David Barsalou has a lot of time on his hands... So much time infact
that he has spent the last 25 years of his life closely examining every
single illustration in over 30,000 comic books with the sole purpose of
uncovering the original source material for the work of 1960s Pop Art
icon Roy Lichtenstein. So far he has sourced about 140 specific
illustrations that Lichtenstein has blown up and sold for mega bucks.
I was always under the impression that Lichtenstein used existing
comics as a reference for his work but I had no idea to what extent he
had replicated the original source. Barsalou explains "The critics are
of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work ,
he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original."
"Barsalou is boring to us," comments Jack Cowart, executive director of
the Lichtenstein Foundation. He contests the notion that Lichtenstein
was a mere copyist: "Roy's work was a wonderment of the graphic
formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by
others. Barsalou's thesis notwithstanding, the panels were changed in
scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact
copy."
You'd have to assume that Barsalou is a bitter and frustrated art
teacher undertaking a project of this nature but
he claims that it's a labour of love. " I'm not doing this to be
mean-spirited. I'm just doing it so people can make up their own mind
if they think Lichtenstein was important or if they prefer the source
images. ... I'm not making any money."
The whole Pop Art Period poses questions about copyright vs art. Is it
really any different to producers using sampling techniques in modern
music? On the one had the original artist that Lichtenstein
copied/referenced would not have received a single cent for the
painting that might have been sold for millions. But then again, it was
Lichtenstein's vision that saw a miniscule detail in a random comic
book and chose to isolate, rework and enlarge it to give it a whole new
meaning. It's an interesting argument anyway.
I still think his work is awesome but you be your own judge. A collection of the original vs Lichtenstein images appear to the right of this post ---> and to see all of the comics that Barsalou has uncovered visit his website -
Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstien here or his flickr page
here.
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