Roy Lichtenstein (1923 – 1997)
Born in New York City in 1923, Roy Lichtenstein grew up in a city that epitomized the ideals and machinations of modernism. He therefore gained a unique understanding of the affects of modern life on the solitary soul, the group, and the society at large. Growing up during the depression years and coming of age at the start of World War II, he was greatly influenced by the jazz clubs of Harlem and the boxing matches and carnivals of Coney Island.
At the age of fourteen, he began classes at Parson’s School of Design, at sixteen he studied at the Art Students League under Reginald Marsh, and by 1940 he was enrolled as a painting major at Ohio State University, Columbus. His education was interrupted from 1943-1946 by a European tour of duty during World War II. He began his artistic career as an Abstract Expressionist painter exploring the ideas of spontaneity and the “epoch of crisis” inherent in action painting. As America began to move past the effects of World War II and into prosperous times, art no longer needed to be an emotional reaction to the effects of nuclear war and industrialization. Instead, it became a commentary on American prosperity and the commercial boom that resulted from the war efforts.
Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings and prints are the embodiment of this change. By 1961 Lichtenstein began to use objects and images from mass culture and advertising. He adapted painting techniques and imagery from comic strips, commercial printing, stenciling, and projected images. GOOD MORNING, DARLING, WHAAM! (1963) and BIG PAINTING IV (1965) are among his most popular comic strip paintings. These blowups of the original cartoon were reproduced by hand and brought him unparalleled attention. His art consisted of black outlines, stripes, dots, brushstrokes, flat fields, foils, and patterns such as canvas weave and wood grain. The idea of appropriating imagery from popular culture transformed Lichtenstein into a leader of the New York City-based Pop Art movement along with artists like Andy Warhol. During this time he also produced elegant sculptures that revived earlier forms of the 1930s, as seen in his MODERN SCULPTURE WITH GLASS WAVE (1967).
Roy Lichtenstein’s BULL PROFILE SERIES is one of his most popular series of his lithographic works. Completed in 1973, Lichtenstein’s purpose during this period was to explore the “progression of an image from representation to abstraction.” To illustrate this progression, Roy’s BULL unfolds in seven different phases. Beginning with a monochromatic palette, he gradually breaks down the form into many geometrical compliments, he sections the picture plane using areas of color and diagonal lines. These shapes become more abstract until they are simply flat planes of color. Once the deconstruction of the BULL has been completed, Roy returns to the original form with a new interpretation in primary colors that are indicative of the Pop Art movements re-interpretation of commercial art.
Information courtesy of Charlton Hall Galleries, February 2007