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Roy Lichtenstein
The cartoon guy. That certainly is one way to describe Lichtenstein but it is not entirely accurate. The American Pop Artist drew inspiration from comic book styles and also from popular advertising motifs not unlike Andy Warhol. Both Warhol and Lichtenstein worked in the commercial graphic design industry. His first painting in a comic strip style was of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. It was a work done for his children. The artist worked with stencils creating rows of oversized dots which led to his paintings looking like they were mass produced when they in fact were not. He didn't want his brush strokes to be visible. Besides paintings he also created lithographs, screen prints, etchings and woodcuts. Sometimes he would combine these mediums in the same piece . Currently there is a traveling exhibit of some of the rarer Lichtenstein works focusing on American India design themes. Lichtenstein saw Native American art was a historical base for American art. It was organized by the Montclair Art Museum in conjunction with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. American Indian Encounters has over thirty paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures, including a rare sketchbook of American Indian design motifs. Roy Lichtenstein's inspiration for these works came after he borrowed a book on the life of George Catlin, the first artist to travel extensively among the tribal peoples of the American West during the 1830s. Lichtenstein described these works as, “mostly reinterpretations of those artists concerned with the opening of the West, such as Remington, with a subject matter of cowboys, Indians, treaty signings, a sort of Western official art in a style broadly influenced by modern European painting.”
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