Lichtenstein the Pop Art Prometheus

In Saturday’s post on the recent passing of certain comic  book creators, I noted that Russ Heath's drawings of fighter jets in DC Comics' All-American Men of War #89 (Feb. 1962) served as the basis for pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's best-known oil paintings.

I also noted this really didn’t sit well with Russ Heath. I also noted that Russ Heath was not alone in that mind set which I noted might be a good topic for a future blog post.

So here we are!  So let’s take a look at who was Roy Lichtenstein and why do we hate him so?

Roy Lichtenstein was born October 23, 1923. By the 1960s, Roy was part of the pop art movement along with Andy Warhol and others.  Lichtenstein specialized in paintings that were derived from American comic books. And therein lies our quandary.

When I was kid, I thought the art of Roy Lichtenstein was cool. It brought the conventions of a comic panel to a larger audience. 

But what I came to realize as I grew older was, what did we need Roy Lichtenstein for? When Lichtenstein translated a comic book panel from a war comic drawn by Irv Novick into a painting to be put on a museum wall, why couldn’t Irv Novick just put his own comic book panel onto an canvas and put his own damn artwork on a museum wall? 

To his credit, Roy Lichtenstein saw that comic book art was simply art, that an illustration in a comic book panel would also be at home in a frame in an art museum. But Lichtenstein was not creating his own comic book art in his paintings; he was adapting the work of others.

Comic art by Tony Abruzza on the left, Roy Lichtenstein's adaption on the right.  

Adapting or copying? There has been a lot of debate among art critics as to how much Lichtenstein altered the original work to bring his own style into one of his paintings or if all Lichtenstein did was just move an image from a comic book page to a larger painter’s canvas? 

Adapt or copy, Lichtenstein failed to credit the original artists in his sources. It didn’t help matters than the original artists weren’t credited in the comic books as was the practice back in day.

Lichtenstein also never had to answer to the comic book publishers who never sued him for copyright infringement or never spoke out publicly against him when Lichtenstein’s work first came to prominence in the 1960s. If Roy Lichtenstein didn’t give due credit or respect to the artists whose art built the foundation of his own career as a painter, neither the publishers who printed the work of those artists in their comic books. 

Roy Lichtenstein may have been an artistic genius who saw art where others just saw commerce; or maybe he was just a rip off artist who got lucky stealing from really good comic book artists who deserved more than they got. Ultimately, Lichtenstein’s work did demonstrate that comic book art was “real” art. And for those who look closely at source of his work, the panels drawn by such men as Irv Novick and Russ Heath, we can see their genuine artistry and the mastery of their craft. 

From the comic books, art by Russ Heath  

from the art museum, "art" by Roy Lichtenstein