Page 35 - Studio International - January 1968

Left, Takka takka 1962
oil on canvas, 56 x 68 in.
Mi Chou Gallery, New York
Below, original comic book source
for Takka takka

twentieth century, when a complete revision of our to a more elaborate surface. His cups and saucers and
understanding of what perception was affected art so the bust of a blonde girl are about two-dimensional lan-
profoundly. Artists then retired from nature into concep- guage interacting with three-dimensional structures. One
tualizations and abstraction and failed to notice that the of his most haunting images is of a girl's head seen from
visual world was becoming something radically else. The the back, she holds a hand mirror reflecting her face so
surprising thing is that it took until the mid-fifties for that the conflict between the flatness of treatment and
artists to realize that the visual world had been altered by the requirement of reading the picture in spatial layers is
the mass media and changed dramatically enough to very disturbing. The remarkable series of print multiples
make it worth looking at again in terms of painting. in which he uses flat treatments on a plastic sheet with a
Magazines, movies, TV, newspapers, and comics for that built-in stereoscopic depth continue the play with that
matter, assume great importance when we consider the paradox. Another example, quite devastating in its simpli-
percentage of positively directed visual time they occupy city, is the 1965 painting Landscape with column, which
in our urban society. So much of what we look at is sieved consists of a canvas divided horizontally into two nearly
and screened and scanned in the process of conversion to equal flat areas; from the side of the lower half a piece of
another dimensionality. TV has only one dimension most column protrudes an end in crude perspective projection.
of the time for the linear stream of electrons needs to be Lichtenstein has said that his choice of subject matter
reconstituted into two dimensions before a picture can be has something to do with realism. Yet his realism seems
made. It is its appreciation of the multi-dimensionality to have less to do with 'a preoccupation with everyday
of our modified world that makes recent art exciting and life' than with his steadfast candour of treatment. What
the more important figures have all contributed to that is realistic about the versions of Mondrian or Picasso is
understanding. Even Oldenburg, whose sources are en- that they are not copies of paintings—they have been re-
tirely in the round, harasses our sensibility with the moved from that reality by the processing they received
squeeze he can put on space by warping it with false in the course of reproduction. What Lichtenstein makes
perspective. Pop mainly uses source material that has perfectly clear is that all his subjects are made as one
been already processed into some two-dimensional before he touches them. Parthenon, Picasso or Poly-
medium. Most of this processing is photographic and nesian maiden are reduced to the same kind of cliche by
photography has some status as a stimulus for art — the syntax of print: reproducing a Lichtenstein is like
Lichtenstein's sources are graphic and as such haven't throwing a fish back into water. The 'Brush-strokes' are
the same degree of respectability. They were that much more real (and at the same time less consistent) because
more shocking at first sight. they appear to derive from an actual brushmark rather
More than anyone, Lichtenstein is true to the mass than a secondary source. It is also difficult to concede
media because of the way he persuades that his sources that Courbet-type realism can be a strong motivation for
are flat. When he works in three dimensions he does so an artist whose attachment to ideas about style seems in-
only to examine the paradox of applying flat conventions evitably to lead to a high pitch of mannerism. Moments