delekkerste

So, Jasper Johns' contributions to the art world in your mind will forever be defined by the fact that he made a bronze sculpture of beer cans that was sold by Leo Castelli who could sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

"Yes, but..." 1. Johns is considered by some to be the most important artist of the past 60 years 2. He was doing other art that incorporated representations of everyday objects; works like the beer can sculpture helped provide a bridge from Duchamp to Pop Art 3. Just so we're clear, he cast two bronze cans and painted the beer label on them (i.e., he didn't just plop two beer cans on a bronze base). He was simply making sculptures of everyday modern objects which hadn't been done before 4. There's a long history of pranks and subversive behavior in art, from Duchamp to Cattelan (see the "ArtNews" feature cover story from a couple of months ago); Johns' work was in that tradition and an homage of sorts to Duchamp I understand your concern about the role of marketing in the past half century of art, but I don't think you should allow that cynicism to cloud all the real merit in this art.

By the way, I was at the Neue Gallerie museum yesterday. It was actually my first visit there (a glaring oversight) and, hence, my first viewing of Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which, I have to admit, is amazing in person and much more impressive than I expected. There's also a spectacular exhibition of early German/Austrian photography going on now - room #2 of the exhibition is mindblowingly good. I'd highly recommend it to anyone in the NYC area. I also saw the incredible The Steins Collect exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, which showcases the art collection of Gertrude Stein and her siblings that they assembled (on an upper-middle class type budget) in Paris in the 1900s-1940s. The exhibition ends this weekend and I can't recommend it highly enough, especially if you enjoy Picasso and Matisse. It's just amazing seeing collections like this, the Frick collection in NYC and the Barnes collection in Philly (among others) and to think that these used to be private collections of some of the most important art in Western history. It also makes me wonder if someone with a decent (but not necessarily unlimited) bankroll and a keen eye could build a collection of contemporary art that would be viewed as amazing, say, 30-40 years from now. Or, is it just an insiders' game now and is that no longer possible? Could it still be done in comic art, or did you have to get in on the big land grab when prices were still (relatively) cheap and the best pieces still largely available in the 1980s and 1990s?

Well, given how much art from the past half century-plus can be traced back, in whole or in part, to ready-mades/found objects, moves away from painting and drawing, and towards conceptual art in general, I'd have to say that Duchamp was not only the more influential of the two, but he was by a wide margin. Did you know, though, that it is virtually certain that the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was behind "Duchamp's" famous "R. Mutt" Fountain? ...amazing that de Kooning gave him the drawing to erase! Tom Friedman did an erased version of a Playboy centerfold in the '90s as kind of an homage to the piece - it was on sale at Christie's in March. There's more to it than that. (thumbs u There are many comic collectors and comic art collectors who appreciate all kinds of art. There are also those who don't. In any case, it makes for some very interesting conversation. Nothing wrong with that - if this subject gets anyone's blood pressure worked up unnecessarily, no one is putting a gun to their head to read it.

I'm reading a fantastic book called "The Forger's Spell" by Edward Dolnick. It's about Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren who faked a number of Vermeers in the 1930s and sold them to people like Hitler's right hand man, Hermann Goering. If you like art, crime, 1930s and WWII-era European history, this is the book for you. For the seven years between 1938 and 1945, Van Meegeren's Christ at Emmaus was the most famous and the most admired Vermeer in the world. It was the picture that popped into every art lover's mind when someone said "Vermeer", just as The Night Watch was when someone said "Rembrandt." Utterly fascinating and highly recommended! Gene

Sounds about right. I don't remember a refrigerator door in particular, but he did paint a number of regular doors. An article in New York magazine last year reported on the controversy regarding one such alleged "Basquiat" painting on a bodega door. The bodega had some connection to to Basquiat's drug dealer and there was some speculation that Basquiat's father, who ran the now-closed Basquiat authentication committee, refused to authenticate it because of that reason. I'm not sure where things stand now regarding the art. In any case, I love Basquiat's work - his retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005 was one of my all-time favorites. Similarly, I'd recommend that anyone interested in 1980s NYC art go see the excellent Keith Haring exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum before it goes away. A Basquiat drawing did not meet reserve in this month's Modern & Contemporary Art sale at Heritage. It has a $122,500 BIN price now, though, unfortunately there's not much to it: Basquiat at Heritage

