All of it had an impact – as did happenings – because I could see that art was changing from expressionism, which I was doing at the time, or thought I was doing. But it wasn’t the direction I really wanted to go.
ROY LICHTENSTEINAll of it had an impact – as did happenings – because I could see that art was changing from expressionism, which I was doing at the time, or thought I was doing. But it wasn’t the direction I really wanted to go.
ROY LICHTENSTEINIm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any.
ROY LICHTENSTEINThere must be something about art… almost all cultures have done art. It’s a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that.
ROY LICHTENSTEINArt doesn’t transform. It just plain forms.
ROY LICHTENSTEINBut when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.
ROY LICHTENSTEINPicasso’s always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.
ROY LICHTENSTEINA number of artists have done things with Mickey Mouse – including Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. He’s such an American symbol, and such an anti-art symbol.
ROY LICHTENSTEINEverybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there’s another purpose to it.
ROY LICHTENSTEINPop Art looks out into the world. It doesnt look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.
ROY LICHTENSTEINColor is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about.
ROY LICHTENSTEINAnd I dont really want it to carry one. Im not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way.
ROY LICHTENSTEINI was at Rutgers University, and that was a center for Fluxus in a way. But it wasn’t what I was interested in.
ROY LICHTENSTEINI’m never drawing the object itself; I’m only drawing a depiction of the object – a kind of crystallized symbol of it.
ROY LICHTENSTEINI think the meaning of my work is that it is industrial, it’s what all the world will soon become. Europe will be the same way, soon, it won’t be American; it will be universal.
ROY LICHTENSTEINIn America the biggest is the best.
ROY LICHTENSTEINOutside is the world; it’s there. Pop Art looks out into the world.
ROY LICHTENSTEIN