Roy Lichtenstein

“Crying girl” “Girl with a Ribbon”

Offset lithograph Oil and magna on canvas
1964 1965
116,8 x 116,8 121,9 x 121,9
“Rage, Flower Trower” “Hammer Boy”
Stencil and spray paint Spray paint
2003, Jerusalem on the main road 2013, 79th and Broadway, On wall of
to Beit Sahour, Bethlehem Zabar, New York City
127 cm x 175,26 Size unknown
 The biggest similarity seems to bi that all four works
present the characters during a certain event of which
we dont know the full story.
 The biggest difference seems to be in the media and
formal elemets, because Banksy is a street artist,
creating his art using the city itself.
 Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997
 He was an American pop-artist

 During the 1960s he became a leading figure in

the new art movement. His work defined the
premise of pop art through parody. Inspired by
the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise
compositions that documented while they
parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His
work was influenced by popular advertising and
the comic book style.

 His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli

Gallery in New York City.

 He described pop art as "not 'American' painting

but actually industrial painting".
 Roy Lichtensteins most famous works

Whaaaam! 1963

Drowning girl 1963

Look Mickey 1961

 Banksy
 He is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director.

 His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in
a distinctive stenciling technique.

 His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and
bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground
scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.

 Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist who later became a founding
member of the English musical group Massive Attack.

Banksy’s tag
  Banksy’s most famous works

Kissing Coppers 2004

Flying Baloon Girl 2005

Israel
Well Hung Lover 2006
•The square painting shows a girl with, a young woman with
slightly inclined head in half profile.
•Across her right shoulder she looks at the viewer with slightly
lowered eyelids.
•At first glance, she seems distressed and imploring. On closer
examination, however, their longing and seductive gaze is
recognizable. Perhaps she is just flirting and wants to play with
her red lips and the shoulder-length, blond hair, which she drops
in the face despite the ribbon, in restraint and shyness.

•This coquettish restraint is expressed primarily by the position

of the shoulder, which forms a barrier to the observer.

•The colors of the hair-blue, red and white, which alternate with
each other four times in wave lines, are repeated throughout the
picture. The blue is redirected in the girl's eyes, the red in the
background of the picture and the white on the skin, as a hint of
the teeth in the slightly opened mouth, and on the white eye skin.
 Girl With Hair Ribbon was painted by Roy Lichtenstein during a period in which he
was working with comics exclusively. He has subsequently been forever associated
with comics, and his paintings from that period are his most well-known, even though
it lasted only four years. Andy Warhol worked with comics too, but Lichtenstein,
having more fully fleshed the idea out and bringing it closer to its logical conclusion,
is more closely associated with them in the pantheon of American pop artists.

 Within Lichtenstein's comics period, there was a period where he exclusively painted
close-ups of women. Girl With Hair Ribbon comes from this period. In Girl, as with
everything from that sub-period, the highly stylized beauty of the woman's face
makes for an overpowering pure femininity in the painting. However, a certain
narrative quality also pervades the painting. Even though taken out of context, the
image still retains some of the narrative qualities of the comic it was taken from. The
woman is looking out towards the viewer, with an expression that hints at longing,
pensiveness, or perhaps even fear. We the viewers are left with a tiny fragment of a
story, but a fragment nonetheless. The image, then, is not a mere portrait of
femininity, but of the affect the unseen phenomenon of the comic's original story have
on what can see in the frame.

 The aesthetic of Lichtenstein's comic paintings is achieved in a similar manner. The

original aspects of the image are maintained, but its size is greatly increased and a
single detail is focused on, in this case the woman's head and face. The stark, thick
line work becomes even more noticeable. Solid coloration is juxtaposed with regular
patterns of colored dots, the method used to print color comics. The result is a
deliberately incomplete decontextualization of aesthetic, like the painting's narrative
qualities.
 Lichtenstein’s“Crying Girl” goes beyond his desire to create
comic-like artworks. Here, he studies the gendered aspects of the
female identity. Immediately, the viewer’s focus lays upon the
emotions of the subject, as it takes over the painting. She has a
sense of stress in both her gaze and physical
stance. Lichtenstein sheds light on how there was still a lack of
female dominance at this time. She seems almost trapped, similar
to the state of many women in America during the 1960’s, as
women were fighting for equality.