I visited the Yale University Art Gallery for the first time a few months ago, which has an impressive collection of Impressionist & Modern Art. Even if Modern Art is not your thing, it's really something to walk into the gallery and see all of these instantly recognizable, iconic works by many of the biggest names - Picasso, Miro, Mondrian, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Twombly, Rothko, Richter, Basquiat, etc. Like it or not, these are the artists that shaped the way we look at art over the past century and their work has been seared into the public consciousness. Anyone who genuinely loves art I think would enjoy seeing this amazing collection online if you haven't seen it already: Yale University Art Gallery Online (with titles & curator's comments) Yale University Art Gallery Online (enlarged photos only)

...that is barely remembered even with RL's appropriation, without which virtually nobody would know or care about it. If RL had never existed, how much would that original page of OA be worth today? A few hundred bucks? Even in our current reality (not an alternate universe where RL didn't exist), the "I Can See The Whole Room..." original sold for $431 on eBay last year. Not even comic art aficionados seem to value the actual art very highly - apparently the inspiration for a RL painting is worth about 2-3% of a so-so Mark Bagley ASM cover in the marketplace - except that it's priceless to those who insist that no comic art should be considered "low art" and who will defend any and all comic art to the end against any beret-wearing gallery zombie who might deign to look askance at it. BTW, "I Can See the Whole Room..." was sold by Lichtenstein's gallery for $450 in 1961. I don't know how much Whaam! cost the Tate when they bought it in 1966, but we've already established that it was nowhere near the $4 million Heath claims. It's entirely possible that it sold for less than 1% of that amount, maybe 0.1%, of which Leo Castelli would have probably taken close to half. Just to set the record straight.

Chris: 1. It doesn't take a lawyer to predict how a lawyer would defend Lichtenstein, because you can look how other copyright infringement cases are defended. I'm not disagreeing with you on the specific points of law, but how it all comes out in the mix is nowhere nearly as one-sided as you're making it out to be. If it was, then O.J. would have been locked up far sooner than he was. 2. I wasn't around in the early 1960s, but I've done enough reading and am smart enough to make logical assumptions to be able to discern what the environment was like back in the day. Most people here seem to be making no effort at all to place Lichtenstein in the context of his day. Would you guys condemn the racist aspects of "Blazing Saddles" and "Sixteen Candles" from a 2012 viewpoint as well, or would you still respect/enjoy those films and recognize them for being the product of their times as they are? 3. You keep trying to insinuate some kind of sinister effort to keep the original artists down to "preserve the legitimacy of the brand", and trying to make us believe that everything would have been so much better for them had RL only given them their proper due. I just don't think this is reflective of reality. The more likely explanation and outcome is that RL and those that followed didn't bother citing them because few would really have cared (see Chrisco's post above). That may offend you as an OA fan, but it's really just apathy and indifference at work, not a sinister plot. 4. 3 seconds of Under Pressure...repeated many times. Plus, the song hit #1 in 3 countries (including the UK) and was a top-10 hit in a dozen countries.

