The GAB

I've been a fan of Roy Lichtenstein's comic book pop art for years. I always wondered how many of his paintings were taken from comic books and did he copy the comic panels directly or make changes to them to improve the composition? Well now there are some answers, thanks to David Barsalou and his Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein project. Originally an exibit at the Springfield Massachusetts Gallery, he now has a flickr site that contains a ton of the source material. It's an interesting deconstruction of the wonderful work Lichtenstein created.

A really interesting read is the Great Bazooka Bubble Gum Wrapper Myth of 1961, A look into the controversy over whether Lichtenstein stole Andy Warhol's idea. Neat.

"... So, I went home and called Andy - no, I think, I went right over to Andy's house... and so, I said, 'Prepare yourself for a shock.' And he said, 'What?' I said, 'Castelli has a closet full of comic paintings.' And he said, 'You're kidding?!' And he said, 'Who did them?' And I said, 'Somebody by the name of Lichtenstein.' Well, Andy turned white. He said, 'Roy Lichtenstein.' He said, 'Roy Lichtenstein used to... ' - as I remember, he used to be a sign painter for Bonwit Teller, and here's where I'm a little bit confused because Andy... couldn't get anybody to show his early cartoon paintings, so he went to Gene Moore and Gene Moore said, 'Well I can put the paintings in the windows...' He put them in the 57th Street window... As I remember, the implication was: Andy felt that Lichtenstein had seen the paintings in the window and gave him the idea to do his paintings..."