A key figure in the movement pop Art and beyond, Roy Lichtensteinn based his deeply inventive career on imitation, beginning by borrowing images from comics and advertisements in the early 1960s, eventually encompassing those of everyday objects, artistic styles, and art history itself.
Referring to Lichtenstein's egalitarian treatment of the subjects he chose for his art, Richard Hamilton, another pop artist, wrote in 1968: “The Parthenon, Picasso or the Polynesian maiden are reduced to the same kind of cliche by the syntax of printing: playing a Lichtenstein is like putting a fish back in the water."
Roy grew up absorbed in the culture of the city of New York, frequently visiting the museums, galleries and concerts that the city had to offer. He showed artistic and musical ability at a young age and admired artists such as Rembrandt, Daumier, and Picasso. While Lichtenstein admired the greats, he was disillusioned with the idea that some artists' work was considered great while others might be considered inferior.
He dedicated his career to elevate "low profile" elements of American culture to the same status as traditional subjects, and thus, through his pieces, Lichtenstein challenged artistic hierarchies and helped redefine what constitutes high art.
Later, his abstract expressionist art was gaining popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, but before developing his trademark style of saturated colors and Benday dots, he painted in a cubic expressionist style.
While his work and process were very different from what would become known, he still parodied American mythology with creations that included cowboys and the Indians. From the earliest days, Lichtenstein was interested in paint cliched themes through a different lens.
While popular expressionist paintings seemed to have no relevance to the everyday world Americans found themselves in, Lichtenstein, in turn, painted what was around him: products, comics, and cartoons, and in the early 1960s , when there was a disconnect between fine art and the current aspect of American culture, he began to attract attention for his graphics that fuse art, commercial art, and in particular, cartoons were not considered among those possibilities.
Although his subjects came from works of fiction or industry, they were a more realistic view of what American life was like at the time. Sweet Dreams Baby is one of Lichtenstein's earliest pop art prints when he adopted his signature style, which was to take still images from popular comics and advertisements, copy the source material by hand, reframe the image to create his own narrative, and then trace the sketch altered on the canvas with the help of a projector.
As Lichtenstein developed the process, he began to use perforated templates to produce the uniform dot pattern.
After mastering the style that would come to define his work, he reoriented his pieces around the aesthetic clichés that existed in the art world. While the painters expressionists revered for their gestural strokes and organic approach, Lichtenstein lampooned the style by recreating it in a high-production graphic manner.
In the early 1990s, already a definitive artist of the generation, he launched his portfolio Reflections, with motifs from his earlier works that were abstracted by snippets of color and pattern. Coming full circle, the comic book-inspired pieces that made him famous were now being refiled and reproduced, and so it is Lichtenstein himself who proves that even his own art is not safe from parody and oversaturation.
Lichtenstein, along with other pop artists, infiltrated the elite spaces of the art world with subjects that were considered taboo, but accurately represented American culture.
Instilled with natural talent and an admiration for the greats, he was still able to step back and question the mindset that kept art inaccessible to the masses. Lichtenstein always painted what was around him, allowing him to document while he parodied. Through his legacy, he gives viewers a glimpse of life in the 1960s and holds up a mirror to the tropes of the history of art.