"As I Opened Fire," Roy Lichtenstein
Along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein helped to usher in a Pop Art revolution in the 1960s. The artist famously borrowed from comic imagery, exaggerating the characteristics of low-resolution industrial printing even as his often single-frame melodramas turned the form's sequential narration on its head.
Ka-Pow! Comics and Cartoons in Contemporary Culture is a new exhibit at Lipscomb University that explores the cultural ubiquity of comic imagery. (Full disclosure: I wrote the introduction for the Ka-Pow! exhibition catalog.) Lichtenstein is represented in the show by a trio of works including two untitled prints borrowed from the collection of the Cheekwood Museum of Art. One is a red-white-and-blue still life of an all-American diner-style meal, including what looks like a BLT and a sweaty glass of Coca-Cola. The other print features a suit-jacket-sleeved arm jutting from the side of the piece to point a finger directly at the viewer. This image includes the exaggerated Ben-Day dots that are the hallmark of the artist's best known work.