Let's not forget Cariou vs. Prince, Gagosian, etc. Prince clearly failed on all four grounds of Fair Use, as would have Erro had the Bolland case gone to court. Lichtenstein, though? Not so clear (see below). Here's also a link to a lawyer who argues for loosening copyright laws for the betterment of art & society: Roy Lichtenstein - Copyright Thief? Regarding Lichtenstein, let me crib from a paper I wrote about the Bolland-Erro case: The fine art world has a long history of appropriating images from comic books, starting with “Pop Artists” such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Mel Ramos in the 1960s. Some have argued that, had copyright laws been more aggressively enforced at the time, perhaps “we would have no Lichtensteins.” After all, the artist was known to have used a projector to blow up a panel from a published comic book onto a blank canvas in order to recreate it line by line, and often copied the accompanying text verbatim as well. If there can be any defense for Lichtenstein’s appropriation under the doctrine of Fair Use, it could be argued under two of the criteria set out in Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act: (1) The nature of the copyrighted work and (2) The substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. One could argue that Lichtenstein appropriated only a small portion (one panel from a single comic book issue) of the copyrighted work. Furthermore, comic book artists at the time were largely “work for hire” employees who did not retain any rights to their work, and few considered comic books to be anything but disposable entertainment at the time. And, in most cases, Lichtenstein appropriated images from romance comic books which featured nondescript “real people” and not trademarked characters like Superman or Green Lantern (who feature prominently in works by Warhol and Ramos, for example). In any case, in the less litigious era of the early 1960s, the comic book publishers themselves who held the copyrights did not pursue any action against Lichtenstein and the other Pop Artists, probably for the betterment of art history (and, thankfully, the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years and has long passed for the early pioneers of Pop Art).

It's only intellectually insulting if you think that (a) comic book art in general is too low-brow to be considered fine art, even transformed by someone like Lichtenstein or (b) you make no distinction between the original and Lichtenstein's version, viewing the latter as just a stolen copy. Obviously, the anti-RL people here fall into the latter camp, though you can't help but wonder if there is some insecurity about the former that causes them to adamantly argue, if implicitly, that all comic book art should be considered worthy of being fine art. Lichtenstein took panels from disposable, throwaway entertainment and gave them a voice of their own blown-up in his trademarked style, cropped and with slight alterations, displayed in a gallery (and later museums). Those panels in their original form served only to advance a readily forgettable storyline aimed at gung-ho teenage boys and hormonal teenage girls. In the gallery, they served to highlight the horrors of war and women's issues in a heavily male-dominated society in the 1960s. They affected the entire cultural landscape - and that's to say nothing of the Pop Art revolution in general, advancing the language of art with new subjects and techniques. To equate that impact and worth with the original is preposterous. Fine, give credit where it's due regarding the original inspiration, but let's give Lichtenstein his due as well instead of marginalizing him and insulting the entire mainstream art world as being a bunch of beret-sporting, cigarillo-smoking, black turtleneck-wearing dupes. :doh:

I wrote a whole paper on the Brian Bolland-Erro case (not sure if that's the one you were referring to, as that was 2-3 years ago and the artist is Icelandic). Appropriating an entire cover of a trademarked character and making minimal changes to it is NOT equivalent to what Lichtenstein did. Your Vanilla Ice-Queen analogy is also not equivalent - it's only the same in your mind because you are refusing to distinguish any gradations between art or even different comic art (hence, my "value neutral" comment a while back) while giving the appropriated work an artificially high value and giving little to no credit to Lichtenstein's work as a result. Nobody protested enough to bring a lawsuit against RL, probably because there is little to no chance they would have won given the prevailing attitudes of the day. Even in today's litigious climate, a good lawyer will claim Fair Use and still have a decent shot at winning. Taking a generic panel from a non-character comic book and transforming it sufficiently as RL did to make it his own is NOT the same thing as ripping off an entire cover of a DC comic book or sampling the signature riff of a platinum hit song by two of the biggest names in rock 'n roll history. :doh:

