Waubonsee Community College

Roy Lichtenstein, a film by Michael Blackwood

eng

videorecording

Roy Lichtenstein

electronic resource

881546465

a film by Michael Blackwood

54

In conversation with Roy Lichtenstein, critic Lawrence Alloway places Pop Art on a continuum of twentieth-century art that includes collage, Dada, and Purism in referring to signs and objects of contemporary society; Lichtenstein argues for distinctions between himself, Warhol, Oldenburg, and others. In his Long Island studio, Lichtenstein works on an elaborate composition; one of his 4 major paintings on the theme The Artist's Studio. The evolution of this giant canvas, now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, figures prominently in the film. Finalizing his preparatory drawing, Lichtenstein and his assistant follow the laborious processes that will endow the finished painting with its cool and mechanical look; projecting and outlining the drawing onto the canvas, blocking out the large areas and shapes, and painstakingly refining the smaller details. As Lichtenstein himself describes his style, it simulates the mindless method of industrial process. The lively and elegant Studio painting is a prime example of Lichtenstein's parody of enlarged excerpts from works of artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Leger. Lichtenstein's paintings are about art - its imagery, its stylistic modes. The classic theme of The Artist's Studio provides him with a rich subject, within which he is able to quote from his own earlier works as well as from those of the modern masters. The film concludes with the opening of a Pop Art exhibition at New York 's Whitney Museum, where the artist is joined by other pioneers of the movement, including Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rivers, and Rosenquist. Roy Lichtenstein died in 1997

general

live action