• Lichtenstein also highlights the glamorized idealization of an

American girl. On the outside she seems beautiful and content,
but the emotions in this painting burst out, showing that beneath
the perfection she is truly struggling. This image is part of a
series Lichtenstein produced in the early sixties, depicting
women in love affairs with domineering men, ultimately causing
the women to be miserable.

• “Crying Girl” was inspired by a strip of comics titled “Secret

Hearts” that revealed the inside of relationships of that time. This
particular image, as seen above, remains to be one
of Lichtenstein’s most iconic creations because it will always
mean a lot more than a pretty girl crying. His intention was to
share the struggle behind perfection-something we often forget to
look for.
From the comic book
“Secret Hearts”
 This work, now covered and protected by a Perspex
overlay, features a man dressed up in what we
associate with traditional riot gear, with a bandana
obscuring his face, and his cap on back-to-front. His
stance is one of a person about to lob a Molotov
cocktail; he's taking aim and is ready to throw his
weapon. However, instead of a weapon, he holds a
bunch of flowers (which are the only part of the
mural to appear in color.)

 By substituting a weapon with a bunch of flowers,

Banksy is advocating peace instead of war, and he
opted to install this message of peace in a high-
conflict area. The work also carries the message that
peace comes with active hard work. The bouquet of
flowers in this work, in addition to symbolizing
peace, life, and love, may also be understood as
commemorating lost lives in an age old religious
conflict. It is a fine example of Banksy's use of art to
relay messages of social importance.
 This more recent Banksy work serves as an excellent example of the way that "guerrilla"
street artists use the surrounding environment as an integral part of their works. In this work,
Banksy has stenciled a simple black silhouette of a child with a large mallet in the process of
striking something in front of him. The pre-existing object that the boy is about to hit is a red
fire hydrant, which has a pipe coming up through the top leading directly to a round red
object several feet higher (possibly a fire alarm). With the inclusion of the small boy with
the mallet, this utilitarian plumbing fixture is instantly transformed to look like a "high
striker" or "strength tester" (the classic carnival game where a player must use a mallet to hit
a lever at the bottom of a tower, with the goal of launching a small puck upwards to hit the
bell at the top of the tower).
 With site-specific works like Hammer Boy, Banksy and other street artists
encourage viewers to envision urban spaces, surfaces, and objects differently, and
to see fun and whimsy in otherwise mundane spaces. In this way, street artists have
much the same mentality as skateboarders or people who practice parkour. For all
of these groups, city spaces and surfaces are not restricted to their prescribed uses.
Instead, participants feel the freedom to co-opt and repurpose the urban
environment. A fire hydrant is not just for holding water, it can also become a
child's plaything. A handrail is not only for holding and supporting oneself, it can
also become a tool for enacting daring acrobatic feats.
 Cultural context:
 Both artists try to subvert our classical understanding of art by using
unconventional media and techniques. Their aim is to broden the horizon of
what we perceive as art. In that endeavor Lichtenstein becomes a part of the
pop-art movement along with Andy Warhol while Banksy becomes a part of
the street art movement. Both of this movements share similar traits like
integrating everyday objects into art and not using classical techniques.
 Function and purpose :
 All four works share a similar intention which is a form of social commentary.
Lichtenstein tries to comment on the position of women in his time. Banksy
comments on war and violance in “Rage” and in “Hammer boy” he tries to
point out the ways in wich people can use the urban setting in cities for more
than what it was imagined by the state and urban planners.
 Media and formal elements:
 Here the similarities can be seen in the comic strip inspiration. All works seem
to represent a certain sequence of an event with a larger context. Therefore all
works present a definite point in time with a certain meaning.
 https://www.aaronartprints.org/lichtenstein-girlwithhairribbon.php
 https://www.theartstory.org/artist-banksy-artworks.htm
 https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/
wiki/Girl_with_Hair_Ribbon.html
 https://guyhepner.com/product/crying-girl-roy-lichtenstein/
 https://guyhepner.com/roy-lichtensteins-crying-girl/
 https://news.masterworksfineart.com/2017/10/19/a-closer-look-roy-
lichtenstein-crying-girl-1963
 https://arthistoryforartnerds.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/crying/
 https://www.canvasartrocks.com/blogs/posts/70529347-121-amazing-
banksy-graffiti-artworks-with-locations
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein