Stories & Lifestyle: Roy Lichtenstein – Pop-art of the special kind

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was born in 1923 into a middle class family in New York. His father was a real estate agent. He attended a private school that did not offer art classes and also his family didn't have great artistic potential. He started painting and drawing at home as a teenager. Lichtenstein drew models and New York sceneries such as Coney Island, block parties and boxing matches. He drew things of every-day life, focusing on realistic depictions, he rejected styles such as Cubism or European Futurism.

Lichtenstein graduated from high school in 1940, and since there wasn't anything for him in New York, he enrolled at Ohio State University in the School of Fine Arts. He wanted to become an artist, but his parents talked him into going for an education diploma at the art school. His greatest influence was professor Hoyt L. Sherman and Lichtenstein drew models and styles - life in the style of expressionism. His studies were interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945, he was sent to Europe. During this time, he drew nature with watercolor, pencil and chalk and after the war he studied at the Cité Universitaire in Paris for a short time. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1946. He then went for a Master of Fine Arts and accepted a teaching job until 1951. During this time, his half-abstract pictures were inspired by Cubism.

He obtained his Master's in 1950 and lost his teaching job the following year due to the high number of G.I. Bill students. He moved to Cleveland in 1951 where he worked as a draftsman and a tin can designer. He had his first one-man exhibitions in 1949/1950 in the Ten-Thirty Gallery, Cleveland and the Carlebach Gallery, New York.

Until 1957 he had three more exhibitions in the John Heller Gallery, New York, but despite the presentation of his pictures he wasn't able to sell very much. That was the reason he turned to teaching again in 1957. He was hired as an assistant professor for art at the New State University, Oswego, where he taught for three years. The first signs of Pop-art can be found in humorous lithographic paintings of 1956, even though he was mostly painting in the style of expressionism at that time. In 1957, for example, he made the picture Ten Dollar Bill, a very abstract ten Dollar note.

Roy Lichtenstein started experimenting with this style and again exhibited his works in New York in 1959. He did not get a lot of attention, however. Probably because he wasn't very convinced of this style, he finally started drawing cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny and other Disney characters. He described this as a mere desparate act, because he believed that Milton Resnick and Mike Goldberg already covered the entire territory. His first Disney paintings, however, were never publicly displayed and Lichtenstein himself painted over most of them again later.

Loon Mickey, breakthrough of a provocation From 1960 to 1964, Lichtenstein was employed at the Rugers University in New Jersey and also moved there. He started experimenting with pictures of gum wrappers and later had the idea of producing these in large size. What started as an experiment turned out so great that he also broke with all other traditions and integrated the imitation of industrial printing techniques and especially the speech bubble into his paintings.

The first result of this new idea was the picture "Look Mickey" in 1961, showing Donald and Mickey on a jetty. Donald says "Look Mickey, I've hooked a big one," while really his fishing hook is only caught in his own jacket, Mickey is standing behind him, grinning and covering his mouth with one hand. This pictures was his big breakthrough, his style also became the style of printed comic books. He painted six more pictures the same year, all in the same style. These pictures include Mr. Bellamy. In the fall, Lichtenstein presented his pictures to the New York gallery owner Leo Castelli, who immediately accepted them for his gallery. Several weeks later, Andy Warhol showed up with comic pictures in the same gallery, but Castelli didn't want them. When Warhol saw Lichtenstein's pictures he decided not to draw comic pictures anymore, because he realized that this niche was taken and Lichtenstein was his superior. Instead he focused on the artistic depiction of quantities and repetitions that made him world-famous.

By 1962 all pictures had been bought by important collectors and Lichtenstein was able to make a living off his art. He integrated this experience into one of his pictures in which the protagonist, a blond woman says "Why, Brad Darling, this painting is a Masterpiece! My, soon you'll have all of New York clamoring for your work!" In the same year, Lichtenstein participated in the first important Pop-Art exhibitions. The New Paintings of Common Objects in the Pasadena Art Museum New Realists in the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York.

The successful years In 1963 Roy Lichtenstein moved back to New York and focused entirely on painting over the next year. A great number of his works was created in that time, with different subject areas and often parts of entire series. Apart from painting, Lichtenstein also turned to sculptures and the installation of artistic objects, always in the typical Lichtenstein style. Unlike Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein never modeled his works of art after photos. Instead he continued to be inspired by cartoon series or the yellow pages, for example for the picture Girl with Ball.

1964: His early work still included a vast number of subjects. Many of these still strongly resemble the originals and comparisons can be made. The flood of advertisements for new devices and gadgets at the time obviously sparked pictures like Roto Broil, Washing Machine or Sock. This commercial art and the comic art share a subtlety in detail, the depiction of every-day items wasn't very popular among art critics, but the buyers at Castelli liked it.

The many individual exhibitions were followed by a retrospective in the Pasadena Art Museum. They even came to Europe. In 1964/1965 he made paintings and sculptures of women's heads and sceneries. Until 1969 he focused on monumental architecture, his brush stroke series, explosions and modern paintings with a view to the 1930s.

At the beginning of 1969 he worked on a film about seascapes, he experimented on the film together with Joel Freedman in New York. He moved to Southampton, Long Island in 1970 and became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the 70s, he worked with visual illusions and works of art history. In 1979 he was commissioned for a public sculpture, a mermaid for the Theater of Performing Arts in Miami Beach, Florida. A new retrospective started in 1981 and went around the world with his works of the 70s.

In 1996, Roy Lichtenstein became an honorary doctor at the George Washington University, Washington DC. Roy Lichtenstein died on September 29, 1997 in Manhattan.
For further information and some pictures please refer to www.lichtensteinfoundation.org