|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 14:02:25 GMT -5
Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 17, 2015 14:02:25 GMT -5
Ooh. But he's completely changing the context that the art was presented in, and I think that has real value as a thought experiment. Plus he's freely acknowledging he did swipes.) If nothing else it gave Russ Heath and others some nice free publicity. And Russ (at least) doesn't seem TOO mad about it. I've never heard that Lichtenstein acknowledged the original artists in any way. People have done decades worth of detective work to track down the original images that Roy copied, precisely because Lichtenstein wasn't admitting that he'd copied anything. He admitted to "nominally tracing" although looking back he was A LOT more of a jerk than I remember - He basically considered comics art to be akin to assembly line work, with the individual artists being more-or-less meaningless. Still, while I disagree with his motives, I think his work was an interesting thought experiment - how much does changing the context change the art? And I agree that Russ Heath's stuff was good enough to hang in a gallery! |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 14:34:37 GMT -5
Post by Rob Allen on Mar 17, 2015 14:34:37 GMT -5
Yes, it was an interesting idea - changing the context doesn't really change the art itself, but people react to it differently. And lots of comic art is indeed good enough for a gallery, and I'm happy to have seen comic art in a couple of galleries. I'm especially happy that the artists whose work I saw were being celebrated, not treated as anonymous assembly-line workers.
There are a couple of things that make me turn a jaundiced eye to Lichtenstein's view that the artists were "meaningless." He served in the Army for a while, and was assigned to the art staff of some Army publication. His direct superior there was Sgt. Irv Novick. Guess which artist's work Roy copied more than any other? Irv Novick. He knew who those artists were, or could easily have found out - they were all in and around New York. I still think Lichtenstein just didn't want to admit that he was copying the work of others and presenting it as if it were all his own.
|
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 14:41:30 GMT -5
Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 17, 2015 14:41:30 GMT -5
That's interesting - I knew Roy L. copied Novick (although I didn't know it was more than once) but I didn't know they knew each other. But, although he was kind of dismissive about it, Lichtenstien did admit to copying. , even using the word "copying." (And "nominally," but still "copying.") He wasn't really THAT dishonest about his process, he just didn't want to deal with the idea of comics artists as real people. Side note: I also like the idea that comics panels, out of context, can be pretty freaking funny. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 14:55:03 GMT -5
Post by Rob Allen on Mar 17, 2015 14:55:03 GMT -5
That's definitely true. Lots of things are hilarious out of context.
|
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 20:28:46 GMT -5
Post by thwhtguardian on Mar 17, 2015 20:28:46 GMT -5
That's interesting - I knew Roy L. copied Novick (although I didn't know it was more than once) but I didn't know they knew each other. But, although he was kind of dismissive about it, Lichtenstien did admit to copying. , even using the word "copying." (And "nominally," but still "copying.") He wasn't really THAT dishonest about his process, he just didn't want to deal with the idea of comics artists as real people. Side note: I also like the idea that comics panels, out of context, can be pretty freaking funny. That link isn't at all how Lichtenstein is usually presented, and understandably so when one reads that the author of the article is also an author of a book thats sales are undoubtedly built on Lichtenstein's good standing, further it's hosted on the publisher's site which is also a museum that is supporting a large Lichtenstein exhibition ...which makes me feel that you're not going to get anything near an impartial view there. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 22:10:01 GMT -5
Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 17, 2015 22:10:01 GMT -5
That's interesting - I knew Roy L. copied Novick (although I didn't know it was more than once) but I didn't know they knew each other. But, although he was kind of dismissive about it, Lichtenstien did admit to copying. , even using the word "copying." (And "nominally," but still "copying.") He wasn't really THAT dishonest about his process, he just didn't want to deal with the idea of comics artists as real people. Side note: I also like the idea that comics panels, out of context, can be pretty freaking funny. That link isn't at all how Lichtenstein is usually presented, and understandably so when one reads that the author of the article is also an author of a book thats sales are undoubtedly built on Lichtenstein's good standing, further it's hosted on the publisher's site which is also a museum that is supporting a large Lichtenstein exhibition ...which makes me feel that you're not going to get anything near an impartial view there. I come from an art history background and, to the rest of the real world, yeah this basically is how Lichtenstien is presented.
