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Classroom use - profile of artist Roy Lichtenstein
Arts & Activities, June, 2003 by Guy Hubbard
THIS FACE
This portrait is of a ferocious German submarine commander from the 1940s who is about to launch a torpedo at a ship he is viewing through his periscope. The painting is one of Roy Lichtenstein's earlier Pop Art paintings done during the period when he was producing war pictures from comic books.
ABOUT ROY LICHTENSTEIN
* Lichtenstein was one of a small group of artists in the 1960s who suddenly became noticed as important artists. Their paintings and sculptures were called "Pop Art" because their ideas came from the popular culture of advertising, everyday commercial products and comic books. Some people called Lichtenstein an "image duplicator" because he found his ideas in pictures that already existed. The power of Pop Art was so great that some art critics have declared that it forever "changed the look of art."
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* As a boy living in Manhattan, N.Y., Roy Lichtenstein was interested in art and was attending Saturday-morning art classes by the time he was 14. Eventually, he studied at Ohio State University, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in painting. After teaching painting for several years at two colleges, he became a full-time artist.
* Not until he was 37, after many years of experimentation, did he discover his distinctive painting style. Interestingly, his earliest Pop paintings were done to entertain his children and included such cartoon characters as Popeye, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. Later, his ideas--like the one in this painting--came from comic-book cartoons on war themes. Other ideas followed, and he also made ceramics and metal sculptures as well as paintings.
* While some European artists had been producing art that was quite like Pop Art, the style reached its highest level among artists working in New York City. While Pop Art only lasted a few years, it continues to be imitated by artists and designers. Critics and historians continue to write about its influence on more recent artistic styles, particularly on a style of art called "Post Modernism."
* Other important Pop artists include Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claus Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenburg. Their styles are all different, but they all shocked viewers at the time by using ideas from everyday commercial products and advertising.
* One thing that makes much Pop Art look very up-to-date compared with art that was done earlier is that objects often fill and even overflow the whole painting, very much like the way scenes are shown on movie and TV screens.
* To give students some idea of the value some people placed on Lichtenstein's art they may like to know that, when the picture reproduced here was sold at auction, the buyer paid $5.5 million dollars for it.
THINGS TO DO IN SCHOOL
* For students to have a solid understanding of Pop Art, they need to see as many examples of it as possible and learn how they came to be created. Some of these studies should include other paintings by Lichtenstein, as well as work by some of the other Pop artists listed above. If the school library doesn't have enough reproductions, local libraries will be able to help with books and videotapes on individual artists, as well as the whole
Pop Art movement.
* Because of the way Lichtenstein worked, students can practice imitating exactly how he did it by selecting images from present-day commercial and advertising art. They first need to find a comic-book picture they like and copy it fairly accurately. They should then project the drawing onto a large sheet of paper using an opaque projector and draw over the projection, while making any changes they think might make an improvement. If an opaque projector is not available, students can enlarge their sketch using large scale squares. Alternatively, they might photograph their sketch and project a slide of it to fill a sheet of paper. Finally, they should paint the picture using black and bright, simplified colors like those used in comic-book frames, while altering the colors wherever that would make the picture better.
* Students may be interested in puffing themselves in the same position as other Pop Artists of the 1960s who found their inspiration in the products and advertisements of their time. Present-day students, however, would be looking around for examples of images from consumer culture that surrounds us today and use examples of them as starting points for their own Pop Art.
Because most people do not like to look at anything that is unusual, students who try this update of Pop Art should be prepared to have their work criticized. For this reason, they should protect themselves by learning as much as possible about the intentions of the original Pop artists.
* Lichtenstein used a very simplified style for this painting and yet he is able to capture the furious expression of the demented captain as he glares through the periscope. Students may be interested in testing their skills in showing facial expressions with just a few lines by finding a photograph of a person expressing strong emotion and trying to translate it into the kind of simplified style used here. Even better, they might like to enlarge their own drawing many times over compared with the original photograph, although they might be wise to make several smaller sketches before filling an area as large as Lichtenstein's painting.
