Roy Lichtenstein

This comprehensive publication on Roy Lichtenstein, one of the most influential pioneers of 20th-century art and a key figure in Pop Art, is being released to commemorate the centenary of his birth. Significant major works showcase the key stages of his diverse oeuvre from the early 1960s to his later works: from the famous icons of 1960s Pop Art, the stereotypical blondes and clichéd war heroes that Lichtenstein ironically depicts through the appropriation of Mickey Mouse, love, and war comics, as well as popular advertising motifs, addressing the constructions of femininity and masculinity in the post-war consumer goods industry and the early protests of the American women's, anti-Vietnam, and anti-nuclear movements; to Lichtenstein's art after the art of Picasso, Monet, and the Surrealists; his reimagining of still life; his futuristically styled murals, enamel, and Rowlux paintings; and finally to the self-referential mirror series, interiors, and landscapes, as well as the monumental "brushstrokes" constructed from Ben-Day dots, with which Lichtenstein rejects the subjective artistic expression of the Abstract Expressionists. Lichtenstein's images almost always refer to other images, presenting a second-order reality, while equally drawing from both "high" and "low art." His cartoon aesthetic and imitation of industrial printing techniques are focal points of this publication, as is his previously less-known sculptural work, an art form that Lichtenstein claimed had nothing to do with him.