a project by David Barsalou, who spent the last 25 years of his life going through every illustration in over 30,000 comic books…. in order to find the original sources of Roy Lichtenstein’s pieces
from lifelounge.com:
"David Barsalou has a lot of time on his hands... So much time infact that he has spent the last 25 years of his life closely examining every single illustration in over 30,000 comic books with the sole purpose of uncovering the original source material for the work of 1960s Pop Art icon Roy Lichtenstein. So far he has sourced about 140 specific illustrations that Lichtenstein has blown up and sold for mega bucks.
I was always under the impression that Lichtenstein used existing comics as a reference for his work but I had no idea to what extent he had replicated the original source. Barsalou explains "The critics are of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work , he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original."
"Barsalou is boring to us," comments Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation. He contests the notion that Lichtenstein was a mere copyist: "Roy's work was a wonderment of the graphic formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by others. Barsalou's thesis notwithstanding, the panels were changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact copy."
You'd have to assume that Barsalou is a bitter and frustrated art teacher undertaking a project of this nature but he claims that it's a labour of love. " I'm not doing this to be mean-spirited. I'm just doing it so people can make up their own mind if they think Lichtenstein was important or if they prefer the source images. ... I'm not making any money."
The whole Pop Art Period poses questions about copyright vs art. Is it really any different to producers using sampling techniques in modern music? On the one had the original artist that Lichtenstein copied/referenced would not have received a single cent for the painting that might have been sold for millions. But then again, it was Lichtenstein's vision that saw a miniscule detail in a random comic book and chose to isolate, rework and enlarge it to give it a whole new meaning. It's an interesting argument anyway."
his homepage
and flickr
notcot.org,
notcot.com/images
from lifelounge.com:
"David Barsalou has a lot of time on his hands... So much time infact that he has spent the last 25 years of his life closely examining every single illustration in over 30,000 comic books with the sole purpose of uncovering the original source material for the work of 1960s Pop Art icon Roy Lichtenstein. So far he has sourced about 140 specific illustrations that Lichtenstein has blown up and sold for mega bucks.
I was always under the impression that Lichtenstein used existing comics as a reference for his work but I had no idea to what extent he had replicated the original source. Barsalou explains "The critics are of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work , he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original."
"Barsalou is boring to us," comments Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation. He contests the notion that Lichtenstein was a mere copyist: "Roy's work was a wonderment of the graphic formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by others. Barsalou's thesis notwithstanding, the panels were changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact copy."
You'd have to assume that Barsalou is a bitter and frustrated art teacher undertaking a project of this nature but he claims that it's a labour of love. " I'm not doing this to be mean-spirited. I'm just doing it so people can make up their own mind if they think Lichtenstein was important or if they prefer the source images. ... I'm not making any money."
The whole Pop Art Period poses questions about copyright vs art. Is it really any different to producers using sampling techniques in modern music? On the one had the original artist that Lichtenstein copied/referenced would not have received a single cent for the painting that might have been sold for millions. But then again, it was Lichtenstein's vision that saw a miniscule detail in a random comic book and chose to isolate, rework and enlarge it to give it a whole new meaning. It's an interesting argument anyway."
his homepage
and flickr
notcot.org,
notcot.com/images
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