ROY

LICHTENSTEIN
ARTIST PRESENTATION
MEGHAN REILLY
 ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997) was one of most influential figures in the pop art movement. His style largely
derived from comic strips, portrayed the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life. Using
bright, strident colors and techniques borrowed from the printing industry, he ironically incorporated mass-produced
emotions and objects into highly sophisticated references to art history.

He became famous for his bright and bold paintings of comic strip cartoons as well as his paintings of everyday
objects. He was one of a group of artists making art in the 1960s who were called pop artists because they made art
about 'popular' things such as TV, celebrities, fast food, pop music and cartoons.

Although best known as a painter, he made different types of art including sculpture, murals, prints and ceramics.

Lichtenstein chose colours carefully, to imitate the four colours of printers’ inks. He also used Ben Day dots, a
system invented to increase the range of colours available to newspaper printing

Lichtenstein is famous for his use of cartoon strips from American comic books, which were very popular the
1950s. He admired the skill of the comic book artist, who could create complex stories of love and war in cartoon
form.
IN THE CAR
 PRESENTATION NOTES
In the Car is a 1963 pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. The painting is based on the September 1961 comic book series Girls' Romances. After 1963, Lichtenstein's comics-based women look crisp, brittle, and uniformly
modish in appearance. This particular example is one of several that is cropped so closely that the hair flows beyond the edges of the canvas. As with most of his early romance comics, In the Car consists of "a boy and girl"
subject. It is described as a tense, melodramatic graphic single-frame depiction of a romantic dialogue between a man and woman. In the Car evokes a mood of resignation, with silence apparently prevailing as the woman
stares stonily out the window. This high quality art print has been expertly produced on medium weight art stock (satin finish) using lightfast pigment based inks resulting in a sharp, vivid image with a high degree of colour
accuracy.

The painting itself depicts a man and a woman in a red car, with speed lines indicating their motion in the typical comic book fashion. The man has bluish hair and is wearing a suit and tie, looking somewhat sternly at the
woman beside him. The woman is blond with pearl earrings and a leopard-print coat. She has an irritated look on her face and stares straight ahead as the car speeds forward. Little else is visible in the painting because even
parts of the original panel that inspired it are cropped out. Besides the two people, only part of the windshield, part of the steering wheel, and part of the outside of the car are visible. The background is rather indistinct.
This image is typical of Lichtenstein's work, and demonstrates his fascination with women in the midst of love affairs with men who were treating them unfairly. The original comic book panel where this work took its
inspiration depicts a woman angry at herself for eschewing her prior commitments in order to ride in a car with an apparently irresistible man. Many of his other paintings deal with the similar melodramatic subject of a woman
fawning over a man, or else suffering tragedy from her romance. The woman's look is also quite faithful to Lichtenstein's style, as he tended to prefer very uniform comic book women with a very stereotypical style about them.

There are a few differences between the original panel and Lichtenstein's paining, though not that many. For one, the speed lines, though present in the original panel, take on a harder look in the painting. The colors are also
brighter, more basic, and less realistic. For example, the man's hair is no longer brown, but a distinct bluish color, and though the woman's hair is a more natural-looking blond in the original comic, her hair is a much brighter,
unrealistic yellow in Lichtenstein's version. Similarly, the woman's coat is a much brighter yellow than the flat orange of the original. The expressions on the subjects' faces are also subtly altered to depict more of a sense of
irritation, as if they are sitting side by side in the car after a disagreement and have resigned themselves to a state of silence. The tension is very visible, and gives the viewer a sense of a tumultuous relationship that may be on
the verge of going sour.

In the car is a classic example of Lichtenstein‘s work, probably one of the most iconic works of art around. It’s really bright and colorful, you can recognize it with ease and it touches on gender stereotypes of American culture.
It depicts the square slicked back and suited idealized American man, the glamorous independent stylish American blonde sitting in a bright red car. The expressions are exaggerated, they are dramatic yet mundane between the
two figures and he wonders what she is thinking and what he is thinking. The color range used is perfect for the idea.