Art

Pop-Art is a term that was first used in 1955 by Lawrence Alloway, a British curator, to describe a modern form of Popular art. The new movement was famous in using aspects of popular culture and consumerism imagery. Pop-Art emerged in the mid 1950s and the style became dominant till the late 1960s. Roy Lichtenstein was a popular pop artist born in October 27, 1923 in New York. He entered high school in 1939 and enrolled in art classes before majoring in art at Ohio State University (Waldman, 12).

He was first inspired in his youth to start painting by Picasso and Paul Klees works and he venture into the field using oils, drawings and pastels. In 1952, he began to include titles in his paintings and woodcut compositions. Lichtensteins major work was produced in 1956 when he painted a lithograph known as the Ten Dollar Bill. He started to focus on characters like the Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck. He joined the Abstract Expressionism Movement in 1959 where his untitled abstractions were exhibited for the first time at Condon Riley Gallery (Bernice, Rea, 23). His paintings were done on a white background depicted using slight traces of bright colors.

He stopped devoting enough time to this movement and changed his style, but continued to use sculptures to develop his interest in art. In 1960s, he changed his style completely and most of his works were based on comic books. His initial pop paintings in 1961 were in form of cartoon images and styles he obtained from commercial printing. His style continued to focus on the daily imagery of consumer culture such as advertisement, comic strips, packaging of consumer products, and celebrities.

Lichtenstein focused on thematic groups just like other pop artists, and some of the groups that he painted include romantic tragedies and war crimes. He used the same technique in both groups. He made the comic strip to be enlarged significantly using benday screen, a special device that simulated dots and created an illusion when a person enlarged a printed picture. He used stencils to produce oversized dots in rows, which made his prints and paintings to appear as a vast mass of publication product. Although he produced his works bit by bit, he strived to make his art appear as machine made. One peculiar technique he used on his paints is that his brush strokes were hard to detect (Roy, et al, 21). He used a large metal screen as a stencil on his paintings. His outlines were large and black, collaborated with reduced set of colors that were bright. This made his printed letters to stand out clearly and this technique of construction allowed him to produce large unified surfaces.

One of his works in 1962 is known as Reverie. It had hairs with large outlines and the skin was made using the benday technique. He painted on a simple blue surface using few colors. It included a simple title removed from balloons and encompassed a short clear song. The intense visual impact was enhanced by the thick black outline of bright colors as well as the simplicity of the text. A piece he did in 1963 called The Kiss V, shows concentration on cartoon imagery, integrating thick black outlines with flat primary colors. The bold image exaggerated the physical features of the couple in a situation that was romantically charged. Through this, Lichtenstein portrayed the emotional reality that was commonly experienced in many American families (Roy, et al, 39). The woman is excessively groomed while the man is very masculine. Their emotional embrace does not necessarily portray a symbiotic relationship, but a case where a woman relies on a man for support.

The 1962s Tire shows Roys change of subject to consumer product but still maintaining the cartoon imagery. The use of commercial products portrays Lichtensteins desire to address the modern American culture- that of consumerism. War like images in form of crashing planes, explosions and firing machines recount heroic deeds made up dreadful details. In 1965, he painted another art called M-maybe using the benday technique, saying that he intended the message to be awful such that nobody would be appeased by it. However, he changed the bad taste into a complete elegance. During this age, many artists were despising commercial art but Lichtenstein unique version was well received and this led to significant spread of pop art (Waldman, 35). His works were slowly becoming successful and famous and were exhibited in prestigious galleries.

At first, the works of Roy Lichtenstein may appear to be focusing on a limited format, but he continued exploring and discovering many choices and diversity. His productions which were distinctively American used pop icons to show events that occurred in many families and even in his own life. His paintings such as the frightened Girl and the Drowning Girl portrayed a woman in distress, which could relate to breakdown of his marriage in mid 1960s. In addition, his piece of work called In the Car portrays a strained and tense silence between the occupants of the vehicle.  

Lichtenstein continued with his artistic research, venturing into different fields like films and sculptures. In addition, he started a series of landscapes like the White Cloud and the Sinking Sand, illustrating the potential of discovering his own specialization. In 1970s, Lichtenstein stopped using characters found in comic books as the source of his materials and his reproductions reflected a case of masterful art. His reproductions were similar to those of famous artist such as Picasso, Monet, Matisse, and Mondrian. Lichtenstein copied and exaggerated the ideas that had made those artists famous and converted them into clichs. Instead of improving the banal to the level of art, he ironically changed art to kitschy and banal (Bernice, Rea, 51). His painting of the Haystack fulfills this role by creating a clich of Wheat-stacks out of seminal paintings by Monet. Compared to other paintings by Lichtenstein, the haystack has pronounced aspects of benday, emphasizing more on the banal quality.

Most of the stylist aspects used in the haystack gives an impression of Lichtensteins artistic prowess of producing materials influenced directly by the printed mass media. Large benday dots were directly forged in the back ground. In addition, few colors were used, using the same tone of black and yellow, and the sky was pale blue. Such artistic works had already been done by Monet. Lichtenstein converted the aspects that made the piece very significant and came up with a banal material. By putting emphasis on masterful pieces of art, he was able to continue advancing the role of art. When he started to use a different approach to achieve a similar result, Lichtenstein was able to explore true aspects of art, producing a clich that had previously uplifted his predecessors to distinction (Waldman, 66).

In addition, he continued to expand on the artistic work he had covered before. For example, he developed a series of Artists Studios comprising of five works he had done previously, merged into a single scene. In the late seventies, surreal works like the Pow Wow started to become popular and gradually replaced his style. Apart from painting, he produced metal and plastic sculptures, and more than three hundred prints, which were mainly screen prints. He donated two books and 154 prints to National Gallery of Art, making it largest handler of his works, and over 4,500 have already been circulated.

Throughout a career that span for more than thirty years, Lichtensteins style managed to retain a frivolous air in his work. His style portrayed the impact of printed mass print, giving a lighter note on his comments on social life, and creating parody instead of derision. Although he used flippant commentaries during his career, Lichtensteins art showed the urge of understanding and influencing personal views using art (Roy, et al, 47). Compared to the 1920s Dadaist movement, he decided to break the common artistic norms so that he could return art to its simple form.