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School of Art and Design
U of M
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DEVELOPING COMICS ENCYCLOPEDIA: ARTISTS • THEMES
Artwork Derived from Comics (Roy Lichtenstein)
by Jim Gianpetrro
Fall 2004
MORE ARTISTS | COMICS-RELATED TOPICS
When considering artwork that is derived from comics, one must look at the Pop Art movement of the 1960's. Pop Art started as a rebellion against the accepted styles; Pop artists thought the abstract expressionists were too overly intense in subject matter and style. Pop Art brought art back to the material realities of everyday life. With the change in time and technology, Pop artists drew their inspiration from the everyday objects that people were most exposed to visually at the time, including magazines, television, and advertisements.
A major figure in Pop art was Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein drew attention to Pop painting in the 1960s with his distinctive renderings of comic books and advertisements. Lichtenstein loved mimicking familiar images in popular culture through his artwork. Using bold colors, thick black outlines and patterns of Ben Day dots, he managed to create works of art that were unique and eye-catching. Often times it is difficult to differentiate his handmade paintings from the machine printed images of which he drew his inspiration.
One thing I think Roy Lichtenstein and all the Pop artists did, was make people reevaluate their ideas about what art really is. An individual might never consider a tiny advertisement in the local newspaper "art" until artists like Lichtenstein presented them as art. It is interesting to consider these questions when looking at Pop art. Do these types of images (magazine ads,, t.v. commercials, or a campbell's soup can for example) become art only when artists reappropriate them as such, or are they inherently considered art?
[Pop Art] is an involvement with what I think to be the most brazen and threatening characteristics of our culture, things we hate, but which are also powerful in their impingement on us.
—Roy Lichtenstein, quoted in Art News, November 1963
Web Links:
http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/
http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1997/10/03/feat/arts.2.html
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/pop_art.html