How Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation Exposes Hypocrisy and Theft

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How Whaam!Blam! Roy Lichtensetien and the Art of Appropriation Exposes Hypocrisy and Theft

By Leo Morgan

Roy Lichtenstein exists as a somewhat controversial figure within the art space. His massively famous artistic career has been argued to be built upon plagiarism and artistic theft, which I won’t beat around the bush and wait to say, I do personally agree with. Although I held this opinion with prior knowledge of his work, I felt like I was able to further back my opinion after watching the documentary, “Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation”

The movie begins with a segment introducing Roy Lichtenstein’s name, some imagery of his artwork, and his reputation as a famous artist commonly credited for the introduction of “Pop Art” to the greater art community. It also includes clips of his art at modern auction going for tens of millions of dollars, which makes a statement to how valuable his work is viewed to be to this day. This is immediately juxtaposed with the statement that a large majority of Lichtenstein's work was simply plagiarized from Sunday comics strips of the time, and enlarged. Next the documentarians take some time to go over Roy’s life and career before his artistic success, such as his time spent in France fighting in ww2, and his subsequent attendance to Ohio state university to get an arts degree. Lichtenstein would hit it big career wise around age 38 with works like “look Mickey’, which saw use of his now famous Ben-day dots. This segment is followed by a scene with a man named David Barsilou who talked about how he noticed that some of Roy’s work heavily resembled comic panels from 60’s Sunday comics, and how he began to find hundreds of exact panels that were obviously the ones Lichtenstein used for his paintings and were never accredited. 

The documentary then shifts its focus to a comics artist named Hy Eisman, who was age 90 at the time of filming, and had spent most of his life and entire career making comics, and had large amounts of his panels used for Lichtenstein’s paintings with no credit. The documentary mentions how Roy was said to use a method of projecting these comic panels on a wall in larger scale and tracing the projection in his painting, and then shows he most likely used this method on Eisman’s work. They also touch upon another artist whos comic art was used for one of Lichtenstein’s most famous paintings “WHAAM!”. Russ Heath at the time of making the panel which became so famous, was working for Atlas comics, which would eventually become Marvel. The next scene mentions how people would find old cut up comics pages strewn around his studio, and even all over the floor to be trodden over, which can be seen as a display for how little respect Lichtenstein held for these works of art, and how he saw them as things to be reused freely without any kind of crediting. Next the documentary interviews a veteran art dealer from the NY art auction house Christie’s, where he talks about the way the fine art trading market has financially ballooned since the 80’s when the global trade of art became more common. He also mentions how recently a Lichtenstein work sold for 60 million dollars in auction. The art dealer also talks highly of Roy’s work, and how he took comics from a kind of low brow position and raised them up into the fine arts world. (As if the hard work of comics artists doesn’t deserve the same level of respect as any other visual art medium) The art dealer and some crusty old lady museum curator then speak in defense of Lichtenstein’s methods, saying that appropriation is a method artists have used for centuries to find success. But I feel like both of these individuals’ points are ignoring the context of Lichtenstein’s success; he was directly profiting from others’ work at the expense of artists who have even outlived him. 

After this segment, the documentary shifts focus to the copyright aspect of Lichtenstein’s artwork. An artistic copyright expert is able to establish that Lichtenstein’s art does fall under fair use because his artwork is transformative enough, but even the art shown on screen makes it obvious that Roy did the bare minimum in a lot of his traced works to make his art appear transformative. This transitions to that old lady museum curator who thinks comics are too “low brow” for an art gallery talking about how Lichtenstein brought his high art spin into repackaging these comics panels so they could be appreciated in a gallery setting. (This woman fills me with anger)

