Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein

4 Pages 1005 Words

DROWNING GIRL

DATE PAINTED: 1963
MEDIUM: Oil on Canvas
PRESENTLOCATION: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
SIZE: 171.8 x 169.5

Drowning Girl (1963) is an example of Lichtensteins comic style which began in the early 1960’s. Drowning Girl is a large picture of a girls head surrounded by a tumultuous wave with the caption reading “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!“ The first thing to notice about this work is its incredible size. The girls head is monumentally large - the entire painting is about as high as a tall woman. The piece is oversized and striking.

Roy Lichtenstein’s comics are what made him famous and all his well known paintings are in this style. The source of his images are obviously from comic books but some of the elements of his compositions come from advertising. Both the form and content of the commercial comic trivialises and generalises emotions, actions, people and objects so as to make them conform to popular opinion. Lichtensteins comics simplified life and reduced its complexities into an assemblage of emotional cues. The viewer accepts this abbreviated language system because it is part of the every day world of media culture.# Lichtensteins comic style works are transparent, simple and easy to interpret. Lichtenstein used this visual language in his adaptation of comic images. The viewer can interpret Lichtensteins comics for themselves and the opinion of the author is concealed. Lichtensteins pictorial vocabulary, typography and the arrangement of his texts are from advertising. Lichtenstein used source material which everyone knew. Because his style is taken from culture - advertising and comics - things everyday people knew - it was widely understood and transparent in what it is trying to say. So in turn his style wasn’t created but rather taken from processes already familiar to people living in the modern communications system and put into new...