If you're going to the
new Roy Lichtenstein retrospective opening May 22 at the Art Institute of Chicago, do this: Stop at the giant display
graphic that serves as the show's entrance and turn to the right. Hanging just
inside the doorway to the first gallery is Lichtenstein's iconic "Look
Mickey" from 1961, a large replica of a Golden Book panel that shows
Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck fishing. It's the first of several Lichtenstein
works that established him in the 1960s (alongside Andy Warhol) as one of the most important artists of the '60s pop art
movement. The only name on the work, however, is Lichtenstein's; the creator of
the original goes unnamed.
In a 1966 interview
with the BBC, Lichtenstein said
he initially used the panels for reference, copying Mickey and Donald into abstracted
works (two of which are included in the show). But he was more taken with the
originals than his interpretations, and the thought "of doing one without
apparent alteration just occurred."
This, of course —
colorful, subtly altered mimicking of comic book art — became Lichtenstein's
signature.
Now turn to the left.
Just beyond that
doorway is the show's last gallery. Hanging on the wall facing you is one of
the replicas of Chinese landscape art that Lichtenstein painted in the 1990s,
works that used many of the elements — a clean look, bright colors, tiny
Ben-Day graphic dots — he famously employed in his '60s comic art images.
"I love standing
in this spot, seeing old and new," said James Rondeau, the Art Institute's
curator of contemporary art and organizer of the retrospective. "Because
this show is about transformation — how you can take something that exists in
the world and, in order to make it art, rethink and distill, then send it back
in such a way we all learn something about it. That Mickey piece shows us
something about our culture, the way we think about images. Then turn, and you
see where Roy was heading. And it's Lichtenstein saying this Song Dynasty
landscape is the same as that comic art, that both are graphic languages, that
both use pictorial conventions. He's saying art history, fine art and
commercial art are collapsing together, always."
He's also preaching
to the choir.
At least he is in
2012.
Decades ago,
Lichtenstein, without necessarily intending to be, was radical. Years before
any hip-hop artist ever sampled James Brown, his work was a quasi lecture on
art appropriation. And he reignited the once-caustic debate about the
legitimacy of fine art versus popular art — a debate that, decades later, feels
as irrelevant and uninformed as the question of whether a comic book can be
sophisticated and smart.
Indeed, the
Lichtenstein show — which includes more than 160 works and spends considerable
time on less familiar, more abstract periods of Lichtenstein's five-decade
career — is far from radical, not even particularly surprising. If anything,
it's a confirmation of Lichtenstein's points, a kind of conversation about how
stiff the cultural conversation once was. "Roy insisted on the authority
of the artificial. We live in that world now," Rondeau said. "We
don't theorize it. We take it for granted. His ideas are our cultural
oxygen."
And yet, if so, why
not mention the original comic book artists? Even hip-hop (mostly) acknowledges
its inspirations and appropriations and blatant thefts. But in exhibitions of
Lichtenstein's art, almost never.
Hilary Barta is 54,
lives in Lincoln Square and has the sunken, exhausted eyes of a guy who works
far into the night. For the past 30 years, he has been a comic book artist. He
is not a superstar — or an unknown. He started out working for Marvel on X-Men
and The Thing comics; he has since worked as an artist-for-hire (a fairly
common industry arrangement) for every major comic book publisher and, being
widely known in publishing circles as a talented satirist, he's currently
drawing "Simpsons" and"SpongeBob
SquarePants" comics.
He's also the kind of
workaday comic book artist Lichtenstein would have borrowed from, if
Lichtenstein started today.
We asked Barta to
come to a preview of the Lichtenstein show. We got the idea after attending an
Art Institute-sponsored panel in April featuring acclaimed comic book artists.
Though the panel was intended to celebrate Lichtenstein, Neal Adams, a
celebrated superhero artist, let loose: "(Lichtenstein) stole from
everybody," he said. "Every comic book artist curses his name!"
Afterward we called Gary Gianni, a Chicago cartoonist (and former Tribune
illustrator) known for drawing the syndicated "Prince Valiant" newspaper strip. "I
never thought of Lichtenstein as stealing millions from pockets of struggling
illustrators," he said. "But some do see it that way. I think now
that the line between his work and the work he took has blurred so much that
frankly I would rather see a show now about the artists he took from than a
Lichtenstein show."
We invited Geof
Darrow, another Chicago comic book artist, known for "Big Guy and Rusty
the Boy Robot" (as well his designs in the "Matrix" trilogy), to
come with us to the preview. He said he would probably be too incensed to be
very fair: "Why not run a concurrent show of Lichtenstein's art sources
for once?" he asked.
Barta was more
agnostic, more uncertain of his feelings. We stood before the 1961 Mickey
painting.
"My first
thought is that this is not a very good comic book panel," he chuckled.
"This was originally most likely done with paint and a certain amount of
style and well-crafted. But Lichtenstein removed all that style."
As we walked into the
gallery devoted to Lichtenstein's iconic comic art appropriations, he was
struck by the scale. He said he was struck by how cold they were compared with
the originals — how stripped of soul the images seemed.
He walked from piece
to piece, from barking submarine commanders to swooning heroines to blazing
machine guns, identifying the original artists — John Romita, Jack Kirby.
"You know what's incredible," he said, "is how subtle
Lichtenstein is, how muted. They don't come off like a pretentious take on
comic books at all. They're very simple. He clearly made them a very different
thing, no question."
Then he stopped and
read the wall copy
"'Cliches'? They
call these panels cliches?" he asked, more to himself. "Do they
really mean that?" He sounded hurt. He read on. He pointed to a mention of
Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock. He noted that the individual comic
book titles are acknowledged but artists' names are missing. He was not
shocked: "But I think that's condescending. Not from the Art Institute.
