Lichtenstein - "Crak" Pop art lithograph of single comic book panel featuring a woman in a beret firing a rifle with the word "Crak" over the barrel

Roy Lichtenstein • American (1923-1997)

Crak • Lithograph on Paper 19” x 27”

Is comic book art, art? From 1961-1965 years, this former window dresser at Halle’s Department Store in downtown Cleveland, thrilled the art world with a series of intricate paintings mimicking comic book panels to the finest benday dot. It all started with a challenge from one of his young sons who enjoyed looking at his comic books more than the Abstract Expressionist art his father was becoming well known for. Taking up the challenge, Lichtenstein created an oversized panel titled Look Mickey. It now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. How many other fathers could answer a son’s challenge with such panache?

In 1964 Life Magazine looked at his comic book images and asked, “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?” They didn’t get it. Lichtenstein was leading a new art movement: POP Art. POP Artists cast popular culture in a central role. They looked at everyday items and icons in a different light. Where most people saw mundane examples of low-brow culture, Lichtenstein and others saw the potential for high art. They understood how common images formed a new visual language and were determined to use it to communicate their ideas.

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Consider the image of a beret-clad woman screaming French commands while firing a military gun. CRACK! The common comic book style conjures up universal ideas to most people. She is Super-Woman, the embodiment of WWII French resistance. Strong. Powerful. In control and dangerous to all those who threaten her home.

None of these traits would be as easily conveyed if done in any other style of painting. Especially at a time when women were most definitely considered the “weaker sex.” Through the use of common images, Lichtenstein was quickly able to tell the story of a woman backed against a wall by a group of nasty predators and fighting back to fiercely protect her home and family. Using an art style mimicking an industrial printing process gave the image even more power as a soulless commentary on modern attitudes.

CRAK was modeled on a panel from Star-Spangled War Stories, a comic book illustrated by Jack Abel. In Abel’s hands, it was considered low-brow comic strip art. When Lichtenstein took a single, oversized panel and painted it, benday dots and all, it became art … POP art, as ingrained in Pop Culture as comic books and Campbell soup cans.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Gifted by the 1001 Gallery 74.20

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“Low-brow popular culture becomes high art at the hand of a master painter whose son thought comic books had better artists than his dad.”

2.
“He believed that common images were so ingrained in pop culture that they formed a virtual language. One he spoke fluently.”

3.
“Although born in New York, he spent a considerable part of his life in Ohio where he was once a window decorator for Halle Department Stores. Those must have been some wild displays.”

4.
“Much of his art purposely mimicked industrial printing processes, a further commentary on popular culture.”

Lichtenstein Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1923

Born to an upper middle-class family in New York City. His father, Milton, was a real estate broker.

1939

During summer classes at the Art Students League of New York, he studied with famed American Scene painter, Reginald Marsh.

1940

Graduated from the Dwight School, a private school on New York’s upper west side. He attended public schools until the age of 12. While in high school he was an avid jazz fan and attended many concerts staged at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. After graduation, he enrolled1951-56 at The Ohio State University to study for a degree in fine arts.

1943-46

Left Ohio State to serve a three year stint in the U.S. Army. He served as an orderly, draftsman and artist.

1946

Returned to Ohio State and studied under Hoyt L. Sherman. Years later he funded a new studio at OSU and had it named the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center.

1949

Earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from The Ohio State University. During his graduate studies he started a 10-year career as a college art instructor. Married Isabel Wilson who had previously been married to another Ohio artist.

1951-56

Moved to Cleveland where he worked as a draftsman and window decorator for the Halle Department Store. Also maintained his painting career working in fluid styles ranging from Cubism to Expressionism. His first solo exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in New York took place in 1951. Son, David was born in 1954, followed by Mitchell in 1956.

1957

Took a job at the State University of New York at Oswego and moved his family to upstate New York. By 1957 he had adopted the Abstract Expressionist style of painting and began incorporating hidden images of cartoon characters in his work.

1960

Began teaching at Rutgers University where he was heavily influenced by fellow teacher and performance artist Allan Kaprow. Began his first Pop Art paintings using cartoon images and ben-day dots to mimic industrial printing processes. This became his most recognized and celebrated style.

1961

Had his first show at famed Leo Castelli gallery. The cover of the exhibition guide was CRAK, a comic strip panel now seen at the Canton Museum of Art.

1964

The height of his fame as a painter. He resigned from Rutgers to concentrate on his studio art full time. A year earlier he produced Drowning Girl, his most celebrated work. It was taken from a DC comic book (Secret Hearts #83). This was also the year Life Magazine criticized his work in an article headlined: Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?

1960s

Began creating reproductions of famed works by Cezanne, Mondrian and Picasso in his distinctive industrialized style. He divorced his first wife in 1965 and married Dorothy Herzka in 1968.

1970

Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to make a film, Three Landscapes based on a series of marine landscapes. Purchased a former carriage house in Southampton, Long Island, where he built a studio and began to live a more secluded life.

1978

Fascinated by German Expressionist prints he saw in the collection of lawyer Robert Rifkind, he began to produce works that borrow heavily from Expressionist paintings. The next year his work was recognized with a medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1995

Awarded the National Medal of the Arts in Washington D.C.

1997

Died of pneumonia in New York University Medical Center.