On Sunday night, BBC4 broadcast WHAAM! Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern,
Alistair Sooke's documentary focused on the career-spanning
retrospective of the pop art giant currently running at the London
gallery. Here's the link to the full documentary, running for a week on BBC's iPlayer.
At
the 35 minute mark, artist Dave Gibbons turns up to debate with Sooke
on the age-old issue of Lichtenstein's plagiarism from comic books, all
while standing in front of Lichtenstein's WHAAM!, the painting
appropriated from a panel by Irv Novick. Gibbons makes a spirited case
for the superiority of Novick's original image over Lichtenstein's,
while the host Sooke argues for Lichtenstein, all the while thumbing
a-little-bit-too dismissively through an issue of DC's All-American Men Of War
#89. Sooke's main argument for the superiority of the pop artist's
work over the comic artist is that his researcher picked up a ragged
back issue of the original for under six pounds, while if WHAAM! went to
auction, it would sell for tens of millions of dollars. To Gibbon's
credit, he states he'd take the six quid comic over the multi-million
bucks canvas. I dunno Dave, $45 million could buy an awful lot of comics. Or sports cars.
For a full take-down of Lichtenstein's thievery from comics, there's always David Barsalou's Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein.
I don't think there's a single panel in that collection that doesn't
contain more power and dynamism in its execution than Lichtenstein's
"transformation" of them.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Dave Gibbons still defending comics from Roy Lichtenstein's thieving ways
by
Mark Kardwell
at
10:52 AM
Labels: BBC, Dave Gibbons, Roy Lichtenstein
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1 comment:
To be fair, based on what Sooke said, taking the power and dynamism out of the drawings was how Lichtenstein transformed them. He deliberately took something with meaning, however cheesy or shallow, and transformed it into something with no meaning. Dont ask me why.
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