Roy Lichtenstein - Pop Idol (BBC)

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archive it's 1961 you are a mild manner frustrated 37-year-old art teacher whose career in art is going nowhere you believe that American art has reached a culdesac it doesn't reflect the excitement of a new

America you decide that what does reflect that excitement is comic book art the imagery of the commercial world you apply High art techniques to this commercial imagery your paintings get

shown in a major Gallery you are Roy lonstein you have become a major figure in American art you have changed the direction of American art you have attained

superpowers Roy lonstein pop Idol C Roy's incredible rags to richest Story the man who blew away the art world with his fabulous and super cool paintings

and made Millions but it wasn't always that way folks in the early years Roy struggled against poverty obscurity and

failure how will Roy get out of this one all this in Roy lonstein pop [Music]

Idol Roy lickstein is best known for his detached ironic comic paintings of chisel Jord men and weeping girls when the work first appeared in 1962 it seemed as if someone had dragged

the images off the billboard and newspaper stands outside and stuck them up on the walls of the gallery lonstein challenged people's conceptions of Art and in doing so became one of the

defining image makers of the 1960s Roy lonstein was born in 1923 and grew up here in the Upper West Side of New York when it was home to a community of affluent Jewish igr his father was a

property developer and his sister remembers how they live next door to a well-known Russian composer there's a plaque there to ro manov and I can

remember we would sit on the indoor steps the steps inside the building and listen to ro Mano practice but life in the lonstein home

was quiet my mother was very funny but um she kept her distance she wasn't

emotional and I think not very concerned about us Roy grew shy and withdrawn but quietly determined and as a teenager he felt the

need to spend more and more time away from home to escape into an exciting New World Roy develops an interest in jazz and spends his evenings Up In Harlem

listening to count basy and Lester Young at the Apollo these performances Inspire his first paintings Picasso style portraits of jazz [Music] musicians but his parents still didn't

take him seriously they didn't think he was destined for greatness I'm afraid not they thought it would be a miracle if he ever finished college and Heavens knows

what he would do after that when America joined the second world war all questions about Roy's future were put on hold he was drafted into the air force but unlike the heroic

Pilots he painted later he never got to fly a plane instead he land did a desk job as a map maker Roy's artistic skills gained the

attention of his commanding officer who ordered him two copy newspaper cartoons to stick on the mess wall lonstein later remembered finding the job stupid cartoons weren't his idea of art at

least they weren't yet Roy finally got to see some action in 1944 when he was called up for the Battle of the Bulge the largest American

offensive in the war he spoke about being in combat at one point and it was incredible he was seeing these incredible things happening

in the sky the the sky lighting up this the uh firing of the guns and he stood up and somebody grabbed him and pulled him down and said you want to get killed

you fool because it was just so incredible he said that he was taken by the beauty of it after Armistice Roy was stationed in

Paris where he spent his time in the G iies by now he was intent on becoming an artist he even tried to visit his hero Picasso but his allwe for the Great Master was so great that he got scared

and ran away without even knocking on the studio door coming back to America after the war retaining a youthful belief in the power of art lonstein seemed a long way

off from the irritant who 15 years later was vandalizing galleries with what appeared to be anti-art in 1946 he enrolled at oh Ohio

State University majoring in artart sculptor Tom Doyle was there with him everyone knew he was going to be a champ you know what I mean because he he was

like the star of the art Department out there I mean he was just so so different than everybody there he had that kind of knowing something like he knew something

you didn't you know what I mean it's like someone who has a secret already Roy was known for a satirical human poking fun at American institutional life particularly the

military we were at a Class A drawing class when MacArthur resigned and made that great speech old

soldiers never die they just fade away and Roy and I laughed like H you know we were laughing and all the other students were just horrified that we're laughing

at this great general you know this playfulness features in Roy's early world work superficially this painting may look like another Art School Picasso imitation but look

closely in the top left hand corner and you can see that it's taken from an advert for corned beef in the year 1954 I was assigned uh to write about an

artist called Roy lonstein whom I had never heard of before nor had anybody else there was a picture of a dollar bill uh and there's a picture of George

Washington crossing the Delaware uh but these uh relatively vulgar subjects were executed in a kind of tired uh you know

modern art school style lonstein seems only a step away from his later pop work he just needed to shed the self-consciously Arty style in which he painted these commercial images but he

wasn't ready nor was the art world then in the grip of abstract expressionism its major figures Mark Rothco Jackson Pollock and William duning were like a Holy Trinity of Gloom the images of

everyday life were rejected as inadequate for representing the tragedy of The Human Condition and were replaced with wild and expressive splashes and sweeps of

paint in 1949 an article in Life magazine called Pollock the greatest artist in America and ever since then most young avantguard painters imitated

his expressive Style by comparison lonstein early work seems stubbornly childish at odds with the art scene the champ of

