Page 44 - Studio International - July-August 1969

teenagers. Thefumetti proceed in a stately and
explicit narrative, whereas American comics
are intricately structured. A high level of de-
coding skill is required of the reader-viewer.
The best parodies of comics are found in other
comics, not only in the celebrated Mad but in
comic books like Ecch, the brawling comedy
of which is close to the vernacular style of a
group of Chicago painters, The Hairy Who.
They produce their own comic books, follow-
ing the layouts of straight comics but swelling
into a Rabelaisian inflation of Americana.
These random notes make the point, I hope,
that the maze of signs in Pop Art is not only
the product of artists' sophistication but is
present, also, in their source material, which
surrounds us, is underfoot.
In New York the first large paintings derived
from comic strips were by Andy Warhol in
1960, such as his Dick Tracy. The following
year Lichtenstein made his first painting of
this type, a scene of Mickey Mouse and Donald
Duck. Though actually taken from a bubble
gum wrapper the style of drawing and the
kind of incident resemble comic strips based
on Walt Disney's film cartoon characters. Pre-
viously Lichtenstein had done Cubist versions
of nineteenth-century cowboy paintings and
of World War I dog-fights, 'the Hell's Angels
kind of thing', to quote the painter. The con-
trast of popular subjects (cowboys and Indians,
old planes) and their Picasso-esque treatment
is certainly proto-Pop. Lichtenstein did not
know Warhol's slightly earlier work and was,
as I hope this indicates, on a track that led
logically to the comics. Early Pop Art, in fact,
is peppered with convergences of separate
artists on shared subjects. The fact of simul-
taneous discovery is, I think, a validation of
the seriousness of the movement and refutes
criticism of Pop Art as a sudden or momentary
affair. It would not have developed spon-
taneously in different places in the fifties, had
it not been an authentic response to an his-
torical situation.
The different uses that have been made of
comics substantiate the continued indepen-
dence of the artists after they had become
aware of their common interest. Lichtenstein
has never used famous figures of the comics,
as Warhol took Dick Tracy or Mel Ramos
took Batman. His paintings derive from speci-
fic originals, but the reference is always to
3 realistic and anonymous originals. He uses
Roy Lichtenstein
Femme dans un fauteuil d'après Picasso 1963 war comics and love comics in preference to
Plastic paint on canvas named heroes or fantastic comics. Ramos, on
173 x 122 cm.
the contrary, began a series of Batman paint-
4
Tom Wesselman ings in 1962, taken directly from Bob Kane's
Drawing for 'Great American nude No 50' 1963 originals (and other artists who draw Batman)
Charcoal on paper
48 x 36⅛ in. but rendered in succulent paint. Ramos then
Coll: Sidney Janis Gallery
switched to painting sex heroines from pre-
5
Wayne Thiebaud code comics and here became engaged in
Pie counter 1962 historical research in erotic iconography.
Oil on canvas
30 x 36 in. (Mysta of the moon; Glory Forbes, Vigilante;
Coll: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Gale Allen, Girl squadron leader; Futura, are
some of the names.) Then, in the June 1966
Batman: 'At the Gotham City Museum, Bruce