![]() In printing Ben-Day dots, four main colors are used: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. ![]() Lichtenstein liked the mechanical, commercial feel that the Ben-Day dots gave his artwork.īen-Day dots are named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day Jr. ![]() Instead of using paint to add color to his work, he used stencils to fill in areas on canvas with small dots, known as Ben-Day dots. He was inspired by newspaper advertisements and comic strips, and he often reproduced these every day images in his artwork. Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was an American artist and leader in the pop art movement. Learn 9 ways to create Ben-Day dots in your art room with the download below. With Lichtenstein’s birthday coming up on October 27th, now is a great time to celebrate this influential pop artist by teaching his iconic Ben-Day dots in your classroom! Collectively they question assumptions about copy and original, reproduction and uniqueness, high and low art.Are you looking for some colorful inspiration for your art room? The bold colors and comic book imagery of famous artist Roy Lichtenstein are sure to grab your students’ attention. His “quotations” from its signature forms (for example the classical column) and stylistic idioms (such as cubism) culminated in works that quote his own earlier paintings. In the later 1960s and the 1970s Lichtenstein undertook an exploration of the history of Western art. Lichtenstein quickly emerged as one of the most important artists in the new pop style. He also turned from its elusive “subjects”-abstraction and expression-to clear-cut images of popular culture. Lichtenstein finally rejected abstract expressionism and its emphasis on brushstroke, gesture, and the artist’s mark. The next year Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey. In 1960, Allan Kaprow, an old friend and organizer of art “happenings,” introduced Lichtenstein to other artists with similar interests, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. In 1957 he was back in New York and soon began to experiment with comic-strip characters. The following six years he worked in Cleveland as a draftsman and graphic designer. Lichtenstein had his first exhibition in New York in 1951, showing work he later recalled as “in the abstract expressionist idiom” then dominating the art world. We come away with a feeling of ambiguity-not the simple joke we anticipated-as we identify with the narrator, Mickey, and the victim, Donald. In Look Mickey, Lichtenstein confronts us with a scene in which the punch line comes at the expense of a popular icon-the ever-irascible Donald Duck. ![]() By enlarging comic scenes and lifting them from their initial contexts, he presented a sly version of the clichéd image. Lichtenstein, however, injected his art with a dark humor that inverted the visuals he transposed. He was even called “one of the worst artists in America” by a New York Times art critic. In response to works such as Look Mickey, Lichtenstein was criticized for “counterfeiting” commercial images. Stylistically, Lichtenstein imitates printed media-its heavy black outlines, primary colors, and, in Donald’s eyes and Mickey’s face, the ink dots of the Benday printing process then used to produce inexpensive comic books and magazines. Yet he does subtly alter the original to turn it into a more unified image: omitting background figures, rotating the point of view by 90 degrees, organizing the colors into bands of yellow and blue, and simplifying the characters’ features. Is Lichtenstein attempting to affront fine art? Instead of painting an original image, he appropriates a scene from the Disney children’s book complete with bubble text-a visual joke. The text, “ LOOK MICKEY, I’VE HOOKED A BIG ONE,” mockingly hangs over Donald’s unsuspecting head. Behind him stands Mickey, stifling a giggle at his friend’s mistake. ![]() Staring at the water, fishing pole raised above his head, Donald thinks he has caught a fish when he has actually snagged his own coattail. In the image, Disney icons Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse stand on a pier. Look Mickey represents the first time Roy Lichtenstein directly transposed a scene and a style from a source of popular culture, the 1960 children’s book Donald Duck: Lost and Found. ![]()
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