Roy Lichtenstein — A Pop Art Innovator

Owity.com
4 min readJul 15, 2020

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Roy Lichtenstein was one of the founders and innovators of Pop Art, who brought the techniques and contents of mechanically reproduced images into the world of visual art. The style he was to help define was focused on imitating popular culture in the visual arts. Born in New York in 1923, Lichtenstein became a leading figure in the Pop Art movement and his works are considered classics of the time. Pop art artist Roy Lichtenstein Whaam is based on the life and work of his father, the artist Roy D. Lich.Roy was alsoinspired by his mother, who used the words “Pop Art” in her own words and in his paintings.

The American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein has shaken up the art world with his series of comics — inspired paintings. Inspired by comics, he created precise compositions that were documented in often tongue-in-cheek — and cheeky — ways and parodied pop culture such as pop music, hip-hop and pop culture. These images were taken from popular cultures and reproduced to create a new context and meaning, and became the basis of his artworks and the inspiration for many of his later works.

Crying Girl (1963)

His early work focused on the theme of American folklore in a style and combination of early modernist movements. In the 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein became one of the leading figures in the art movement in New York City. He was celebrated as a pioneer of this movement, which also included Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. While his colleagues, like Warhol, often used Pop Art to comment on the negativity of mass consumption, Lichtenstein’s workbook was much more positive. He became famous in the 1960s and 1970s and still holds records — and breaks the record for his art at auction.In 1962, he used a perforated metal screen for the first time to make Benday dots that had previously been painted by hand. The triumvirate of New York pop art ruled in the late 1960s and early 1970s with Robert Rauschenberg, James Mapplethorpe, and Roy Lichtenstein, but they all burst at the seams in their own way. Those who never had the opportunity to meet him in person probably first met him in 1960 through historical accounts.

The movement drew on the works of artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Gauguin, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and others, creating vibrant compositions and establishing them as the cornerstone of contemporary art. Art reflects art, Pop Art artists are inspired by the works of art directors, writers, artists, musicians, poets, filmmakers, actors, comedians, singers, dancers, photographers, filmmakers and musicians.He wanted his images to be programmed and impersonal, reflecting the detachment of American consumer culture from the world of art and art history. But his typical Pop Art style took shape in 1961, mainly inspired by advertising and comics, but also by his love of music, movies, television and music.

Masterpiece (1962)

Lichtenstein’s paintings are often seen as an ironic and satirical representation of art history, showing how visual art became a common good and was codified for public consumption by advertising, printing and other media. Set to music with a commercially available Benday Dot, “Benday Dots” (1969) by Roy Lichtenstein, one of his most famous works. His use of pop culture and his distinctive style distinguished him from other pop artists, and his images have become icons. Overall, Lichtenstein is best known for the comics he based on and focused on. He incorporated comics into his work to disenchant the ego and the demands of high modernity. Towards the end of his life, Lichtenstein devoted himself to his art and often spent at least 10 hours a day in his studio

The projectors magnified spray guns and stencil pens to make the images look like newspaper cartoons viewed through a magnifying glass. Lichtenstein used commercial art methods in his paintings, but turned to the design of elements of commercial graphics from the 1930s and explored everyday objects used by art movements of the 20th century.

In The Car (1963)

Lichtenstein also created sculptures, prints and ceramics, but he is best remembered for his painted works. His best known work from this period is Whaam, which he painted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, taking inspiration from a series of stencils from the comic industry of the early 20th century. They imitated borrowed sources to emphasize the visual qualities of comics, such as the use of black and white and an impersonal-looking “stencil process” that mimicked the mechanical printing used in commercial graphics. Roy Lichtenstein is Pop Art.

Roy Lichtenstein — Profile Links

https://lichtensteinfoundation.org/ https://www.instagram.com/roylichtenstein/

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Cited Sources

Originally published at https://owity.com.

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