Page 37 - Studio International - January 1968

2 Lawrence Alloway narrative painting). When, in 1961, he began to use
comics as a source, it was a logical extension to move
from using other styles of painting to other channels of
visual communication, comics and such mass-produced
graphics as phone book, diner menu, newspaper ads.
The route by which he came to paint in the now famous
way was not direct or easily come by. After the Ameri-
cana painting, Lichtenstein turned to abstract art but, he
records, 'began putting hidden comic images into those
paintings, such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and
Bugs Bunny'.1 This led in a while to a painting such as
Look Mickey, ca. 1961, in which the cartoon imagery is
The early work of Roy Lichtenstein, though it had been dominant, even extending to the flat, unmodulated
seen in six one-man shows in New York in the 50s, seems brushwork. (The Western subjects had always been seen,
to have been unknown to the critics, and the public, as it were, through a screen of painterliness.) Lichtenstein
when they faced his first exhibition of comics-derived has said he 'was amazed to see Andy's work because he
paintings at the Castelli Gallery in 1962. He had was doing cartoons of Nancy and Dick Tracy and they were
clearly revealed, by that time, a well-developed sense of very similar to me'.2 Jasper Johns had made a small
allusion, which could flip between paraphrase and paro- painting with, pasted in, an Alley Oop comic strip in 1958
dy, or hover between both. Typical is the series of and Warhol's Dick Tracy is 1960. Both these works carry
paintings with Western subjects, some of them derived direct references to well-known characters, whereas
from nineteenth century originals (by Remington, for Lichtenstein has always avoided recognizable heroes.
example), others freshly invented, but in terms of The source of his comics imagery is not to be found in
Picasso's late cubism. Inside Fort Laramie, ca. 1956, for either of the artists who preceded him, but in a more
instance, converts Cubist figure conventions into costumed general awareness of American subject matter. 'I was
Indian warriors, and the beach-huts of Dinard become aware of the happenings of Oldenburg, Dine, Whitman,
the Fort. As early as ca. 1952 Lichtenstein painted a and Kaprow. I knew Kaprow well; we were colleagues
George Washington crossing the Delaware, before Larry at Rutgers. I didn't see many happenings, but they
Rivers, that is to say; stylistically, however, it resembles seemed concerned with the American industrial scene.
Motherwell's Homely Protestant enacting the historic mo- They also brought up in my mind the whole question of
ment, so it is not a competitive matter with Rivers (whose the object and merchandizing.'3
picture is like a slick Sir William Coldstream). At the Golf ball, 1962, is one of a series of enlarged, isolated
very least, it can be said that Lichtenstein had a ten- objects, viewed head on, and it is remarkable for the
dency to use his art to refer to other styles, sometimes two austerity of its coding. There is a narrow rim of black to
at a time (such as Cubism and nineteenth century indicate volume, but most of the information is carried
by the pattern of similar black arcs turning in different
directions according to their placement on the surface.
It was said of Lichtenstein's landscapes and sunsets of
1964-5, with their strictness and colour intensity, that he
was incorporating elements of Op Art.
Golf ball, viewed properly, however, shows that reductive
and systematizing tendencies are implicit in his work
since 1962. This point can be made in another way, by
comparing a comic book source drawing with the paint-
ing derived from it. Takka takka, 1962, repeats many of
the elements of the original drawing, but, at the same
time, everything is changed. The words are confined to
an unbroken rectangle, unlike the step in the original
description. The machine gun juts out at an angle in the
drawing and, though still tilted, is held back by its rela-
tion to other forms in the painting. The original is
laconic and naturalistic, with the artist locating his few
forms to overlap each other to create spatial illusion. In
the painting, however, this spatial openness is sealed off
by a new explosion in the background which makes
possible a decorative closure of all the forms. The density
of the various elements freezes the impression of action
evoked by the original. The flame at the mouth of the
machine gun and the foreground foliage echo each other,
an effect increased by the hard contouring which
Lichtenstein lays in around every image, including
smoke, fire, and objects in the air.