Next the film takes a surprising turn for its next focus, now interviewing the member of a band telling us how his friend had went to a painting class focusing on appropriation, and had painted an appropriation of one of Lichtenstein’s paintings- which this band member then thought he would use it at the cover image on his bands upcoming album. Shortly after this he received word from Lichtenstein’s estate that he was violating copyright by using this artwork without permission, even though this method was pretty much was Lichtenstein did with his own paintings. The band member proceeded to post about this dispute on the band’s website, and shortly after this post went viral online, the Lichtenstein estate changed their tune and simply required a small piece of text accrediting Lichtenstein’s original painting in the margins of text on their cd cases for the album. (I think if Lichtenstein had even simply bothered to simply mention the name of these original comic artists beside his paintings, it would have been more acceptable for him to appropriate in the ways he did)

 Next the documentary returns to David Barsilou and his efforts to find the original comic panels that Lichtenstein stole from to expose the span of his “appropriation”,

And David talks about how Lichtenstein’s estate had sent a desist letter to him and within this letter they even say how in the way he wishes to display the original comics panels violates the copyright, a;omg with him violating the copyright of Lichtenstein’s work. David laughs at the hypocrisy of this letter. 

After returning to the NY art dealer, he mentions how recently a billionaire had bought a Lichtenstein painting for 165 million dollars. And he makes a strange joke about how bloated the art market is and says that there will eventually be a billion dollar painting and says: “when will the revolution start?” Cut back to Russ Heath working in his studio and talking about his financial and general living situation, how he lives by himself in a small apartment that he can barely afford. He is only able to get by from the help of a small charity that helps comic artists called the Hero Initiative. He is visited once a week by someone from the charity, who helps him with rent, and takes him to the store to help him get groceries. Russ talks about how he would’ve appreciated some money from the credit to his name, and that the publisher he worked for at the time could’ve sued, but didn’t want to deal with the backlash and lawyer fees. 

In the final section of the documentary they pose a question of whether Roy’s work was ethical, cutting to a bunch of different interviewees from previous scenes in the film, and their differing perspectives ranging from defending Lichtenstein to outright calling him a thief. Next the film goes to show beyond the shadow of a doubt to prove Lichtenstein’s projector tracing method was more than heresay, showing side by sides of several of his paintings and older comics panels and then overlaying them. Showing how a lot of his paintings are practically identical to the works he is appropriating from. The film ends with a segment leaving the final conclusion to the viewer.

Personal Thoughts

Personally, I had always disliked Roy Lichtenstein’s artwork, in that I found it a little bit boring because the first time I had seen it I thought “why is this special I’d rather read a comic book that is full of drawings like this?” of course I still thought at the very least the imagery was somewhat engaging since it was a far cry from any regular painting. Of course upon coming here to CCAD and taking an art history course I learned of how a lot of his art was actually lifted from older comics works and that he had given no credit to the original artists. As a comics major this especially disappointed me that a blatant plagiarist was held on such a high pedestal within the fine arts space. I had always thought that comics fell under appreciated within the fine arts gallery setting, and the way some fine arts people are willing to stay willfully ignorant about Lichtensetin’s plagiarism out of lack-of-respect to comics reinforces the way I feel. Seeing Hy Eisman and Russ Heath’s perspectives in the film further deepened the ire I feel towards Lichtenstein when they talked about how they received no credit or compensation, and especially when Russ Heath showed how he was forced to live off charities. To think how much better these men and all the other artists he stole from lives could have been if he simply gave them the credit they deserved from his artwork. Not to mention the fact that the documentary confirms that Lichtenstein was actively tracing the original artwork’s projections for his paintings, which to me is the final nail in the coffin. In the effort to make art using the rising consumer-capitalist culture within America, Liechtenstein embodied capitalism in the most pure way, by profiting off the hard work of others, and leaving those to suffer while he only climbed higher. 

Citations-

Whaam!Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation. Directed by James L Hussey and Jesse Finley Reed, 2022, Hussey Cotton LTD. 

Look Mickey- Roy Lichtenstein, 1961, oil on canvas, 48in.x69in. , National Gallery of Art

Whaam!- Roy Lichtenstein, 1963, magna acrylic and oil on canvas, 68in.x160in. , Tate Modern