Ohio State College slipped out of the Limelight he'd married in 1949 and he and his wife Isabelle had two sons lonstein could only find work teaching in Osgo right up in the

mountains by the Canadian border it was not a good move I don't know he had the kids you know and they had a dog it was like kind of but it didn't seem

I don't know it seems like he was kind of like floating or something I didn't feel like he was all that you know happy and of course she wasn't happy I mean she was really unhappy I think when they

went to Osgo you know because who would no one would ever visit him there you know it's like way the hell out of you know it's like Siberia or something you know Isabelle became depressed and

turned to alcohol in the evenings Roy took refuge in his Studio but knowing that his style was at odds with the mood of the times he was suffering an

identity crisis what should he paint craving success and recognition he began dabbling in abstract expressionism it was a compromise and the paintings

from this time like the energy and gentle humor of his best work well I think he never really was interested in the abstract expression of

paintings that he was doing I I think they probably felt false to him but he did feel as if he

was stuck in the Boondocks and he was but Roy was secretly working on something quite different to his mind American society was in a state of Rapid

change and he wanted to reflect this in his work enjoying economic boom the country was at the beginning of its obsession with consumerism the images in people's lives were no longer those in

the art gallery but those on televisions and Bill boards and in comic books lonstein instinctively felt that art must come out of its Ivory Tower and

respond to this visual Challenge in a series of sketches from the late 1950s he began to experiment with familiar cartoon

characters I was doing them sort of immersed in abstract expressionism it was kind of abstract expressionist image with these cartoons within this expressionist image it's a

little hard to pick I think and the paintings themselves weren't very successful he was right they weren't successful he had yet to find a way of using the images of the commercial world

without concealing them in the house style of American art so for the time being he continued with his likewe abstract work throughout the 50s lonstein

determined quest to get the attention of the artor was going nowhere every Gambit he tried every tack he pursued was greeted with lukewarm response as 1960 approached and he was in his late 30s he

was getting desperate Splish Splash I was Taking a [Music] Bath as the new decade began Len Stein's

luck changed he got a teaching post at Douglas College just outside New York he was back at the heart of the avantgard art scene now he could see that there were other artists like him sick of

abstract expressionism and Keen to engage with the world around them in flag Jasper Johns took a America's most beloved image and presented it in faded tones looking ragged and warm Robert

renberg embraced materials traditionally outside of the artist's reach using newspaper and magazine cuttings to add texture to the background of his work an underground art scene based at Douglas

College had begun holding live performances or happenings which did much to challenge people's conceptions of what was and was not art change was in the

[Music] air this move also Shook Up lien Stein's personal life and he separated from Isabelle lety Lou Eisenhower became a

close friend and later his lover he came to Douglas and he met all of these people who had a whole different vision of what art was and it

was very it would took him a while to acclimate and then I think he slowly began to move in a New Direction I think he was beginning to see that there was

something else there that you could make art out of besides abstract ideas lonstein realized that his abstract painting had taken him down a

creative cuac seeing how dated his work was in comparison with the other New York artists he had a breakthrough one day in the spring of 1961 he returned to the cartoon imagery

he'd been toying with for so long but this time he was to do something very unusual in doing these paintings I had of course the original strip cartoons to

look at and the idea of doing one without apparent alteration just occurred to me and I did one really almost half seriously only to get an

idea of what it might look like I kind of got interested in organizing it as a painting really and um brought it to some kind of conclusiveness as an aesthetic statement which I really

hadn't intended to do to begin with the result of this experimentation was look Mickey if the Apparently unaltered cartoon image didn't represent

a Manifesto for a new art form in itself then the text made it clear Roy in the guise of Donald Duck was telling the world he was on to something big but

while the painting was bold Roy's characteristic caution made him hesitate I was with Roy and we're in the car going to pick up some beer and Roy is

telling me about the Donald Duck painting and you know and I'm saying yeah yeah turn here stop there so I can get the beer and he's saying what do you

think of this idea he wasn't sure whether it was art or not the Curious Thing he said is that we looked at this

painting and was appalled by it and that in a way he had to get Beyond his own taste to be able to

continue to do that because it looked so unlike [Music] art but Roy overcame his reservations

and during the summer of 1961 worked at a feverous pace on the first of what are now called his pop paintings he copied the images of newspaper adverts and comic strips and the techniques by which

they are created the wild gestural bu stroke of the abstract expressionist gave way to a simple illustrative line this palette was restricted to one

or two primary colors and sometimes no colors at all he increasingly abandoned the paintbrush in favor of stencils and rollers the work looked as if it was

created by a machine rather than a human being miniature Bend dots are used in newspaper advertisements in various densities to create the illusion of modeling in light and Shadow lonstein

enlarged them to an absurd degree and they became his signature they demonstrated how he relished the drama of abstraction but transformed it into a

cartoon but while lonstein had managed to convince himself would he be able to convince others the castelli gallery here on the Upper East Side was one of the most important galleries in New York

at the time Leo castelli had made Robert renberg and Jasper John's Famous if Roy got a show here this new art might take

off at the time Ivan carp was Castell right-hand man a friend called him and asked him to look at the work of Roy lonstein on the landing just before the

gallery level was this young man standing in front of a number of canvases I said are you the person who was sent by my friend out there in New Jersey he said yes I'm Roy lonstein and