Eddie Campbell (artist on From Hell) on Lichtenstein: in 1968 there was an exhibition of comics at the Louvre, with lots of panels by caniff etc, blown up to canvas size. Horn and Couperie put together the book that went with it and you can still find that. I posit that this is an example of comics being taken seriously on the heels of the Pop art movement. and yes, I'd agree that wasn't Lichtenstein's purpose. he was just looking at junk culture and questioning what's the difference between high and low. and as for the comics he picked, he was deliberately picking the lowest, not caniff or Rip Kirby or any 'name' stuff. and as to which was 'drawn better', i think that's beside the point. There are levels of art. at a certain level it's about how well made the thing is, at a higher level it's about ideas, and the dialogue a society is having with itself. And at that level it is quite irrelevant to talk about skill i think. But yes, a lot of the anonymous stuff is probably more skilful. This sounds to me like what Charles Rosen was warning against in the quote. It's easy to express that high moral attitude now, after comic book artists have fought for their rights over many years, and in the field of music the owners of songs have asserted their rights, and the credit lines at the ends of movies go on for ten minutes. by all means establish legislation that protects intellectual property, but it (all intellectual property... there was a time remember when the concept didn't exist, and in the intervening time it advanced through shades of grey) ... only came to be regarded as such after many years of debate, and it could also be argued that 'High Art's recognition of comics as art, per se (hi, Percy)... contributed to the good. Lichtenstein always asserted that comic book art was art. That's all history. To make heroes and villains out of it is like comic book morality. To do it now is unnacceptable (see the Hughes article linked above) because the goal posts have been shifted, but you can't go retroactively applying that. I was thinking about another moving of goal posts. Today you can't play another person's song in a public performance without dutifully coughing up. But a hundred years ago the income was all derived from sheet music so the owner of the song wanted it to be publically performed by as many stars as possible so ordinary people would want to play it at home on the piano. Nowadays nobody buys sheet music, so the whole game has to work differently. Micropayments for every performance. With RL it's really about quotation. He's lifting one panel out of a whole comic and 'performing' it in a completely different way. It might be like the London Philharmonic doing an disc of adaptations of popular tunes in new arrangements. Okay , so they pay the royalty. but it wasn't always so. As for crediting the original artist. Don't forget that the owner of the art, DC comics mostly, didn't give credit either. Another example of the goal posts moving. Does that change the value of the panel. We probably can't know because we can't go back to 1959 (or whenever he made the first one). There's evidence that William Overgard was pissed, but he was a syndicated strip artist who signed all his work. But this seems terribly small minded to me.

Preserved for posterity.

Thanks, Rich. I agree - a lot of art historians, dealers/gallerists, critics, collectors, curators, etc. probably haven't done a lot of those things either, so I'm not really sure what the relevance is. I can tell you that my girlfriend of many years is a trained and practicing artist who comes from a very modest background and who has shed blood, sweet, tears and more for her craft, so I'm not far removed from the feelings and emotions that a struggling artist experiences. And, yes, I have been actively involved at the Guggenheim Museum for many years, including sitting on one of their acquisitions committees. I could cite a long list of relevant education and experiences to go on top of that, but my point is not to toot my own horn but rather to show that I've actually studied all sides of the issue at hand while many of the comments in these threads show that some clearly have not (some have even been rather unapologetic about that fact). It's not like I don't recognize where a lot of people here are coming from, because I felt similarly at one point - that is, before I actually educated myself on the topic. My opinion changed when I studied the facts with an open mind - perhaps some of yours would do likewise.

As if blowing up the one and shrinking the other to the same size on an HTML page is the best way to compare the two. Nobody is denying for a millisecond that Roy didn't appropriate the examples on the left, and that's all that this bogus comparison "proves". No need for anyone to present their credentials at the door, but it's clear that many people here are speaking from the position of an aggrieved comic fan, as a lot of the statements against Lichtenstein don't make any sense in light of even the most basic facts that are known about the artist and his motivations. I've seen dozens (and not just the comic work) in museums around the world and I have been impressed, as have millions of other people, many of whom are comic book fans and actually think it's cool that the subject matter can and is taken seriously by a lot of people. Some will bemoan that it shouldn't take a Lichtenstein for this material to be taken seriously, but that just speaks to their own opinions, insecurities and axes to grind. Which, I reiterate, would probably be a hell of a lot less had Roy been a nice guy who doled out credit and made friends with the artists of the day (again, if no one else was up in arms about what happened, would anyone here really be either?) It doesn't make the work any less important or meaningful, though, and even most of the appropriated artists seem to have gotten over the fact more than the indignant people on this Board.

