| Artist: | Lichtenstein, Roy |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title: | Little Big Painting | |
| Date: | 1965 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | Pop Art | |
| Movement: | Pop Art | |
| Materials: | oil & synthetic polymer paint on canvas | |
| Subject: a gestural, action brushstroke, only this one has not been made with an action painting gesture; arrested action painting brought to a standstill; the drip as a cliche, a code; art in the age of mechanical reproduction (Walter Benjamin); mark-making as no longer being self-expressive and existentially freeing; its a now highly stylized; the coded gesture in an age of simulacra (the Hyperreal); a kind of dot matrix version of the action gesture (simulating halftone image reproduction processes); standardizing the gesture Style: the process of painting is at odds with the gesture represented; Lichtenstein's method is highly calculated and not at all spontaneous; it's a slow way of making something look quick; anti-painterly, anti-subjective; paints in the ben day dots of halftone reproduction processes;paints as if he were a printer, simulating a machine aesthetic; freezes the action painter's gesture through his own calculated gesture. Context: age of mass media and mechanical reproduction; self-negation of the cool 60s ("the death of the author"-Roland reference back to the heat of the 50s AbstractBarthes); clearly an ironic Expressionists; suggestion that everything is coded and learned through reproduction. | ||