I asked Mr lonstein to deploy his works in the gallery whatever the spaces there were between the paintings on display and I had a rather startling reaction ction I said I remember

something like I'm not sure you're allowed to do things like this I think that was the phrase that I issued forth at the time that were so startling and so contrary to the general prevailing

current of the Arts at the time you know and uh they were in a sense immediately buoyant and refreshing I wanted Leo to see them and

when Leo saw them he was not appalled he said well this is this is so dead center American isn't it Ian we'll leave some a couple of paintings here and see what kind of reaction we get to them there was a certain buzz in New York

unbeknownst to each other a number of different artists started creating surprisingly similar work at exactly the same time an artist and a friend of his came in and I took out the painting of the

beach ball girl of Roy and showed it to them and they were enthralled and one of them who had a mop of gray hair and a very modled complexion said to me I'm

doing very work I'm doing work very very very much like this would you come to my studio and look at it it was a man named Andy Warhol Andy Warhol was known only as a successful commercial illustrator

in private he'd also made some of his own cartoon paintings not unlike lonstein through the Autumn of 1961 ly waited on tenter hooks as castelli

considered the work of both artists and he said well it's between me and another guy and I said who's the other guy and he says Andy warh I said who in the hell

is Andy Warhol I never heard of Andy Warhol you know he said he does IM Miller shoe ads I said forget about that guy you'll never hear from him again you

know Leo castelli found Warhol a little too exotic as a personality and decided to do a show of lion Stein's work alone Warhol realized that without Castelli's patronage he would look like

a follower of lonstein so he abandoned his cartoon work and tried something different the result was the Bold graphic enhanced Campbell Soup cans the

distinctive repetition of this mundane everyday image was to make Warhol famous and in the spring of 1962 lonstein had his legendary debut at the castelli

gallery he'd hoped that his work was unusual but he never anticipated the outrage it would cause there was profound hostility to

his work in the formal Arts Press uh there was nobody except possibly the uh Professor Robert Rosenblum who was positive about it when you first saw the

works they looked unspeakably ugly uh which of course could be either a point of Fascination or

repulsion you were really forced to look at how a creepy strange you know a woman in a dishwasher had really

looked I'd just never seen anything like it there was no place for me to um compare it to or

rationalize uh for or against it I was just confused like I said and uh it's a very pleasant

feeling lonstein intention was not just to undermine the hallowed notion of art for years he'd searched for a way of expressing his real self this was it the

comic paintings hung on on the wall were cool ironic even fistic and for Roy a cool ironic kind of guy this was the most honest and personal form of

expression he could find gone was the Artist as tortured Mystic to his critics the work seemed a Triumph of the banal two collectors bought all the works at

very humble prices as you can imagine you know several hundred doar for a major painting but still we consider that a remarkable success that anybody at all would buy these Works was so disconnected from prevailing modes you

know it was a shattering new experience for people and so it was a commercial success in that regard you know Lenin's quest for artistic success had reached a crashing climax he was no longer the

underdog people were paying attention he'd outwitted Mickey Mouse he'd beaten up Bluto and he done it by avoiding the bullying tactics of the abstract expressionists his tone and technique

was subtler and finer and seemed to have infinite possibilities as an artist he could see clearly because he was now the King of New York he was now the hero that he'd always wanted to

beckenstein's success meant he could afford Studio space in New York and assistance to help him the next few years were his most productive period resulting in the war paintings and

crying girl series the comic book paintings weren't merely an indifferent manufactured exercise in appropriation and objectivity they could be violent melodramatic they were were a stylistic

intensification of the excitement that the subjects had for him and they enabled him to play out a series of satisfying fantasies through the paintings he could tell stories about his personal life and his life as a

