Roy Lichtenstein always had a child’s face, a cartoon face, from the moment he was born until he left the cartoon of this world at the ultrasonic speed of his planes or with the slowness with which the tears of his melancholic and hopelessly in love characters fell. .
Lichtenstein, undisputed superhero of pop art, invincible and whose work has endured time and has connected with the (excessive?) revival of Marvel and DC films, would have turned 100 these days and his work continues to awaken an inextinguishable emotion and launching lightning, thunder, engine flashes and rumblings. Boom. Whaam. Pop. Blam. Wow.
His last name may not be the easiest to write or pronounce, but his work is one of the most recognizable (and less obvious than it seems) in the world. The American artist, from now until well into 2024, will be honored in style in galleries and museums for the way in which he transformed the aesthetics of comic strips, revolutionized it.
It is one of the most universal artistic currencies by magnifying them in every sense: expanding them and taking them out of their usual format, that of the entertainment notebook, that of superheroes, villains, that of trenches and bombings.
It is curious the way in which the artist in love with the work of Rembrandt, Picasso, Daumier or Matisse, to name a few great masters whom he deeply admired, portrayed American society in an apparently easy way, enlarging the comic strips. and exaggerating the grain, the polka dots, of the cheap prints of the vignettes that almost always had a very limited range of colors but that gave an image with the nuances of simplicity.
Now that’s called minimalism. It used to be called poverty of means. In fact, some blonde hair, a trademark of the house, appeared grayish or blue, due to a lack of variety of inks.
It is curious that many artists saw the light with the fevers they suffered, the visions they had while resting in bed… Lichtenstein began to paint in oils and jumped on the abstract expressionist bandwagon but not for long. It was the chewing gum’s fault.
In 1953, at the age of 30, with his baby face, Lichtenstein was still eating chewing gum. One day he bought a package of Bazooka, some chewing gum from the Popps company that included small comic strips as a wrapper.
And the rest would be history if it weren’t for the fact that the artist of pensive girls with medium blonde hair (sometimes gray, due to the chromatic limitation) never stopped evolving.
Far from resting on his laurels, he explored new worlds in his definitive aesthetic, and following the great masters, he painted, printed, worked with ceramics like an artisan and sculpted. Its greatness lies in that range of genres and techniques that can be seen at the Tate in London (where it has a permanent room), in various locations of the powerful Gagosian gallery in New York (a symphony of sculptures), in the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía in Madrid, where it has a sculpture outside titled Brush.
In Barcelona reigns its spectacular sculpture that presides over the seafront and is one of the great sculptural gifts that the city has received. The statue of a deconstructed face is a nod to Gaudí and, with the eye, eyelids and drooping eyebrow to Picasso, of course.
It wasn’t always easy to talk to the artist. One would dial the number of his studio and if an assistant called he would say “right now he is flying” or a similar version would say “he is in full flight”, or even he is “in the middle of something”. Which meant that he was traveling or simply modeling the wings of his fighter-bombers and he didn’t want the bombs to fall in the wrong place.
In the early nineties, that’s how things worked. You were a kid and a veteran editor gave you a phone number that you kept forever. You dialed the phone at the studio of, say, Frank Stella, and the great American artist would get on the phone and answer all the questions about the work of him, Goya, Velázquez. They were different times. Will they return? Lichtenstein was born on October 27, so until next year there are celebrations for a while. One of the most wow-boom-bang-whaam of 2024 will be at the Albertina in Vienna.
But there will be many. You will remember the series of stamps that the US Postal (the American postal service, not the cycling team of cheaters) dedicated to it a few months ago and that in some countries, Bazooka chewing gum continues to inspire children and not so children with its tiny comic strips.
