Unit X - Susperstitions

Research + Exhibitions - Roy Lichtenstein

This is an exhibitions I have been waiting to see for a long time. I have seen a few painting of Lichtenstein's but never as many as a full exhibition. I have been a huge fan of Lichtenstein since my GCSE'S. Lichtenstein's work was the first i was introduced to when learning how to drawn and about the different types of art. I have always been fascinatedby his style of work, about how it looks so graphic and animated but instead, it's a perfectly drawn out painting.

When looking through Lichtenstein's work, some had no glass case so you could view them up close, I was actually surprised to see how messy some of his work is, having always thought they were perfectly finished off. However when looking close, you could see the original pencil marks left underneath the paint, the dots smudged where his hand caught them and the paint drag lines on the canvas. This is something you would only see close up. As well as the untidiness, I noticed how bright the colours were. The paint was so smooth and even on the canvas which made the colour just pop. Throughout the pop art movement, Lichtenstein started using a stencil to create the dots, drilling into pieces of metal then using it as a stencil, instead of painstakingly painting each dot. You can see on the paintings, where he has dotted the whole canvas, then panting the picture over the top. 

  

What I found most unusual and quite unnerving, was the nudes that Licht
enstein created before his death in 1997. Lichtenstein did not use live model when creating this, but instead he used old comic book drawings of women and imagined them naked and worked from that. I found this a very weird method of working and I don't think it worked very well. His models looked very rigid and scary, there faces had no emotion or no movement in their bodies. They looked wooden and lifeless. 

The exhibition was set out in the different stages of Lichtenstein's life, starting from his famous pop art, to his then nudes. The exhibition was almost like walking through his art-life, seeing how his technique changed and the topics and influences changed. The paintings changed from bright, powerful, large pop art canvases to small tranquil landscape paintings.