pop art
ist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery
in New York City and along with Andy Warhol
, Jasper Johns
, James Rosenquist
and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody
. Favoring the old-fashioned comic strip
as subject matter, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-cheek
humorous manner.
Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.
I got the idea of doing really simple minded pictures that would look inept and kind of stupid and the colour would look as if it wasn't art.
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.
I think I am anti-experimental and anti-contemplative, anti-nuance, anti-getting away from the tyranny of the rectangle, anti-movement and light, anti-mystery, anti-paint quality, anti-Zen and anti all of those brilliant ideas of preceding movements which everyone understands so thoroughly.
I want my images to be as critical, as threatening and as insistent as possible.
I'd always wanted to know the difference between a mark that was art and one that wasn't.
It's not saying that commercial art is terrible or 'look what we've come to' — that may be a sociological fact but it's not what this art is about.
My work doesn't look like a painting ... it looks like the thing itself.
My work is about our American definition of images,and visual communication.
One would hardly look at my work and think it wasn't satirical, I think, or that it makes no social comment. I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any.