Art: Roy Lichtenstein

GO to the 3rd floor of the Modern and Contemporary Building where Roy Lichtenstein's Cold Shoulder (1963) is installed. Lichtenstein (1923-1997) is among a group of artists whose startling transformations of commercial imagery became known in the 1960s as pop art. The primary subject of his first major body of work was comic strip imagery, faithfully enlarged in oil or acrylic paint with limited, flat colors and precise drawing, resulting in hard-edge paintings that document and, at the same time, parody these familiar images of modern America. Lichtenstein's work, along with that of other Pop artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and James Rosenquist, shares a fascination with the commonplace and everyday image of modern America as well as treating that image in an impersonal, neutral

Cold Shoulder, a masterwork of pop art, typifies Lichtenstein's work, borrowing the comic strip imagery and mechanical reproduction (the patterned dots) from commercial art to create a distinctive style of contrasting yet compatible forms. The faceless greeting, the icicle-like forms hanging down from the balloon, and the de-personalized nature of Lichtenstein's style itself all contribute to the cool emotional tone and wit of Cold Shoulder.