On the contrary, Russ Heath and other artists have been mentioned by name in many articles, even if a few freelancers who don't know anything about art may have indicated otherwise. It's not like the originals were such a revelation that even if Roy had titled his work "WHAAM! - based on an original comic art panel by Russ Heath" that people would have been busting Russ' door down, anymore than Andy Warhol made millionaires of the guys who designed Campbell Soup Cans and Brillo boxes. Rich is absolutely right - nobody, not even the artists or publishers themselves thought highly enough of these no-name, no-character panels to even challenge Lichtenstein legally at the time. I also don't see why some people think riffing off the well-known "Pieta" is somehow better than riffing off a no-character, no-name comic panel. Lichtenstein appropriated so little of the whole and substantially changed what he borrowed in both form and purpose that I'm not sure even in today's litigious society (let alone the early 1960s) that a good lawyer wouldn't clear Roy of any charges regarding violation of Fair Use under the 1976 Copyright Act (Chris may disagree, but you can find legal opinions online that would support my assertion - at worst it's debatable and unclear). In fact, I wrote a whole paper about a similar case for a class in art law at NYU a couple of months ago - yes, I actually go to these lengths to study the legal/ethical aspects of art, as well as its aesthetics, history and cultural importance so I have all the facts from both sides and can speak intelligently to them instead of just from the heart or off the cuff. You make it sound like it was some sort of deep, dark secret that Lichtenstein appropriated these images when, in fact, it was well known and well documented. People just didn't care because this art was considered to be disposable and would have just been lost to the dustbin of history (or so it was thought at the time) had Lichtenstein not done something with them. Furthermore, Lichtenstein riffed on numerous other artists than Russ Heath - Monet, Picasso, Mondrian, etc. But, as with the comic art, he did it his way to evoke a different aesthetic and point, just as he did with the comic strips. To call these straight copies or bad copies also totally misses the point. You need to examine Lichtenstein in the context of the Pop Art movement and that period of art history - it may seem to some slighted comic fans as larceny in 2012, but, at the time, he helped break new ground and his importance and enduring influence on the art world and popular culture remains strong and undeniable. Regarding his early 1960s paintings, Lichtenstein broke ground with new ideas (the transformation of commercial objects and images - including everyday objects and advertisements, not just comic art), new techniques (utilizing Benday dots and other techniques to mimic industrial/commercial printing processes - some of you guys criticizing the alleged poor technique clearly need to do some research to at least find out what Lichtenstein's most basic motivations were!) and new contexts (e.g., focusing on women's issues or war issues outside of a romance or war comic book recontextualizes the image and sends out a very different message). I can assure you that standing in front of a Lichtenstein painting evokes a very different set of thoughts and feelings than, say, reading a copy of "Secret Hearts" or "Our Army At War". To say that is just copying lines out of a comic book panel belies either real ignorance or an axe to grind on the part of the speaker, as is the implied notion that one cannot be a fan of both Lichtenstein and comic art because the former somehow slighted and condescended to the latter. I appreciate good artwork in whatever form it may take, and if it's good comic-themed artwork, so much the better. Would we even be having this conversation if Roy had credited all his sources and all the great '60s comic artists loved him for the attention he brought to the medium? It seems like most people here just hate everything he did because he seemed to be a bit of a jerk who didn't drink the comic art Kool-Aid but benefited tremendously from it (which, deeper study shows, is not wholly correct).

It's not like we didn't already know that Russ Heath was the artist of the source material. And, as such, it's not like he hasn't already benefited from the limited association with Lichtenstein already. How much more do you think he would have benefited had he been explicitly credited? Do you think he would have gotten more comic work? Do you think Leo Castelli would have signed him up to do fine art? I think it's highly probable that his life would have turned out pretty much exactly the same way, same for all the other artists whose material Lichtenstein appropriated. Do you think they'd all be living in mansions, rolling deep with their posses and poppin' Cris' in the back of their Bentleys had Roy mentioned their names in the liner notes? I'm with you that RL should have given credit where credit was due, but that Russ Heath has fallen on hard times has nothing to do with any lack of attribution on Lichtenstein's part. And I'd really like to know where Russ got that $4 million number from. It may have been appraised at that level at some point, but Roy surely didn't see it when he sold it in 1966. Even Picassos weren't selling for 7-figures yet back then. :doh:

