Roy Lichtenstein: American Indian encounters

Abstract

"As one of the founders of American Pop art, Roy Lichtenstein achieved an international prominence in the 1960s for his sly, provocative transformations of images from comics, cartoons, and advertisements, elevated to the realm of high art. Although Lichtenstein's work has been prodigiously exhibited and published, certain aspects of his inventive, prolific oeuvre have yet to be thoroughly examined. Among these relatively unknown bodies of work are the artist's pre-Pop adaptations of American history frontier themes in the 1950s and his "Amerindian" series of 1979-81." "Exploring what he called "a kind of conception of the over-reproduced," Lichtenstein reworked images of American Indians and their cultures as the cliched signs of high art and mass media in a fresh, modern way, "to erase the meaning of the originals" and create a new formal unity. This resulted in Lichtenstein's unique marriage of representation and abstraction, high art and popular culture."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents

Foreword and acknowledgements / Patterson Sims -- Preface / Jack Cowart -- Roy Lichtenstein : American Indian encounters / Gail Stavitsky and Twig Johnson -- Exhibition checklist -- Plates -- App. I. Books on American Indian art in the library of Roy Lichtenstein / Justine D. Price.