the works of the premier American Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein continue to elicit strong reactions, from both his fans and his detractors, almost 60 years after he made his art world debut. Why? Roy Lichtenstein’s work is the very definition of “Pop Art” itself: the idea that everyday objects and motifs/ideas/forms from our commercial and popular culture environment could be legitimate areas of artistic study and exploration as valid as the more traditional ones of the “natural” world (landscapes and still lifes) and the inner imagination (abstract expressionism). Lichtenstein chose the worlds of commercial and comic art for his particular pop art and produced a body of work that turned out to be his life’s work. Through his artistic transformation of his “found” art subject matter, Lichtenstein explored many of the most classic artistic subjects of culture, society, relationships, image, identity, perception—and “art “itself, in a complete turning inside-out of the art imitates-life-imitates-art Mobius strip that both confounded and won over art critics, and is the source of a kind of humor in his work. And yet there is nothing “funny” about the fact that Lichtenstein’s works have never ceased to provoke disdain from critics and members of both the art and comic art worlds, for what they maintain is merely the gross appropriation and plagiarism of Lichtenstein’s source material and his lack of accreditation of those original works.

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