Exhibit defies artist’s claim that his work is empty of ideas BY MARGARET HAWKINS Last Modified: May 13, 2012 02:11AM Andy Warhol famously said, “I like boring things.” Roy Lichtenstein, the world’s second most famous Pop artist but arguably the better one, painted boring things. He did it in a way that made the whole world look, and therein lies the paradox of Pop — boring subject, riveting art. “Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective” will open at the Art Institute of Chicago on Wednesday, May 16. The show will be the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work since his death in 1997, and its international scope confirms Lichtenstein’s place in 20th-century art. Organized jointly by the Art Institute and the Tate Modern, in London, and curated by James Rondeau and Sheena Wagstaff, of those two museums, respectively, the exhibition begins in Chicago but after that will travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Modern and, finally, the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the fall of 2013. Rondeau and Wagstaff put the show together over a period of five years. They worked closely with Lichtenstein’s widow, Dorothy, and with the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, in New York, which operates out of the artist’s home and studio in Manhattan’s West Village. The curators began by reviewing nearly 2,000 documented works produced by Lichtenstein during a career that spanned almost 60 years. From that they narrowed the show down to a relatively spare selection of 130 paintings and about 30 additional objects, including drawings and even some sculpture. “We tried to select the very best work from each moment in the career,” said Rondeau. He pointed out that while a good selection of Lichtenstein’s most famous work, his comic strip-based paintings, will be in the show, they represent only a small portion of the artist’s career and are not the exclusive focus of the exhibition. ‘Comic strip guy’ Still, ask the man on the street, or even the woman at the museum, about Roy Lichtenstein and nine times out of 10 you’ll get, “The comic strip guy? I love that stuff!” “It’s not necessarily his best work,” said Rondeau, though he acknowledges the phenomenal place these paintings hold in the public imagination. “They have the icy cool of scared icons,” he said, explaining their almost universal appeal. “They are defining images of our time. But Roy was so much more beyond the sensationalism of those early paintings.” Lichtenstein was 40 and already an established artist when he suddenly became famous for painting huge, made-up comic strips, and after that he went on to do much else. “After 1966, he applied that same style to a wide range of subject matter,” Rondeau said. “Using the same building blocks — heavy black outline, handpainted Ben-day dots — that language persists throughout his career. The style takes on a life of its own.” The style is Lichtenstein’s painterly interpretation of mechanical printing, which it imitates so precisely as to be mistaken for it. In these often enormous, sometimes deceptive inventions, glamorous-looking girls speak and think their vacuous thoughts in big bubbles, and it’s all larger than life. The monumentality of these works — in contrast to the 3-inch newspaper strips that inspired them — lends much to their seeming significance, despite glaringly and intentionally trivial plot lines. Five-foot-tall “M-Maybe” shows the head of a beautiful and perturbed looking blond whose thought bubble says, “M-Maybe he became ill and couldn’t leave the studio!” The head of the girl in “Drowning Girl” (“I Don’t Care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!”) is nearly 6 feet tall. Lichtenstein used that contrast to subtle effect, playing with the public’s belief that comic art, and anything painted in that style, was lowbrow and trivial. The work forced viewers to rethink their assumptions, even while Lichtenstein claimed his work was not about ideas. Lots of symbolism Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation, warns viewers not to take this claim, or the apparent simplicity of Lichtenstein’s paintings, at face value. “Roy said his work was meant to be blank, and not about ideas, but his work was very complicated,” he said. “The paintings are loaded with symbolism, irony, parody and a synthesis of human emotions. “Roy was trying to make it look ‘dumb.’ It allowed him to hide his thought and his process behind this perfect surface.” Cowart described Lichtenstein as a consummate craftsman and explained how painstaking he was in painting the irregular dots “to get them just perfect.” Likewise with the campy text he used. “It was very crafted,” Cowart said. “Sometimes he invented it, sometimes he found it and changed it.” Like Warhol, Lichtenstein was all about exploring and exploiting the newly accessible world of mass reproduction for the purposes of high art. “He knew that the eye can sometimes tell the mind what to think, and he enjoyed that tension,” Cowart said. “He believed in the science of vision, and he probably read Scientific American more than he read Art Forum.” “He’s giving you something you don’t think you’re getting,” Cowart said, explaining the layered satisfaction of looking at Lichtenstein paintings, the way at first they seem beautiful and deliciously trivial but then gain traction in the intellect over time. Ordinary made fascinating Exactly what Lichtenstein is giving the viewer is the subject of much scholarly analysis in the 300-plus-page catalog that accompanies the exhibition. The work speaks for itself, too, and the “dumb” objects may speak most clearly. Some of the “boring” objects Lichtenstein makes fascinating: coffee cups, washing machines, step-on garbage cans, spray cans, hot dogs, engagement rings, a ball of twine. Comparisons to Warhol are inevitable, both professionally and personally. “They were polar opposites,” according to Rondeau. “They shared a pop sensibility, the embrace of the commonplace and the clichéd,” he says, but Lichtenstein “was not invested in boredom in the same provocative way that Warhol was.” Cowart, who knew both men, agrees. Warhol’s celebrity and public persona were integral to his art, he says, while “Roy was more classical than Andy. He liked to stay in the studio and work.” Work, he did. Cowart described his routine. He lived “above the shop” and went to work downstairs every morning and out to lunch with his studio staff at 1 p.m., then back to work until dinner and later continued to draw through the evening. His Manhattan studio — he had two, the other on Long Island — was a large and airy light manufacturing space with 14-foot ceilings and big windows, that he acquired in the late ’80s and stripped back to bare floors. After a brief few years making the paintings he’s most famous for, Lichtenstein moved on. Later work included his brushstroke paintings — absolutely flat paintings that resemble textured brushstrokes, and graphic representations of landscape, sometimes painted, sometimes collaged, but always composed of dots. From the 1970s on, Lichtenstein riffed on art history. In paintings based on the work of Monet, Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso, Brancusi and De Kooning, he continued to challenge assumptions about low and high art. But it was at the very end of his life, Rondeau and Cowart agree, when Lichtenstein was possibly making his best work. “He returned to the brushstroke for the first time in 50 years,” Rondeau said of this late work. “The exhibition is meant to show the arc of his career and it does. He started with the expressive use of paint and went back to it at the end.” Margaret Hawkins is a local freelance writer.

