In 1949 Life magazine published a short feature on the artist Jackson Pollock where the editors famously asked: “Is this the greatest living American painter?” The headline was both genuine and rhetorical. The article was sparked by one of Pollock’s consummate supporters, the art critic Clement Greenberg, who, by the late 1940s was the vocal arbiter of modernism and, more acutely, the promoter of Abstract Expressionism. In the profile photograph, the 37-year-old Pollock stands in front of one is his long horizontal paintings, the chaos of colors and splatters stretching the length of the article. He is dressed in his distinctive overalls, his face expressionless as he crossing his arms and leans slightly back, his posture holding a mixture of private emotions and manly reserve. While the article never prescribes an answer to the question (the editors did receive over five hundred letters from readers with their own answers, mostly affirming their alarm and distain for his canvases), it does declare that Pollock “has burst forth as the shinning new phenomenon of American art.”
15 years later, the magazine would ask that question again about Roy Lichtenstein, only in a slightly different way. In its profile of the artist it asked: “Is this the worst artist in America?” This playful echo of the Pollock profile set the contrast between the two artists, but also christened the increasing interest in Lichtenstein’s work. The profile described Lichtenstein’s painting process, showing readers how he transformed cartoon images into paintings. It demonstrated his particular methods in achieving his distinctive benday dots, that repetitive surface that gives his canvases a mechanical sense of texture and depth. Contrasting to Pollock’s full body portrait in front of his canvas, Lichtenstein presents a more reserved image. He sits in a high-back wicker chair, one of his romance paintings propped in front of him, shielding his body from us. His head, slightly tilted back, rests above the canvas, a shy smile on his face as he gazes down at the camera looking almost regal.This difference in the artist’s image reflected a deeper difference in the styles of art as well. Lichtenstein’s Pop Art was, in many respects, a much more controlled and quiet form compared to the loud canvases of the Abstract Expressionists, their works filled with emotional forces, undefined and unlimited. Pop Art offered the hum of the machine. Think of Andy Warhol’s famous mantra, “I want to be a machine.” Abstract Expressionism rested on the power of the brush stroke, the texture of paint, and the serendipitous surface of the canvas. Pop artists instead turned the brushstroke into line and dots, creating a constant repetition of surfaces, questioning the authentic power of any one imagine. If Abstract Expressionism was about the artist’s emotions, Pop Art was about the cool distance of the artist. In defining this contrast, French theorist Roland Barthes wrote in the late 1970s that the Pop artist “has no depth: he is merely the surface of his pictures, no signified, no intention, anywhere.”
by James Polchin, The Smart Set | Read more:
Video via: Tate Modern, Image via Roy Lictenstein, Masterpiece