[Music] painter I have a feeling that these the male figures you know are often Roy

himself these handsome gorgeous figures Roy wasn't handsome you know this is a fantasy about who you want to be and what you want the beautiful girl you

know he got the beautiful girl you want um the elegant life of these people you got that then in the early 60s there was the end of his marriage there were

girlfriends but while the women in his life changed there was one consistent image that he painted The Crying girl now perhaps the girl in the paintings was crying because of Len Stein's

disappointment with the cliches of romantic love or perhaps the girl was crying because Roy lonstein was saying I want a beautiful girl to cry over me in the way that these girls are crying over

the men in their lives and then again it's just possible that lonstein empathized more with the submissive girls than their heartbreaking hunks we had a game we used to play you

know where I would burst through the door from having come in from graduate school and say something like you know I'm going to grab you and rape you and he would

go and run around the room very slowly so I could catch [Music] him in 1965 he was able to leave behind the commercial imagery that had

satisfied all sorts of psychological and artistic needs and returned to high art subjects the big brushstroke painting tamed the passion and spontaneity of the expressionist brushstroke into something

cool and formly elegant into simply an image he had turned abstract expressionism into a cartoon both as a kind of tribute but also to announce that he had found a style that was all his own and he could do anything with it

that he wanted and that's just what he did for the next 30 years he presented a sort of history of the world according to Roy lonstein there were Landscapes with Bend

dots imitations of great artworks with Bend dots still lives with Bend dots Interiors with Bend dots some paintings seem to be just bend dots

alone meanwhile Roy himself became a well-known Society figure elegant and reserved in 1968 he married again the beautiful Dorothy herzer he finally had

the Brad lifestyle he'd always wanted but he used to joke and say someone's going to shake him on the shoulder suddenly and say Mr lonstein Mr

lonstein get up it's time for your bills and he'll have just you know been in a coma or something he'll still be living in a weo

but the more well-known Roy became the more difficult he was to read this self-portrait is revealing in that it is not revealing his head is significantly a mirror to the World

Around It reflecting nothing it was as if he wanted to keep his personality out of his art in so far as he'd become Brad he was in danger of having reduced his life and

his work to two Dimensions you know he got an idea aide did it but then he was unwilling to move on you know you can take the idea to the

next place to a new Step um he didn't do that so was lickstein just a one hit wonder intent on reducing everything to a cartoon to his admirers the concept

grew to become a style in itself like impressionism or cubism Jeff Coons is one of America's most famous artists today largely because like lonstein he exploited

commercial and Pulp images sometimes people say well you know he didn't change it was always kind of like more of one line and I really think just the opposite I think my gosh

look at all the different approaches he made to his work going from very kind of uh modernist style uh paintings to the different uh type of cartoon images to

the two dimensional sculptures but a very wide variety how do we make sense of VO Len Stein's career well for me his later works were

like good album tracks they're not as sexy as immediate as his early pop hits but in a way they're more absorbing and definitely more mature I mean look this guy all he ever

want to do with paint right I mean he's like worked his assle all the time I mean that's all he ever did you know he liked sort of like cars he liked to play tennis a little bit I guess but uh I

know he was a fantastic worker by the mid 1980s lonstein was one of of the most successful artists in the world his public sculpture and murals could be found all over the United

States the lonstein style once so controversial had become mainstream and his Works were selling for a vast amount in the '90s Lenin's marriage to The

Establishment was finally consumated with a major commission for a series of prints to go on the walls of US embassies around the world I I don't know what to say I'm completely overwhelmed and nobody

screamed or got sick or anything when it was was unveiled so thank you all Roy lonstein never cultivated a

celebrity in the way that other pop artists did but he definitely had enough of an ego to allow many of the everyday images that he had turned into high art to be returned in a way to the commonplace for them to come off the

gallery walls and have a life in the outside world these tended to be items produced in collaboration with museums that were putting on major lonstein shows and at the openings of these shows

Roy would never wear one of his own ties but Jasper Jon's would and in return Roy lonstein would wear a Jasper Jon's tie and I imagine now somewhere in New York that Jeff Coons is having a cup of

tea out of a Roy lonstein teapot in fact lonstein reputation has suffered because of his extraordinary success his images are so widespread

that we forget how disconcerting they were when they first appeared Pinnacle art press in New Jersey are doing yet another run of posters to satisfy the endless market

demand for his work I'm the first Pressman on this machine my son is my operator think be popular mainly because of the bright

colors there's a lot to look at there's things to read on it um it's overall it's just an eye-catching piece it's

large you know it would look really nice framed up I think along with a couple other ones why Brad darling this painting is a

masterpiece my soon you'll have all the New York clamoring for your work I like it i' hanging on my

wall by the time he died in 1997 the one time ononto eblo of the New York scene had become the Mellow old man of art the world of Commerce that he had plundered

over 30 years before had swallowed him back up and moved on while the world outside of the gallery has got more and more garish and

spectacular since lonstein had his big idea his work does retain its power he took American art out of the gallery and into the everyday World ironically you

now have to return to the quiet of the gallery away from the commercial chaos he slightly predicted to see that Roy lonstein produced some of the best paintings of his

time [Music] [Music]