Yeah, too bad it's factually incorrect. Lichtenstein sold Whaam! to the Tate museum in London in 1966, at which point no Lichtenstein would have been priced anywhere near $4 million (not to mention he likely would have discounted the piece significantly to get it into the museum). In fact, no work of art by a living artist sold for even $1 million until 1980 (by which point we had suffered huge price inflation from the late 1960s through the 1970s). While I am saddened to hear of Mr. Heath falling on hard times, the fact is that his life would be no better off had Lichtenstein never existed, and he would have no more money in his pocket had Lichtenstein explicitly credited the source idea of the painting to him.

Just finished reading the short e-book (available for Kindle) Con Art - Why You Ought to Sell Your Damien Hirsts While You Can by Julian Spalding. The book lambasts producers and enablers of what the author calls "conceptual contemporary [con] art", with Damien Hirst the chief offender (though Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and others are also singled out for shame). I didn't agree with all of the author's conclusions, but he did make some good observations, particularly about "found objects" and the limits to how artistic photography can actually be, as well as some of the nonsense being purveyed in the marketplace by galleries and museum curators. I also respected the fact that the author is an art critic and former curator, and was keen to highlight the truly good/great art that's been produced over the past century (he's not just some Philistine buffoon bashing all art created after 1900). It's a very short (44 page) read and well worth it.

I really didn't do that if you reread my post. You're reading something that isn't there. I spoke only about this particular piece of artwork. FWIW, I've enjoyed some of the lively banter about modern art the last couple years here. Its forced me to have a better understanding of why I do or don't care for certain pictures. Regarding this and the other points, I was talking about the general tenor of the debate here over the past few months and not just singling out your last few posts.

