For this post I decided to add to our class discussion on Roy Lichtenstein by sharing some of the research from a thesis I did on him last year. In that paper I put forward an argument as per the assignment, but in truth I’m not art-literate enough to consider my opinion a well informed one. As a comic-literate comic artist, I enjoy wrestling with the ideas in/of Lichtenstein’s work- it forces me to hold conflicting points of view. Aesthetically I often prefer it to the appropriated work (would hang it on the wall), however it’s questionable how much added value he brought to the source material, which was already ripe, powerful imagery- by design. His satire of comic books echoed a long-held (and cliche) popular sentiment, although I recognize that there is a larger satire at play. I’m not sure comics were especially indicative of what he was sending up, compared to the sanitized/idealized pop culture of the day. It was heartening to see in our class slides Lichtenstein’s paintings next to the original comic panels, I drew from the same source as Professor Alford in my thesis, and it is (or was) uncommon to find the imagery paired like that. My recollection from the research process is that this was especially true of books about Lichtenstein. For someone whose work depends on re-contextualized imagery, the comic book aspect is rarely placed in context. Here a few things I came across that were striking.
Lichtenstein said of the comic book vocabulary he played with: “...it still seems to retain it’s cliche quality to the people looking at it. This has gone on from generation to generation of illustrators, each one adding a little bit to the last, and it’s become a kind of universal language....the fact that an eye, an eyebrow, a nose, is drawn in a certain way- is really the same kind of restriction that adds tension to a painting.”1 From Scott McCloud , a sample of popular artists2 that pre-date or were contemporaries of Lichtenstein provides context (Fig.1).
Jules Feiffer is notable among these, having already won a 1961 Oscar for Munro, an animated short, he later went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. Carl Bark’s art was particularly popular among Uncle Scrooge fans, despite the fact that his work was uncredited; in other words, it was demonstrably recognizable and distinct, despite working with Disney’s established characters. Lichtenstein’s idea of a universal “comic book style” is indicative of a popular (mis)perception at the time, which was beneficial to him in that this aspect of his satire went largely unexamined, and so was considered accurate. Of the 60 plus paintings from this period, 28 are drawn from the work of 3 artists, comprising the bulk of the romance imagery. Tony Abruzzo’s art (Fig.2) provided the basis for 15 pieces. 3
This limited sourcing is at least as significant a restriction as the ones Lichtenstein percieves. In 1964 LIFE magazine described the comic books Lichtenstein appropriated as: “...impersonal, allowing no evidence of the artist’s emotions; it was mechanically mass produced, eliminating not only all painterly handiwork, but originality and uniqueness.” 4 Lichtenstein’s self-described contribution to his final imagery is that: “..the difference is often not great, but it is crucial.” 5 If we are to evaluate the work on these terms, they extend to the source material. What I see, and admittedly I’m not objective, is that these qualities regarding the lack of emotion and individuality were imposed by Lichtenstein, in execution as well as his limited choice of source material. They reflect genre, era, and the work of a handful of individuals, more so than medium. I’m unsure how and to what degree this should factor in understanding his work.
1 David Sylvester, Interviews With American Artists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 224.
2 Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993), 131.
4 Dorothy Seiberling, "Is he the worst Artist in the U.S.?," LIFE (Jan 31, 1964), 83.
5 Seiberling, "Is he the worst Artist in the U.S.?," 83.
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