Roy Lichtenstein and Pop Art

Roy Lichtenstein achieved his artistic breakthrough relatively late in life, at a time when he was almost 40. His breakthrough consisted of painting motives from comics. How could a motive from a comic be art? Lichtenstein had experimented with various styles before, but once he painted his comic motives it became immediately clear to him that he had discovered something real, that he made an actual artistic discovery, that his paintings were a revelation what art could be. Indeed, his comic paintings became an immediate success, and together with Andy Warhol´s soup cans and the like they established New York Pop Art (ironically, Warhol had done paintings from comics as well originally, but as soon as he discovered that Lichtenstein did the same thing, he turned to other motives which would make him even more famous). Lichtenstein´s paintings consisted of relatively few colours, but they were tasty and bright, saturated and a pleasure for the eye. They were actually destined to become pop-ular. He expanded his motives and his style throught his career. His paintings would become allusions to Surrealism, or to Picasso, to Matisse or to Léger. His famous brush stroke paintings, icons of Pop Art all the same, were allusions to Abstract Expressionism and to Action Painting. Lichtenstein also made sculptures, of his brush strokes or of his explosions, i.e. something you would not consider a motive for a sculpture. But such was the tacit humour that you had in all his art. Eventually his oeuvre was full of citations from the history of painting. He was one of the most successful American artists, with many of his paintings becoming popular and printed as posters in huge quantities.

Pop Art was the last movement in art that managed to establish a universal signifier and a universal paradigm, a concise statement and a concise diagnosis of the world as a whole. Ideally, this is what you would expect from art. Yet such expectations have become frustrated afterwards, and ever since the 1970s or so. Therefore one might consider Pop Art as the last true triumph of an art that was somehow avant-gardist and somehow “stronger” and more intelligent than the world, than the society it sprang out of, that was ahead of its time. After Pop Art, developments in society seemingly became more turbulent, more intelligent and more avant-garde than art, with art merely trying to catch up with those developments, with art becoming an intellectual by-product of social developments. Art reflects on society, and society had changed at the time when Pop Art came into play. It had become a consumer society, a society of mass consumption and a society of (fordist) mass production. A wealthy and seemingly pacified society. The artifacts that sprang out of and circulated in society had changed – with the standardised mass consumer product, i.e. Warhol´s soup cans and Brillo boxes, becoming the emblem of society. Clement Greenberg´s sharp distinction between Art and Kitsch became blurred. Artefacts of the popular – i.e. consumer products and advertisement, comics, movies, fashion, music, etc. – were oscillating between Art and Kitsch, respectively they were neither (high) art nor addressing a stupid sentimentality as does the Kitsch. The Popular became a category of its own. Therefore it seems a natural consequence that art becomes poppy. Vice versa, in the later 1960s popular music or the cinema (“New Hollywood”) even became distinctly artistic. At any rate, Pop Art, in essence, reflected on the Popular. Although Pop Art was innovative and something new, it was not extremely avant-garde. Neither it was obviously critical and expressing an Unbehagen in der Kultur that intellectuals, and various types of people, have been lamenting ever since about so-called consumer society. Rather than that, Pop Art even seemed optimistic. In general, Pop Art reduced itself to being a diagnosis of its time, and little else. And in doing so, Pop Art did it perfectly right. In refraining from being judgemental, Pop Art preserved its charismatic enigma of leaving everything afloat. Andy Warhol left it open whether his art actually meant a lot – or practically nothing at all; whether it was full of meaning, or devoid of any. Therefore his art has the quality of great art – as it remains vibrant, oscillating, alive, present. Pop Art serves as an examination of the depth of the supposed flatness it seemingly portrays. It is, as any great art, an enigmatic clash of dimensions that finally cannot be explicitly sorted out, neither by our intellect or by our perception or imagination.