Well, I would say this: 1. If you don't think it is beautiful/poignant/moving, why not? Is it because it looks too much like a throwaway, disposable no-name comic book panel? Because I'd like to believe that this panel of comic art, while being nothing special in its original context, has been made to be beautiful, mysterious, poignant and enchanting in the way Lichtenstein has transformed it and put it into a different context. That it manages to evoke the kinds of thoughts and feelings that it does says something positive both about the artist and the potential of the comic book medium - it's not just lowbrow kiddie stuff. 2. There's no doubt that money does skew perception, but it's not just the money, but what it represents - its historical importance (innovation, breaking new ground, capturing the zeitgeist of the time, becoming iconic, etc.), the cachet/reputation of the artist, etc. My girlfriend makes some really cool art, but obviously I'm going to look at it in a different way than a $45 million Lichtenstein. That's just a case of it is what it is. And, as you said, it's not like this is something unique to the fine art market. 3. I can understand that this painting might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I suspect that most people who like fine art but who don't like the painting probably think less of it precisely because it is comic book-related and thus too simple/ordinary/low brow for their tastes. That a bunch of comic book fans think that this is "a turd" just tells me that there are perceived slights to the comic book medium by the artist not crediting the source material that is clouding people's opinions. If Lichtenstein had attributed all his sources and all those creators became huge fans of his and the feeling in the comic book community was that he did a great service in helping comic books be taken seriously, I bet there would be a lot of fans here instead of critics. I can understand if people think the artist is a turd of a person, but, putting that aside, the art is beautiful, important, iconic and reflects positively on the comic book medium (regardless of the artist's own views). I like good art, and if it's good comic-themed art, so much the better. Like a lot of you guys, I was not a big fan of contemporary art at first (and, I remain much more of an Old Masters kind of guy). But, I have to say that Modern/Contemporary has really grown on me the more I've learned about and studied it, and am able to appreciate how the history of art has progressed over the past century. To call that drinking the Kool-Aid I think is pretty unfair - I think before condemning the art world based on preconceived notions, one should actively study and participate in it with an intellectually honest, open mind first (which is exactly what I've done). That's not to say that a lot of the criticisms aren't valid - I'm currently reading the book Con Art - Why You Ought to Sell Your Damien Hirsts While You Can (like I said, I'm keeping an open mind) which does a good job of pointing out some of the more egregious examples - but to paint the entire contemporary art world with a broad brush, armed with criticisms that could just as easily be applied to comic OA or any number of other collecting disciplines, strikes me to be a bit unfair.

The prices just get nuttier and nuttier, but the artwork is beautiful. In spite of its overt comic book style, it still manages to be a moving and poignant stolen moment of a sleeping girl, as much as any photograph or Old Master rendering of the same subject, without the use of any words or backstory as in the original printed comic book. I don't know what kind of value-neutral world some of you guys live in, but to think that the original panel in a comic book speaks to the reader/viewer in remotely the same way, or is somehow equal to or even superior because it was the source material for Lichtenstein's work, is just That said, the mood of the market (not just in contemporary art, but across many art/collectibles categories) feels disturbingly like late 2007-early 2008 to me, with people paying up with abandon despite the fact that the global economy is clearly showing signs of rolling over (with Europe sliding into a Depression with a capital D). I would not be at all surprised to see another hiccup in the art market in late 2012 or early 2013, much as we saw in late 2008 and 2009 (and, aside from the best of the best, most art/collectibles are still below their peak prices achieved in 2006-2008). I would not be at all surprised to see people point (in hindsight) to the $120 million sale of The Scream as an inflection/turning point in the art market, much as Damien Hirst's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever sale in September 2008 marked the top of the overall contemporary art market to date.

Chris, will you be leading the protests against this? Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective at The Art Institute of Chicago Opens May 16 At the very least, I expect a strongly worded letter to the Director of the AIC and to the editor of the Tribune.