It's a general condescension from the art world. They find the thoughtfulness
to cite fine artists but not other artists? Truth is, it probably doesn't occur
to them."
Jack Cowart,
executive director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, has heard the
complaints. He said that Lichtenstein was never sued for copyright infringement
and, when the pieces were initially celebrated in the 1960s, comic book
publishers never raised the issue.
Asked why the artists
are never cited, he said that acknowledging the source material would have made
Lichtenstein's work too much about the original and that viewers wouldn't be
able to take the new work at face value. Rondeau doesn't disagree.
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He said he never
wanted to ground the show in any outside context, "which could become
insistent. I think the (original) work has equal value. I do. But it's just not
my field. It belongs to a study of material culture and illustration."
Rondeau said
Lichtenstein was never disingenuous. Pointing to the large Ben-Day dots inside
a painting of a magnifying glass lens, he said: "See, Roy's showing you
what he did, literally showing you his methods."
Indeed, artist Laurie
Lambrecht, a former Lichtenstein assistant, remembers the man as deliberate,
modest — "He once told me far more talented people worked just as hard,
but their careers never took off like his."
Even David Barsalou,
a retired art teacher in Massachusetts who has been documenting Lichtenstein's
original sources since 1979, said the shaming of Lichtenstein was never his
intention, "just equal recognition for artists often as educated and
visually sophisticated as fine artists." Lichtenstein's "Look
Mickey," for instance, was the work of two Disney artists, Bob Grant and Bob Totten.
Rick Yager, another
illustrator appropriated by Lichtenstein (though none of those works are in the
new show), attended the School of the Art Institute. Barsalou has documented
about 150 such pieces, posting the results on his website, Deconstructing Roy
Lichtenstein.
Joe Kubert, now 85,
is one of the artists Lichtenstein often used. Kubert has never really minded,
he said.
"Appropriating
or not, I think every artist steals," he said. "I have my
motivations, and Lichtenstein had his." Ironically, on the Lichtenstein
Foundation website, a picture of a growling comic book dog illustrates its
warning to any potential copyright violators. It's a near perfect copy of a
growling dog that Kubert once drew.
About midway though
our walk-through, having passed by Lichtenstein's comic book years, his
commercial illustration period, his Ben-Day dot mirrors, his sketch-pad pages,
sculptures and a gallery devoted to several playful parodies of Picasso,
Mondrian and Monet (none of whom are credited in gallery labels either,
incidentally), Barta stopped short before a series of paintings of
Lichtenstein's own studio. He could not pull his eyes from one piece in
particular. It was white and yellow and from 1973. It shows a sofa, telephone,
still-life fruits at the foot of furniture and, hanging on the wall in the
picture, Lichtenstein's 1961 Mickey painting.
Very meta.
"Very
pre-meta," Barta corrected.
The work is bright
and charming, and only half of the painting-within-the-painting shows. Also,
the painting-within-the-painting (hanging above the painted sofa) is smoother
than the earlier, cruder take of the same image that opens the show.
"Don't you think this is more about collecting art than about the work
itself?" Barta asked. "It's definitely Lichtenstein having fun. A
comment on his profession? Don't you think?"
Yes. And maybe.
If there's an
especially glaring omission in this sprawling retrospective, it's one that
can't be helped: A Roy Lichtenstein show in 2012 offers such an opportunity to
discuss how much of our culture was anticipated by his art and methods, it's
hard not to wish we could hear from the artist himself, who died in 1997 at 73.
Then again, Lichtenstein once said his art was "anti-contemplative … anti
all of those brilliant ideas of preceding movements which everyone understands
so thoroughly." He never did say much — not nearly enough.
Said Cowart:
"His work is so seemingly clear we tend to forget what he was actually up
to. And unfortunately, Roy was not good at explaining that. What you see is
what you get. Except when you don't."
Asked about his use
of comic book imagery, Lichtenstein would say he found aspects of commercial
art forceful, overwhelming. A musician could cover a tune and create a
distinct, aesthetically legitimate work, he said, but an artwork that
incorporates a cartoon is seen as a cartoon itself. Whether that translated
into respect for cartoonists whose work he appropriated and never acknowledged
by name is unclear.
Though Lichtenstein's
paintings have been offered by cultural critics as a sign of newfound
appreciation for comic books, cartoonist Art Spiegelman once quipped:
"Lichtenstein did no more or less for comics than Andy Warhol did for
soup."
Walking quickly
through the show's later galleries, Barta swung back and forth between
appreciating Lichtenstein's loving mimicry and wondering why, decades later,
source material remains unacknowledged.
He came across as
seriously conflicted.
"Maybe 20 years
ago, I'd have felt militant," he said. "But I can't deny comics have
a place in the culture now. I can't say Lichtenstein is getting the attention.
Look at (cartoonist) Daniel Clowes' museum show that just opened in California.
But then I'm certainly not speaking for the cartoonists whose work is in this
show.
"As an art fan,
looking at this, it's hard to believe anyone once thought Lichtenstein's ideas
were shocking. But as a comic book fan, when I look at a Lichtenstein version
of, say, a John Romita panel, the meaningfulness on Lichtenstein's end has
mostly fallen away, and what's remained beautiful is the John Romita itself.
Lichtenstein was about changing context, of course. He meant something
different than what the original meant. And yet, with or without him, the
context has changed again. Now I see Lichtenstein's version of a Joe Kubert
explosion and think, 'Someone likes Kubert. But they flattened him in the
process.'"
We pointed to a sign
on the gallery wall. It read, "No photographs, video or film
permitted."
"That's
irony," Barta said. "That's hilarious, actually. Except it
isn't."