The painter Roy Lichtenstein helped to define pop art—the movement that incorporated commonplace objects and commercial-art techniques into paintings—by paraphrasing the style of comic books in his work. His merger of a popular genre with the forms and intentions of fine art generated a complex result: while poking fun at the pretensions a seriousness of theme that enabled it to transcend mere parody.
That Lichtenstein’s images were fine art was at first difficult to see, because, with their word balloons and highly stylized figures, they looked like nothing more than the comic book panels from which they were copied. Standard art history holds that pop art emerged as an impersonal alternative to the histrionics of against the fading emotional power of abstract expressionism, rather than an aloof attempt to ignore it.
But if rebellion against previous art by means of the careful imitation of a popular genre were all that characterized Lichtenstein’s work, it would possess only the reflective power that parodies have in relation to their subjects. Beneath its cartoonish methods, his work displayed an impulse toward realism, an urge to say faith in reconciliation, not only between cartoons and fine art, but between parody and true feeling.
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