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Dorothy Seiberling
For some of America's best known critics and a host of laymen, the answer to the above question is a resounding YES. A critic of the New York Times, hedging only a bit, pronounced Roy Lichtenstein "one of the worst artists in America." Others insist that he is no artist at all, that his paintings of blown-up comic strips, cheap ads and reproductions are tedious copies of the banal. But an equally emphatic group of critics, museum officials and collectors find Lichtenstein's pop art "fascinating," "forceful," "starkly beautiful." Provocative though they are, Lichtenstein's paintings have done more than stir up controversy. They have done something significant to art - as discussed on a following page.
The critical stew enveloping his work is gratifying to Lichtenstein. A quiet, affable man Of 40, he fully expected to be condemned for the subject matter as well as the style of his paintings. But he little dreamed that within two years of his first pop exhibition, his canvases would be selling out at prices up to $4,000 and he himself would be a cause célebre of the art world.
THIS IS HOW HE BEGAN ...
AND THIS IS HOW HE DOES IT
In 1951 Lichtenstein translated American artist William Ranney's Emigrant Train into Picasso-like shapes. Later he tried out variations on Disney cartoons.
At the outset of his career, Lichtenstein was engrossed in 19th Century Americana. He liked painting cowboys and Indians in modern art styles. Gradually he worked his way into 20th Century Americana like Mickey Mouse and bubble gum wrappers. In 1961 Lichtenstein began to explore comic books. Extracting single scenes, he translated them into paintings, using the techniques shown at right. [Editor's note: The original article included step-by-step photographs of Lichtenstein at work.]
Starting with a scene from a science fiction comic book, Lichtenstein made a small sketch of the composition. Then he used a machine to project the sketch to the size he wanted and traced it onto his canvas. To simulate photoengraver's dots, Lichtenstein laid a metal screen on the canvas, spread oil paint over the screen with a roller and rubbed the paint through the holes with a toothbrush. Undotted parts of the picture were masked with paper. Lichtenstein then painted in the letters and black outlines. The finished picture shows how Lichtenstein altered the cartoon by centering the face and balloon, adding a red helmet and turning the comic strip's question into a joke about his own art.
THE ARTIST HAS SOME ANSWERS
In the debate over pop art and Roy Lichtenstein, three questions keep cropping up.
Why - people start off asking, does Lichtenstein choose subject matter that is so banal, trivial, vulgarly commercial?
Just because it is that way, answers Lichtenstein. It is challenging, he says, to try to make art out of "non-art" i.e., cheap illustrations that are so crude, so slick and so utterly familiar they seem to defy any transformation into art.
There are other answers to this question about subject matter. Like most young artists, Lichtenstein wanted to stake out his own territory. He had dipped into abstract expressionism but found that the masters of that style had already worked out most of its problems. Besides he felt that it was too unrealistic, too inward. Lichtenstein was interested in looking out at the world, at the industrial, hard-sell environment. He gravitated to commercial illustration because "it was an area that hadn't been explored, it was taboo." And inevitably - since new generations of artists are inclined to take off in the opposite direction from their immediate predecessors - Lichtenstein chose an area at the opposite end of the pole from abstract expressionism. It was emphatically representational, depicting love stories, war thrillers, household products; it was impersonal, allowing no evidence of the artist's emotions; it was mechanically mass-produced, eliminating not only all painterly handiwork but originality and uniqueness.
Lichtenstein's paintings so successfully convey the effects of commercial art that they automatically prompt the next question. Does Lichtenstein transform his source material or does he merely copy it?
"The closer my work is to the original," Lichtenstein says in reply, "the more threatening ... the content." kiid yet, to make sure that his paintings do "threaten" or otherwise disturb the viewer, he is forced to alter the original cartoon. He tries to make the composition tight, to unify the details so that the image comes across all at once. "I take a cliché and try to organize its forms to make it monumental.... The difference is often not great, but it is crucial."
Even if they take Lichtenstein at his word, most viewers wind up with the question: But is it art?
This is the attitude Lichtenstein wants to provoke. By his very act of painting such ignoble images on a giant scale and exhibiting them in an art gallery, he appears to make a mockery of both art and art lovers. He leaves the viewer wondering if his paintings are only parodies, ironic gestures, or if they will outlast their shock and give a new shape to art?
An increasing number of critics already accept Lichtenstein's work as art. They liken his injection of vulgar forms into painting to the equally brutal and controversial breakthroughs of such masters as Caravaggio who introduced an earthy realism into the refined art of 16th Century Italy, or Courbet who jolted 19th Century France with his rude peasants and explicit nudes. The critics further point out that Lichtenstein has not only brought back the figure with a wallop, he has also revitalized abstraction and firmly locked the two together. Between his powerful representational images whether girl or garbage can and his insistent patterns of dots, lines and glaring colors, there is constant competition and tension: flatness versus depth, content versus design.
Eventually, Lichtenstein and his admirers expect, the repulsiveness of his subject matter will wear off and viewers will become more aware, and perhaps appreciative of the esthetic qualities of his paintings. Right now, however, his subject matter dominates. He has magnified, and thus made inescapably visible, the most crassly materialistic and adolescent aspects of modern society. Some opponents of his work contend that he favors what his paintings reflect. Lichtenstein shrugs and refers back to the realistic painters of 50 years ago. "It's the same with me today as it was with the Ash Can painters. I'm in favor of these things as subject matter, but not as a social condition."
Life, January 31, 1964: 79-83
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