Many of Roy Lichtenstein’s early paintings appropriated imagery found in comic books. Drowning Girl, samples a page from issue #83 of Secret Hearts, a romance comic book illustrated by Tony Abruzzo and published by DC Comics in 1962. In Abruzzo’s original illustration, the drowning girl’s boyfriend appears in the background, clinging to a capsized boat. Meanwhile, the drowning girl in the foreground laments with closed eyes.
To create Drowning Girl, Lichtenstein cropped Abruzzo’s splash page (a comic book page with a single image surrounded by a frame), showing the woman alone and encircled by a threatening wave. He also changed the caption from “I don’t care if I have a cramp!” to “I don’t care!” and the boyfriend’s name from Mal to Brad. Describing his use of the comics medium, Lichtenstein says, “My work is actually different from comic strips in that every mark is really in a different place, however slight the difference seems to some. The difference is often not great, but it is crucial.”
Critics continue to debate the differences between Lichtenstein’s painting and Abruzzo’s illustration. The similarities continue to invite questions about authorship, style, and the value society ascribes to different forms of art.
Additional text from 2021
Many of Roy Lichtenstein’s early paintings appropriated imagery found in comic books. Drowning Girl samples a page from issue #83 of Secret Hearts, a romance comic book illustrated by Tony Abruzzo and published by DC Comics in 1962. In Abruzzo’s original illustration, the drowning girl’s boyfriend appears in the background, clinging to a capsized boat. Meanwhile, the drowning girl in the foreground laments with closed eyes.
To create Drowning Girl, Lichtenstein cropped Abruzzo’s splash page (a comic book page with a single image surrounded by a frame), showing the woman alone and encircled by a threatening wave. He also changed the caption from “I don’t care if I have a cramp!” to “I don’t care!” and the boyfriend’s name from Mal to Brad. Describing his use of the comics medium, Lichtenstein says, “My work is actually different from comic strips in that every mark is really in a different place, however slight the difference seems to some. The difference is often not great, but it is crucial.”
Critics continue to debate the differences between Lichtenstein’s painting and Abruzzo’s illustration. The similarities continue to invite questions about authorship, style, and the value society ascribes to different forms of art.
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Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923–1997 155 works onlineA key figure in the Pop art movement and beyond, Roy Lichtenstein grounded his profoundly inventive career in imitation—beginning by borrowing images from comic books and advertisements in the early 1960s, and eventually encompassing those of everyday objects, artistic styles, and art history itself.
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Ben-Day dots
An inexpensive mechanical printing method developed in the late 19th century and named after its inventor, illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr.
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Modern art
Art made from the 1880s to the 1970s—a time marked by the growth of cities, the rise of industry, a surge in technologies, and the development of mass media.
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Pop art
A movement comprising initially British, then American artists in the 1950s and 1960s. Pop artists borrowed imagery from popular culture—from sources including television, comic books, and print advertising—often to challenge conventional values propagated by the mass media, from notions of femininity and domesticity to consumerism and patriotism.
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