Anyway, the only thing that really matters is the one direct quote. The site probably has different biases than mine or yours, but if they're not forging/inventing quotations, it doesn't matter. This is proof that Lichtenstien flat out used the word "copying" to describe his work.
|
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 23:10:42 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2015 23:10:42 GMT -5
You also have to understand that crediting the artists (if he was even able to do so, did the original publishers even credit the artists?) would have done NOTHING for their careers, and the fine art crowd who wanted to look at what is essentially a blown up still life of a piece of mechanically printed media could not possibly care less about the comic book the original panel that inspired that work came from.It's really not the same thing as swiping comics for use in comics, not even close. If I painted a picture of the newsstand in our banner here, would is be plagiarism if I didn't credit the artist of each and every one of those covers? Because that was the point of Lichtenstein's art. It was a study of the four color printing process. Which is why it was blown up and the pigment pixels were accentuated. And like I said, I am not sure if the artists were credited in the comic books or not, but at the time it was common to not credit them. Can you blame someone from outside the industry overlooking etiquitte that developed later when the actual industry itself did the same? Did the artists even expect credit for their work?
|
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 23:38:53 GMT -5
Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 17, 2015 23:38:53 GMT -5
I think they should have been credited as more than interchangeable cogs in an assembly line, which is how Lichtenstien viewed them. At the very least that eliminates any sort of humanistic element from his art which would have made it function as anything more than a fairly shallow thought experiment.
(I'm not THAT big a fan, you guys.)
|
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 17, 2015 23:58:08 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2015 23:58:08 GMT -5
I think they should have been credited as more than interchangeable cogs in an assembly line, which is how Lichtenstien viewed them. At the very least that eliminates any sort of humanistic element from his art which would have made it function as anything more than a fairly shallow thought experiment. (I'm not THAT big a fan, you guys.) Were the publishers of the source material any better though? We're so forgiving of people like Stan Lee for things like Whitewash Jones because that's just "how things were" back then. But not crediting cartoonists is also how things were back then, and in my opinion, the lesser of the two evils. Being all bent out of shape over Lichtenstein and not Lee doesn't make sense to me. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 18, 2015 3:22:39 GMT -5
Post by the4thpip on Mar 18, 2015 3:22:39 GMT -5
Dixit Wally Wood: "Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up." I am surprised that post got so many "likes." I always hated that quote. I feel it cheapens the art of comic books and justifies lazy, uninspired work like that of Greg Land. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 18, 2015 3:57:02 GMT -5
Post by Paradox on Mar 18, 2015 3:57:02 GMT -5
It was a different era. Comic artists weren't "creative types", they were commercial artists, where that kind of attitude was commonplace. Churn it out, it doesn't have to be that good, just fast.
Wood was an asshole and a drunk, anyway. He drew purty pictures, but the way he ran his studio was exploitative (although, again, not that unusual for the time).
