Lichtenstein was the one who truly committed to the comics, going so far as to incorporate into his paintings cartoon conventions like outlines, speech balloons, spelled out sound effects, and the Ben-Day dots used in print graphics for shading and coloration. Through the ensuing years of his long career, Lichtenstein branched out and applied his branded technique to depictions of everything from Zen scroll paintings to expressionist brushstrokes.
As Lichtenstein explained it, “I’m interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it’s the tension between what seems to be so rigid and clichéd and the fact that art really can’t be this way.” He also admitted, “I think my paintings are critically transformed, but it would be difficult to prove it by any rational line of argument.”
It came to be called Pop art, this transformation, or perhaps degeneration, of expectations for artistic subject matter. On the surface, Pop art was easy to like. It was bright and playful; instant gratification art that echoed the fast, disposable consumer culture Americans were used to in their daily lives.
In a way, Pop art was a variation on the conventional art practice of still life. The imagery depicted in this case came not directly from life but was reproduced from the filtered and stylized presentations of industrial mass media: advertising, Hollywood, newspapers, comic books, and television. It was informed by the illusions, distortions, and manipulations these mediums employed.
For the general population, Pop art was the gateway drug to Postmodernism, the corrupt philosophy favored by the elites. Far from being innocent fun, Postmodernism seeks to displace human nature with a nature invented by humans, a very different state indeed.
At its core, Pop art did not aspire to inspire. It retreated from significance into the trendy pose of irony. Art, once considered a higher calling of humanity, was now a leering inside joke. It created a false equivalence. We put this Mickey Mouse knockoff into a museum, like it was a treasured masterpiece. Get it?
In August 2021, there is a tour of the paintings Roy Liechtenstein made between 1948-1960, before he Popped up. The images I’ve seen, while crude, have the distinction of being original. As such they are more engaging than the pulp pictures he merely recycled.
When it comes to the quality and quantity of artistic experience, those painted comics are one-liners.
