''Crying Girl'' is the name of two different works by
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Fox Lichtenstein ( ; October27, 1923September29, 1997) was an American pop artist. He rose to prominence in the 1960s through pieces which were inspired by popular advertising and the comic book style. Much of his work explores the relations ...
: a 1963
offset
Offset or Off-Set may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Off-Set", a song by T.I. and Young Thug from the '' Furious 7: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack''
* ''Offset'' (EP), a 2018 EP by singer Kim Chung-ha
* ''Offset'' (film), a 200 ...
lithograph
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...
on lightweight, off-white
wove paper
Wove paper is a type of paper first created centuries ago in the Orient, and subsequently introduced to England, Europe and the American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. Hand-made wove paper was first produced by using a wooden mould that c ...
and a 1964
porcelain enamel
Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by melting, fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between . The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitrification, vitreous coating. The wo ...
on steel.
Background
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of
comics
a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...
. Lichtenstein in 1958 made drawings of
comic strip
A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...
characters.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...
produced his earliest paintings in this style in 1960. Lichtenstein, unaware of Warhol's work, produced ''
Look Mickey
''Look Mickey'' (also known as ''Look Mickey!'') is a 1961 oil on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Widely regarded as the bridge between his abstract expressionism and pop art works, it is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as ...
'' and ''Popeye'' in 1961.
In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein produced several "fantasy drama" paintings of women in love affairs with domineering men, causing women to be miserable. These works served as prelude to 1964 paintings of innocent "girls next door" in a variety of tenuous emotional states.
Picasso's depictions of weeping women may have influenced Lichtenstein to produce portrayals of vulnerable teary-eyed women. Another possible influence on his emphasis on depicting distressed women in the early to mid-1960s was that his first marriage was dissolving at the time. Lichtenstein's first marriage to Isabel Wilson, which resulted in two sons, lasted from 1949 to 1965.
Although single-panel comic representations depict a moment in time, both works are examples in which the moment is "pregnant" with drama related to other times.
This work also marks a phase in Lichtenstein's career when many of his works were named with
present-participial names such as ''
Sleeping Girl'', ''Crying Girl'' and ''Blonde Waiting'', which accentuates the works' "relation to process and action."
[
]
1963 lithograph
The lithograph, which shows a crying woman with her hand near her mouth, is on lightweight, off-white wove paper. It measures . This image was adapted from a comic book panel from the romance comic
Romance comics are a genre of comic books that were most popular during the Golden Age of Comics. The market for comics, which had been growing rapidly throughout the 1940s, began to plummet after the end of World War II when military contracts to ...
''Secret Hearts
''Secret Hearts'' was a romance comic anthology published by DC Comics in the United States, primarily in the 1950s and '60s. A staple of the company's romance line, it was "one of the publisher's most successful and well-known romance titles."
...
'' #88 (DC Comics, June 1963), in the story "Escape from Loneliness," penciled by Tony Abruzzo
Anthony Joseph "Tony" Abruzzo (1916–1990) was an American comic book artist. He is best known for his work in the romance comics field for National Periodicals (later DC Comics), particularly ''Girls' Love Stories'', for which he illustrated st ...
and inked by Bernard Sachs
Bernard Sachs (January 2, 1858 – February 8, 1944) was an American neurologist.
Early life and education
After graduating with a B.A. from Harvard in 1878, Sachs travelled to Europe and studied under some of the more prominent physicians o ...
.
Artist Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...
claimed to have purchased the lithograph from Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli ( Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which Castelli s ...
on a visit to New York in 1963 for $10 ($ in dollars). Close recalled the purchase: "I remember I bought Roy Lichtenstein... for endollars from Leo Castelli at Lichtenstein's first /nowiki>sic/nowiki> show. I brought it back to Yale and I was attacked unmercifully." (Lichtenstein's first solo show at The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, which sold out before opening, ran from February 10 through March 3, 1962.
1964 enamel
The porcelain enamel on steel, which depicts a woman wiping away a tear, measures . It was adapted from a story in the same romance comic, ''Secret Hearts'' #88 (DC Comics
DC Comics (originally DC Comics, Inc., and also known simply as DC) is an American comic book publisher owned by DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC is an initialism for "Detective Comics", an American comic book seri ...
, June 1963): "Exit Love--Enter Heartbreak!", drawn by Werner Roth and John Romita Sr.
John Victor Romita (; January 24, 1930 – June 12, 2023) was an American comic book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics' ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' and for co-creating characters including Mary Jane Watson, the Punisher, Kingpin ...
The 1964 enamel has been held at the Milwaukee Art Museum
The Milwaukee Art Museum (also referred to as MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection of over 34,000 works of art and gallery spaces totaling 150,000 sq. ft. (13,900 m²) make it the largest art museum in the state of Wis ...
since 1965, and is considered to be one of Roy Lichtenstein's earliest attempts at producing enamel-on-steel works from the same type of comic book imagery he had begun producing as conventional hand-painted canvases.
See also
* 1963 in art
Notes
External links
Milwaukee Art Museum Collection websiteLichtenstein Foundation website (enamel)Lichtenstein Foundation website (lithograph)
{{Roy Lichtenstein
1963 paintings
1964 paintings
20th-century portraits
Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein
Portraits by American artists