When American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey in 1961, it set the tone for his career. This primary-color portrait of the cartoon mouse introduced Lichtenstein’s detached and deadpan style at a time when introspective Abstract Expressionism reigned.
Mining material from advertisements, comics, and the everyday, Lichtenstein brought what was then a great taboo—commercial art—into the gallery. He stressed the artificiality of his images by painting them as though they’d come from a commercial press, with the flat, single-color Ben-Day dots of the newspaper meticulously rendered by hand using paint and stencils.
Roy Lichtenstein, (born October 27, 1923, New York, New York, U.S.—died September 29, 1997, New York City), American painter who was a founder and foremost practitioner of Pop art, a movement that countered the techniques and concepts of Abstract Expressionism with images and techniques taken from popular culture.
As a teenager, Lichtenstein studied briefly with the painter Reginald Marsh. After serving in the military during World War II, he attended the Ohio State University, teaching there from 1946 to 1951 and receiving a masters degree in 1949. He also taught at New York State University College, Oswego (1957–60), and at Douglass College of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1960–63).
