Red Lamps by Roy Lichtenstein

Red Lamps by Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein takes a modernist perspective of the picture plane by utilizing a method of commercial design through comic strips and advertisement. Lichtenstein integrates the readymade quality of screen prints and integrates a painterly gesture with the use of thick lines, flat surface planes, and obscured perspective.

Unlike with most print series, the prints of the Interior Series by Roy Lichtenstein preceded, rather than followed, the paintings of similar subjects. Roy Lichtenstein’s Interiors are based on advertisements, most of which Roy Lichtenstein cut from the Yellow Pages.

About:

Roy Lichtenstein was a pop art painter whose works, in a style derived from comic strips, portray the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life. Using bright, strident colors and techniques borrowed from the printing industry, he ironically incorporates mass-produced emotions and objects into highly sophisticated references to art history.He  was one of the first American Pop artists to achieve widespread renown, and he became a lightning rod for criticism of the movement.

Primary colors–red, yellow and blue, heavily outlined in black–became his favorites. Occasionally he used green. Instead of shades of color, he used the benday dot, a method by which an image is created, and its density of tone modulated in printing. Sometimes he selected a comic-strip scene, recomposed it, projected it onto his canvas and stenciled in the dots. “I want my painting to look as if it had been programmed,” Lichtenstein explained.