Page 32 - Studio International - January 1968

Roy Lichtenstein

A retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein's work—discussed here by Richard Hamilton the artist and
Lawrence Alloway the critic— is at the Tate Gallery until February 4. It was recently shown at the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

1. Richard Hamilton

Roy Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Warhol, Rosenquist and
Jim Dine have gained their exalted position in the inter-
national art scene very rapidly. It wasn't so long ago that
a curator of painting at the New York Museum of
Modern Art was publicly complaining that whatever it
was that they were doing it wasn't making art. The basis
of Peter Selz's contention was that an artist must trans-
form his source material in some very tangible way and
this necessary transformation was not evident in the work
of the so-called 'Pop' artists. I doubt if any museum
official anywhere would now be so rash as to suggest that
Pop Art' is not art or that an aesthetic transformation has
not occurred. Most artists dislike the label 'Pop' when it
is applied to them but Lichtenstein accepts it fairly
happily. Of the Pop artists, I suspect Lichtenstein is the
only one who would have some interest in this question
of transformation, in particular of just how little of a
transformation will make sense, because he has been
more concerned than the others with consideration of
this issue as a factor in his work. Between Dine—deeply
involved (so much so it worries him) with the sensual
'_ook Mickey ca. 1961 acrylic on canvas aspects of his medium, whether paint, object or plumb-
ing —and Warhol, who would regard the whole con-
troversy as silly, there is a lot of room for manoeuvre.
'nside Fort Laramie ca. 1956 oil on canvas
Lichtenstein's early work, or at any rate the earliest by
which his present style can be recognized (he thinks of
himself as schooled in Abstract Expressionism), pedantic-
ally excludes attributes that we normally expect in a work
of art. His method of composition then (Roto Broil, Tire,
Ice Cream Soda, Hot Dog, Ball of Twine are examples) was
to ignore the problem by placing the image centrally and
symmetrically on a stark ground in the middle of the
canvas. What he paints is often a whole object offered in
such a way that we resist thinking of it as 'Still Life' —
there is no support for the illustrated object so the canvas
bears the blazon in a quite heraldic manner. His forms
are described in a fashion consistent with this style—linear
treatments, coarse as in naive illustrations for line repro-
duction or the more skilfully explicit old-time mail order
catalogue draughtsmanship. There is no encouragement
to think of the line as painted at all. The mark imitates a
line drawn with a pen but magnified. Although it must be
painted, all brushstrokes, or indeed any signs that the
marks are made by hand, are smoothed away. Where
colour is applied, usually through a perforated screen, it
is invariably an even tint filling in an area enclosed by a
line that has grown to the proportions of a form in itself.
His major concern appears to be with the task of depict-
ing a figurative subject in such a way as to adhere to the
two dimensional integrity of the canvas and in these pre-