Lichtenstein and Me

The artist, Jon Schueler, along with our new college president, Bud Leake, was in my studio in 1961 or 1962, visiting. I had done an awful painting which included the use of a tampon glued onto the canvas, and Jon started to tell us, mainly Bud, a story. This story was based on my idiotic painting, of course.

It seems this artist they knew had completely lost his mind, and began to paint all this crazy stuff. Here was a perfectly good painter, now losing it, and painting such objects as a Roto Broil 400 and Golf Balls! He surely had lost it!

The story should have died except for the timing. Had it been someone who was lost to obscurity, it would have long since left my mind. But this story was about Roy Lichtenstein. I guess the idea behind the story was to warn me not to do crazy things, like this misguided Lichtenstein person!

In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first Pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965 and included the use of advertising imagery suggesting consumerism and homemaking His first work to feature the large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Benday Dots was Look Mickey ,1961, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. This piece came from a challenge from one of his sons, who pointed to a Mickey Mouse comic book and said; "I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad?"

Not all advice one receives in school is good advice, although the advice to stop doing tampon paintings was a good direction for me.