Roy Lichtenstein – Commercial Success and Pop Art

The American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein was born in New York City back in October 27, 1923. He grew up on Manhattan, on the Upper West Side of it. Lichtenstein is widely celebrated because of his involvement in the new American Pop Art movement and his fame of being one of the leading figures of it. It was inspired by advertisements and comic strips. 

Lichtenstein was one of the pioneers of the movement with his representation and parodies with bright and graphic works referring directly to the popular culture of America and drawing references from the growing consumerism. His art was also a quote to the art world itself. Roy Lichtenstein merged as one of the most comical yet majorly popular pop art activists who radicalized twentieth century America. Roy Lichtenstein’s parodies of art gained him much popularity with his funny takes on the consumerist popular culture. Roy Lichtenstein’s artworks are up for grabs online. Check out Roy Lichtenstein and buy his paintings and caricatures online. Explore the comical artist with his cartoons, parodies, comic strips that once defined the boundaries of American Pop art. Buy works of Roy Lichtenstein online.

During the late 1940s, many of the galleries nationwide celebrated Lichtenstein’s works and showcased his art extensively. He had shows in Cleveland and New York City. 1950s was a pre-pop era for Roy Lichtenstein as he would often choose his artistic subjects from mythology as well as the history of America and not so much from avenues of popular culture like magazines and comic strips. During this time he paid homage to earlier arts from eighteenth century all the way through modernism. But 1960s changed much in his artistic preferences. Around this time, he began his experiments with different subjects and played around with the methods of production. His newer works were both his commentary on the American popular culture as much as it was a resistance to the new found Abstract Expressionist painting by contemporaries of Roy Lichtenstein like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Explore the earlier works of Roy Lichtenstein. The early paintings of Roy Lichtenstein were all his love for the earlier arts which he composed carefully instilling mythical elements and historical approaches. Have a look at these paintings by Roy Lichtenstein.

He chose Parodies as opposed to painting abstract. He could never sum it up all witin the confining definitions of subject-less canvases like that of Pollock’s and other expressionists. He would rather take his imageries directly out of comic strips. He chose mimicking his borrowed sources over expressive his own emotions through art. His take on the impersonal-looking stencil process was also an indirect quote on the mechanized printing process which was widely popular for commercial usage of art. Lichtenstein's most celebrated work around this time was "Whaam!," which he painted in 1963.

For the work he used a comic book panel taken from a DC Comics' issue of 1962 titled, “All-American Men of War.” Some of his other works created around the same time also featured cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. His works were directly inspired from advertisements of food and household products. Another gem of a work that he created was a large-scale mural of a laughing young woman which he adapted from an image that he found in a comic book. This work was showcased at the New York State Pavilion of the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. Lichtenstein’s excellence lies in his deadpan humor matched with a slyly subversive approach to build a signature school of art which is stemmed out of mass-reproduced images. Roy Lichtenstein’s art is unparallel in respect of his contemporaries and the leading expressionist movement. He left a settling mark on the history of American art by pioneering a new gerne of art, a new school of thought, American Pop Art. Explore Roy Lichtenstein’s works in contribution to American Pop Art. Buy paintings of Roy Lichtenstein online.

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