Edutainment > Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997 - Citations

Roy Lichtenstein was an intelligent, witty and overt commentator of his own art. What he says gives a better understanding what Pop Art is all about.

First Publication: March 2002
Latest Update: pril 2013

No Roy Lichtenstein Pictures on this Page?

For copyright reasons we cannot show you any pictures of Roy Lichtenstein art works on this web site. That's a pity. But you find a rather popular, easy to read biography on this page. And to make this page look less sad, we show you an art work by a young, emerging Chinese female artist, Poon Shu. You can see many more of her paintings on our website dedicated to contemporary Chinese art.

And I am sure, Roy Lichtenstein would have appreciated Poon Shu's work. ;-)

Super Girl

By Poon Shu - born 1975

Oil on Canvas.

Citations by Roy Lichtenstein

"But my work is not about form. It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things and I'm interested in the way I think other people saw things. I suppose "seeing" at its most profound level may be synonymous with form, or rather form is the result of unified seeing."

"Pop might be a difficult starting point for a painter. He would have great difficulty in making these brittle images yield to compositional purposes. ...Interaction between painter and painting is not the total commitment of Pop, but it is still a major concern - though concealed and strained."

"I had trouble with the brush-strokes too: they looked like slices of bacon or something, they really did not look anything like brush-strokes when I started. And I got this idea that I would use India ink on acetate and make a brush-stroke, because the acetate kind of repels the ink. And then I would copy, I would draw pictures of those and it was just a way of getting an idea for a brush-stroke. It had more interest than I could get by trying to dream one up."

"Anyway, the dots can have a purely decorative meaning, or they can mean an industrial way of extending the color, or data information, or finally that the image is a fake. .... I think those are the meanings the dots have taken on, but I am not really sure if I have not made all this up."

"I am trying to make the drawing as powerful as possible. I start with the color, which I have already visualized, but it usually changes, because the drawing that I have done is not really like the painting. The quality of the colored pencil is not the same as the paint. Also the thickness of lines changes. Because of the dots and the diagonal lines and unmodulated color, I work in a color key that I love to play with. I try to make it different from painting to painting. You do whatever is required to make more of a color or make it brighter or duller or whatever you have to do to give you the sense of wholeness."

Other Pages Related to Roy Lichtenstein

• Okuyama Gihachiro - 1907-1981
• Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997

Author: Dieter Wanczura

Literature source used for this article about Roy Lichtenstein

• Roy Lichtenstein, exhibition catalog of the foundation Beyeler, 1998, ISBN 3-905632-02-0

The images on this web site are the property of the artist(s) and or the artelino GmbH and/or a third company or institution. Reproduction, public display and any commercial use of these images, in whole or in part, require the expressed written consent of the artist(s) and/or the artelino GmbH.

	Web  www.artelino.com