picture of a brush stroke," Lichtenstein said. "And that's a kind of absurd thing to do. It has that congenital-in absurdity, and that'south the reason I similar it."

Virtually lxxx years afterward Claude Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral (left), Roy Lichtenstein did his ain take on the iconic landmark (right.) Click here to learn more than about Monet'southward Cathedral serial. Monet: AP/Sotheby's/Lichtenstein: San Francisco Museum of Modernistic Art/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein hide explanation

toggle caption

Monet: AP/Sotheby's/Lichtenstein: San Francisco Museum of Modernistic Art/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Near 80 years subsequently Claude Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral (left), Roy Lichtenstein did his own have on the iconic landmark (right.) Click here to learn more than about Monet's Cathedral series.

Monet: AP/Sotheby'southward/Lichtenstein: San Francisco Museum of Modern Fine art/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Dorothy Lichtenstein, the painter's widow, says that with his dots her married man moved beyond the post-Globe War Two abstract expressionists — Pollock with his drips, de Kooning with his brush sweeps — but he kept the past in his rearview mirror.

"Certainly his castor stroke paintings were an ode in some way to abstruse expressionism," says Dorothy Lichtenstein. "He thought ... you could await at the history of fine art equally the history of brush strokes as well."

Lichtenstein had some trouble making brush strokes, but he used his dots to reproduce some of his greatest brushy predecessors. He was inspired past Monet'south Rouen Cathedral series of the late 1890s, and in 1969, turned his pale, dotty cathedrals into glowing shimmers.

Dorothy Lichtenstein says her husband went to museums in search of the masters. "Information technology was actually great going to a museum with Roy," she says. "Everything was grist for his listen. He was e'er looking at paintings and how he might be able to transform them."

Pablo Picasso was Lichtenstein'due south hero, says National Gallery curator Harry Cooper. Lichtenstein painted his Picasso-inspired Cubist Still Life in 1974. National Gallery of Art/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein hide caption

toggle caption

National Gallery of Fine art/Manor of Roy Lichtenstein

Pablo Picasso was Lichtenstein'southward hero, says National Gallery curator Harry Cooper. Lichtenstein painted his Picasso-inspired Cubist Nevertheless Life in 1974.

National Gallery of Fine art/Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

Picasso was his hero, says curator Harry Cooper. "Matisse was right up at that place, just information technology was really Picasso he attacked commencement."

"Attacked," Cooper says — not "tackled." Lichtenstein was paying his respects to Picasso and Mondrian and Monet and others, only it wasn't merely an homage.

"It's also bringing these artists downward to the level of dots and comic vocabulary," says Cooper. "I recall artists are always very anxious near their predecessors — the anxiety of influence. And so what he said about Picasso was that he realized he could get in his own, and that felt expert."

Cooper says Lichtenstein made a real touch on. "We can't go anywhere without seeing pop fine art," he says. He helped bring pop art into design and larger culture, and showed that it wasn't "just a gimmick, merely a joke."

Perhaps. But you'll nonetheless get some good laughs at the National Gallery'southward Lichtenstein retrospective until mid-Jan. The show will travel to London and Paris. (If travel isn't on your horizon, there's a hefty catalog to peruse.)

Share this post