Pop Art has been deemed superficial. On the one hand because of its boldness and simplicity. Nevertheless, it was due to this boldness and simplicity that Pop Art became a success and a landmark within art history (Pop Art actually surfaced not in New York but in Great Britian and was pioneered by artists like Richard Hamilton, David Hockney or Peter Blake – yet British Pop Art was, in a way, too reflective, too thoughtful and too nuanced, too hesitant to reach its full maturity). On the other hand, politically conscious people may feel offended especially by the superficiality of Pop Art´s leading proponent and, moreover, the defining artist of his time, Andy Warhol. Although Warhol was able to artistically capture an entire age and to establish universal signifiers, he was unable, or unwilling, to reflect on what happened in the second part of the 1960s in America (a time when Pop Art was past beyond its prime, however), notably the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, the race question. Truly, Andy Warhol was not a particularly critical or politically conscious person (and neither Pop Art had been of such qualities). His primary motive was to become famous, a celebrity. And it is true that all his art remained superficial. Warhol himself acknowledged that and at time lamented it. But his art was superficial in a highly evocative way. According to Dali, the genius spiritualises everything. And Andy Warhol spiritualised superficiality. That is no mean achievement. Superficiality is even something that is universal. The Vietnam war and the opposition against it, the Black Panther movement or the feminist avantgarde were things that happened in some space and in some time and that were linked to vocabularies that are somehow outdated. The consumer society (and the desire for fame) still persists. Also Lichtenstein´s art is less superficial than it appears to be. Apart from the mastery of execution and the humor and the versatility of the intellect that keeps his art highly alive, Lichtenstein´s art is evocative, almost an epiphany. His art clearly expresses what painting could be and what painting could be about. And it comes in an unexpected way. It catches by surprise. There is sophistication to it, but it is also easily approachable and tangible for a larger audience. That´s what art should be and should do. The white space of the empty canvas is an abyss. The metaphysical abyss of art. It confronts imagination with what could be, with what could reasonably happen in art. If you are lucky and very imaginative, something will rise up from this abyss that tells a greater truth. This is what happened also In Roy Lichtenstein´s case.  

It was a good idea of the Pop artists not to try to comment a lot about the change within society they reflected on – the transformation into a consumer society. Many intellectuals and wannabe-intellectuals could not evade that trap. However, the transformation into a consumer society is a historical change far too profound for anyone to truly grasp. It is a transformation that will likely have its effects on the rest of human history. Time and again, there is voiced a concern about the “superficiality” consumer society supposedly brings about. But, obviously, what consumer society brings about is something that is good. If anyone laments the superficiality of consumer society, it, well, is probably due to his own superficiality or inability to see and adapt to larger patterns. As already noticed, the Popular became distinctly more artistic in the later 1960s, epitomised for instance in the Beatles´ album Sgt. Pepper´s Lonley Hearts Club Band, arguably the greated and most universal piece of popular music of all time (the iconic cover was done by a true Pop artist, Peter Blake). With Sgt. Pepper the Beatles wanted to express the sentiment of their time, that is to say of carefreeness and of joy. Rightfully, Sgt. Pepper has dominated the lists of best albums of all time, also the famous List of 500 best albums of all time by the Rolling Stone magazine. Yet recently, Sgt. Pepper got positioned in distinctly lower ranks by the Rolling Stone magazine. Much more dominating are now albums by people of colour and by women (notably hip hop records). The best album of all time is now considered to be What´s Going On by Marvin Gaye. I have listened to What´s Going On several times in trying to understand what would be so great about it, but I still can hardly remember anything from it. I do not catch why this album should be super, musically. However, the Rolling Stone magazine is fascinated because What´s Going On deals with racism, police brutality or the Vietnam war. Well, okay. In championing for What´s Going On the people from the Rolling Stone magazine obviously think they are very thoughtful. However I do not think they truly are. The Vietnam war, racism and police brutality against Afroamericans is not something that is truly universal. Nothing of this actually affects me, or anyone I know. When the Beatles want to bring cheerfulness and joy it deems me a lot more universal. Meanwhile I have travelled the world a bit, and I have witnessed that most of the “oppressed” people in this world are conformists all alike. They are not very “conscious” and they are not very interested in politics. They are interested in consumer products. If they have consumer products, they´re happy. They bring them cheerfulness and joy. Therefore Pop Art is universal art. And Sgt. Pepper´s Lonley Hearts Club Band is the preeminent popular music album of all time.