Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was one of the leading artists of the Pop movement, along with Andy Warhol. At the height of his fame, his work mostly consisted of lithographs recreating panels from comic books, although he later branched out to abstract metal and plastic sculpture. Although he was American by nationality, he considered the Pop movement to be "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting." He's best known for his lithographs, however, such as Drowning Girl
◊ and Whaam
◊. He made use of such techniques as Ben-Day dots
, bright colors, and bold outlines to create a mass-produced effect similar to Andy Warhol's silkscreen prints.
His last commission was designing the logo of DreamWorks Records.
Tropes
- Ace Pilot: Lichtenstein was enrolled in pilot training while serving in the army in World War II, but never actually saw action. He remained fascinated in aviation, and painted several works focusing on flying aces.
- Closeup on Head: Lichtenstein often enlarged panels in such extreme close-ups that you could see the raster points and Ben-Day dots of the original comic book page.
- Comic Strips: Lichtenstein's trademark was blowing up frames from comic strips up full size.
- Disneyesque: He used a comic strip panel of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as the subject for one of his paintings.
- Fanart: Most of the comic strips he choose for reproduction were series he enjoyed himself. He also reproduced masterpieces by Paul Cezanne, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso in his own style.
- Hollywood Drowning: Drowning Girl, which provides the trope's page pic.
- Irony: Some of the comic strip images he used had an ironic undertone.
- Promoted Fanboy: Lichtenstein made art critics look at comic strips, widely considered children's pulp.
- Reference Overdosed: All of his paintings are copied images of either comic strips or paintings. Accusations of plagiarism already occurred during his lifetime, yet he purposefully distorted and stylized the imagery in his own work and changed the scale, color and treatment. None of his works were exact copies.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Constantly. Whaam is probably the most famous, but he also painted works entitled Blam, Brattata, Takka Takka, Bratatat!, Varoom!, and Crak!.
- Shout-Out: As a huge Tintin fan he also used images from Tintin stories for his paintings.
- Stylistic Suck: Lichtenstein sometimes deliberately made the comic book characters he copied crude and badly copied.