|
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 18, 2015 5:55:47 GMT -5
It was a different era. Comic artists weren't "creative types", they were commercial artists, where that kind of attitude was commonplace. Churn it out, it doesn't have to be that good, just fast. Wood was an asshole and a drunk, anyway. He drew purty pictures, but the way he ran his studio was exploitative (although, again, not that unusual for the time). Wood also came up with the "22 panels that always work", a list that is more germane to a mass-production mindset than to a purely creative one. I can't recall if he was the one who gave this tip about how to make a New York city background without effort... You take a black and white photograph and photocopy it, the copy the copy again and again (losing details each time) until it looks like a rough drawing. I thought it was pretty clever, if a bit of cheating. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 18, 2015 10:14:24 GMT -5
Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 18, 2015 10:14:24 GMT -5
It was a different era. Comic artists weren't "creative types", they were commercial artists, where that kind of attitude was commonplace. Churn it out, it doesn't have to be that good, just fast. Wood was an asshole and a drunk, anyway. He drew purty pictures, but the way he ran his studio was exploitative (although, again, not that unusual for the time). Not remotely unusual. It was the standard practice of the day in the comic strip industry and pretty normal in most commercial art studios. It was the rare comic strip "creator" that didn't have multiple assistants toiling away as soon as it was popular enough to afford them. The Al Capp/Ham Fisher feud started when Capp was an assistant on Joe Palooka. He then turned around and did pretty much the same crap to his assistants on Lil Abner. |
|
|
|
Swipes
Mar 18, 2015 11:40:18 GMT -5
Post by berkley on Mar 18, 2015 11:40:18 GMT -5
I think they should have been credited as more than interchangeable cogs in an assembly line, which is how Lichtenstien viewed them. At the very least that eliminates any sort of humanistic element from his art which would have made it function as anything more than a fairly shallow thought experiment. (I'm not THAT big a fan, you guys.) I think it was a legitimate artistic idea but, exactly as you say, not a very profound one. If he had done one such painting and then moved on to other ideas I might feel some respect for him as an artist. But to make his entire career out of doing that same thing repeatedly marks him as little more than a con-artist, in my eyes. There's another guy around now who's hit upon a similar schtick: he takes paintings done for old science-fiction paperback covers and re-paints them, with minimal changes, on a larger canvas. That's it. Same idea of taking a piece of popular or commercial art and re-contextualising it, which is itself only a more specific instance of the broader idea that anything at all can become or be made into art by the re-contextualising hand and mind of the artist. To me, Marcel Duchamp already exhausted this idea with Fountain. From wikipedia: |
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,201 
|
Swipes
Mar 18, 2015 12:41:18 GMT -5
MDG likes this
Post by Confessor on Mar 18, 2015 12:41:18 GMT -5
I think they should have been credited as more than interchangeable cogs in an assembly line, which is how Lichtenstien viewed them. At the very least that eliminates any sort of humanistic element from his art which would have made it function as anything more than a fairly shallow thought experiment. (I'm not THAT big a fan, you guys.) I think it was a legitimate artistic idea but, exactly as you say, not a very profound one. If he had done one such painting and then moved on to other ideas I might feel some respect for him as an artist. But to make his entire career out of doing that same thing repeatedly marks him as little more than a con-artist, in my eyes. Just to correct you on one point, berk: Roy Lichtenstein did a lot more stuff than just the pop art comic book homages/parodies that he's best known for. These images below are all paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and, although they all discernibly bear traces of his signature style, I don't think you can call these the work of an artistic one trick pony...      Personally, I really like the majority of Lichtenstein's work, but not just because some of it has obvious comic book associations. I also would contend that Lichtenstein's appropriation of comic book panels doesn't really count as "swiping". The reasons I say that are because a) that type of appropriation was almost completely unheard of at the time and the revolutionary originality of the concept negates any concerns about plagiarism in my view, and b) Roy regarded the essence of pop art as being an attempt to create industrial, unoriginal artwork anyway. In this respect he shared much in common with Andy Warhol, of course, who even went as far as calling his studio The Factory, just to ram the point home. So, these comic-inspired paintings were Lichtenstein's attempt at commenting on disposable, early '60s consumerist culture by taking the everyday objects of modern life (like mass produced comic books, for example) and putting them up on the gallery wall. I presume that this was why he didn't give credit to the likes of Irv Novick, because the anonymity of the builders of our brave new, mass-produced, consumerist world (in this case comic book artists, but it could've just as easily been transistor radio designers) were completely unknown to the general populace. It's the same reason Andy Warhol never credited the graphic designer who came up with the packaging for Campbell's soup cans or Brillo boxes. Also, as an aside, I believe I'm right in saying that the likes of Whaam! and Drowning Girl were something of an attack against the over-earnest abstract impressionist movement of the day. |
|
