Clip & save art notes - discussion about artist Roy Lichtenstein's Torpedo…Los

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). Torpedo ... Los, 1963. Oil on canvas; 68" x 80". [c] Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

ABOUT THIS PAINTING

The original idea for this painting came from a comic-book story called "Battle of the Ghost Ships!" that had been published shortly before Lichtenstein translated one frame into the picture reproduced here. The story told about a World War II German submarine that was doomed to torpedo the same ship over and over again and, in doing so, driving the submarine captain mad.

The original panel from the comic book showed much the same scene as we see in the final painting. The differences are that two balloons containing speech in the original filled about half of the illustration. The captain was saying that he recognized the boat he was looking at, while the sailor is suggesting that it might be another ship with the same number.

Lichtenstein simplified the composition by removing all the words except for the command to prepare to fire a torpedo. He also made the submarine commander glare through the periscope with his right eye so that it could be seen more easily. The inclusion of a staring single eye was frequently used by the artist for maximum effect.

In the original illustration, the right eye was closed as the captain squinted through the periscope with his left eye. Also in the original, the captain has his mouth almost closed, while Lichtentstein's portrait shows him with his mouth wide open, snarling the order to load the torpedo. Another change from the original is that the artist moved the scar that had originally been on the captain's nose to his cheek, so it could be seen more easily.

While it is easy to see that the two pictures are alike, the painting is far more violent than the comic illustration. In the painting, the captain's face fills most of the space with a raging--almost insane--expression. Unlike the works of most other artists, however, Lichtenstein draws the face with the least number of lines possible and almost without any shading except harsh black.

The rippling black shadow down the right side of his face suggests that the captain is sweating inside the submarine and also that he is being lit by lamps shining from different directions. Adding to the tension in the face is the tight grasp of the captain's fingers around the handle of the periscope. Lichtenstein also added cables and dials to make the submarine interior look more convincing.

Solid black lines and shapes of the comic-book style dominate the painting, although a few areas of bright color are added. Other spaces are filled with a pale pinkish-blue color made with patterns of specially prepared dots that make the picture look even more mechanically produced than the original illustration.

The use of dots is a feature that is repeated in many of Lichtenstein's paintings and is derived from the way much commercial printing is done, especially newspaper illustrations. Pictures are photographed through screens that convert everything into dots that are often called "halftones." The dots are most noticeable in areas covered with lighter grays or pale colors.

In keeping with the ideas of Pop Art where artists imitated mechanical methods of reproduction, Lichtenstein painted evenly spaced dots called "Benday dots" to show shading. Benday dots were made mechanically using a metal stencil in which holes were evenly spaced. Paint was spread over the stencil with a roller and then a scrub brush was used to push the paint through the holes and onto the canvas. As time went by, the artist had assistants paint these dots instead of making them himself.

Hand-stenciled dots are used for the spaces in this painting that lie between the solid black and brightly colored areas to fill in areas and make the painting look more complete. The Benday dots used here are quite small, although in later work Lichtenstein often used dots that were much larger and more brightly colored.

Another major difference between the original illustration and the painting is its scale. The comic-book illustration was just one panel among many on a page of a magazine and it measured about 2" x 3" in size. In contrast, this painting measures 68" x 80" (5' 8" x 6' 8"). It is no longer a frame in a picture story from a comic book, but has become a larger-than-life-portrait. It remains extremely simplified but, because of its size, it overwhelms people who see it. To get an idea of how big it is, students might like to pin sheets of newspaper on a wall to match the size of the painting.

Large-scale, aggressive, military-action paintings were the first ones to be painted in Lichtenstein's final Pop Art style during the early 1960s. For several years, he continued to produce paintings of fighter pilots in action and machine gunners blasting at enemies. He then turned his attention to quite a different theme that focused on teen-age romances, often showing tearful young girls who were upset with their boyfriends.

As time went on, Lichtenstein experimented with numbers of other subjects. One of the subjects, which became a kind of signature, was unusual in that the entire artwork would feature nothing more than enormous Pop-Art images of splashy brushstrokes. These works were sometimes produced as paintings and other times as large pieces of outdoor sculpture.--G.H

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