I especially like National Gallery curator Harry Cooper’s assessment of the comic book panels Lichtenstein swiped: “He’s always making these alterations. He did it because he felt these things could be improved ... they weren't quite art, but he could make them art.” I notice, too, that the print version of the story manages to lead with “Whaam! Varoom! R-rrring-g!” Disappointing.
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162807890/one-dot-at-a-time-lichtenstein-made-art-pop
Replies
I've argued in the past that Lichtenstein did bring something to the images he copied, which is why there's a recognisable Lichtenstein style. But I want to register my disagreement with the notion that the images he imitated weren't art, and he turned them into art. Lichtenstein's "appropriated" images are memorable partly because the images he imitated were often well-composed in the first place. Part of the attraction of his work is its accessibility, and it's not the case that the images he imitated were not accessible before he imitated them. It's not obvious to me that the changes he made to the images he copied were always aesthetic improvements.
Painting is not an inherently superior medium to pencil or ink, so that e.g. an image is low art if executed in ink, but high art if executed in paint. Having been created for a book cover, comic or advertisement does not by itself make a painting or drawing aesthetically inferior to another painting or drawing. (""You shan't marry that painting!" Lord Museum Work shouted at his daughter. "He's beneath you! He's in trade!"") A work of art is also not aesthetically superior to another because it is larger. (I owe this last point to a critical comment I saw somewhere on Glenn Brown's imitation of Tony Roberts's Double Star.)
...You know , when what I believe is the same exhibit was written up in The New York Review Of Books , I posted and linked and go: comments: zero !!!
Check this out: http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html
(Some days I just love the internet!)