''Look Mickey'' (also known as ''Look Mickey!'') is a 1961 oil on canvas painting by

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. H ...

. Widely regarded as the bridge between his

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

and pop art works, it is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as well as being the first example of the artist's employment of

Ben-Day dots The Ben Day process is a printing and photoengraving technique for producing areas of grey or (with four-colour printing) various colours by using fine patterns of ink on the paper. It was developed in 1879 by illustrator and printer Benjamin ...

speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

s and comic imagery as a source for a painting. The painting was bequeathed to the Washington, D.C.,

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of ch ...

upon Lichtenstein's death. Building on his late 1950s drawings of comic strip characters, ''Look Mickey'' marks Lichtenstein's first full employment of

painterly Painterliness is a concept based on ''german: malerisch'' ('painterly'), a word popularized by Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) to help focus, enrich and standardize the terms being used by art historians of his time to ch ...

techniques to reproduce almost faithful representations of pop culture and so satirize and comment upon the then developing process of mass production of visual imagery. In this, Lichtenstein pioneered a motif that became influential not only in 1960s pop art but continuing to the work of artists today. Lichtenstein borrows from a Donald Duck illustrated story book, showing Mickey Mouse and

Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic American Pekin, white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit, sailor shi ...

during a fishing mishap. However, he makes significant alterations to the original source, including modifying the color scheme and perspective, while seeming to make statements about himself. The work dates from Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition, and is regarded by art critics as revolutionary both as a progression of pop art and as a work of

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

in general. It was later reproduced in his 1973 painting '' Artist's Studio—Look Mickey'', which shows the painting hanging prominently on a facing wall of Lichtenstein's studio.

Background

During the late 1950s and early 1960s a number of American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of comic strips into their work. Lichtenstein was among them, and in 1958 began to make drawings of comic strip characters.

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

produced his earliest paintings in the style in 1960. Lichtenstein, unaware of Warhol's work, produced ''Look Mickey'' and ''Popeye'' in 1961. Lichtenstein's 1961 works, especially ''Look Mickey'', are considered a minor step from his earlier comic strip pop art. According to the Lichtenstein Foundation, ''Look Mickey'' was based on the

Little Golden Book Little Golden Books is a series of children's books, published since 1942. ''The Poky Little Puppy'', the eighth release in the series, is the top-selling children's book of all time in the United States.. Many other Little Golden Books have b ...

series. The National Gallery of Art notes that the source is entitled ''Donald Duck Lost and Found'', written in 1960 by Carl Buettner and published through Disney Enterprises. The image was illustrated by Bob Grant and Bob Totten. An alternative theory suggests that ''Look Mickey'' and ''Popeye'' were enlargements of bubble gum wrappers. This image marked the first of numerous works in which Lichtenstein

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydropo ...

ped his source to bring the viewer closer to the scene. A number of stories purport to tell of the moment of inspiration for ''Look Mickey''. Critic Alice Goldfarb Marquis writes that the artist recalled one of his sons pointing to a comic book and challenging: "I bet you can't paint as good as that". Another says that the painting resulted from an effort to prove his abilities to both his son and his son's classmates who mocked Lichtenstein's hard-to-fathom abstracts. American painter

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well a ...

once stated, in reference to a

Bazooka Bazooka () is the common name for a man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher weapon, widely deployed by the United States Army, especially during World War II. Also referred to as the "stovepipe", the innovative bazooka was among th ...

Dubble Bubble Dubble Bubble is an American brand of fruit-flavoured, usually pink-colored, bubble gum invented by Walter Diemer, an accountant at Philadelphia-based Fleer Chewing Gum Company in 1928. One of Diemer’s hobbies was concocting recipes for chew ...

Gum wrapper, to Lichtenstein, "You can't teach color from Cézanne, you can only teach it from something like this." Lichtenstein then showed him one of his Donald Duck images. During the comic book phase of his career, Lichtenstein often slightly altered the colorization of the original source. According to Marco Livingstone, his early comic subjects comprise a "loose and improvised style clearly derived from de Kooning." Art historian Jonathan Fineberg describes a Lichtenstein painting of 1960 as an "...abstract expressionist picture with Mickey Mouse in it, related stylistically to the de Kooning ''Women''". When Leo Castelli saw both Lichtenstein's and Warhol's large comic strip-based works, he elected to show only Lichtenstein's, causing Warhol to create the ''

Campbell's Soup Cans ''Campbell's Soup Cans'' (sometimes referred to as ''32 Campbell's Soup Cans'') is a work of art produced between November 1961 and March or April 1962 by American artist Andy Warhol. It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring in he ...

'' series to avoid competing with the more refined style of comics Lichtenstein was then producing.Bourdon, p. 109. He once said "I've got to do something that really will have a lot of impact that will be different enough from Lichtenstein and

James Rosenquist James Rosenquist (November 29, 1933 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist and one of the proponents of the pop art movement. Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advertising a ...

, that will be very personal, that won't look like I'm doing exactly what they're doing."Watson, p. 79. Lichtenstein's foray into comics led to the abandonment of the topic by Warhol. Although Lichtenstein continued to work with comic sources, after 1961 he avoided the easily identified sources like

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Mickey Mouse. During autumn 1961, Allan Kaprow, a fellow teacher at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and wa ...

, introduced Lichenstein to art dealer

Ivan Karp Ivan C. Karp (June 4, 1926 – June 28, 2012) was an American art dealer, gallerist and author instrumental in the emergence of pop art and the development of Manhattan's SoHo gallery district in the 1960s. Ivan Karp was born in the Bronx and gr ...

, the director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Lichtenstein showed Karp several paintings, but not ''Look Mickey''. He instead impressed him with '' Girl with Ball'', and Karp decided to represent Lichtenstein a few weeks later.

Description

The painting is one of Lichtenstein's first non-

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

works, and marks his initial employment of

which he used to give it an "industrial" half-tone effect. The painting is his first use both of a speech balloon and comics as source material. The work has visible pencil marks and was produced using a plastic-bristle dog brush to apply the oil paint onto the canvas. By the time of his death, ''Look Mickey'' was regarded as Lichtenstein's breakthrough work. In reproducing a mass-produced illustration in a painterly style, Lichtenstein simplifies by reducing the composition to primary colors, which serves to accentuate its mass appeal and largely gives it the "pop" look. Typically, Ben-Day dots enable an artist to produce a variety of colors by using dots of a few colors to give the illusion of a broader palette. By mixing dots of different colors, like an ink jet printer, just a few colors can create a broad spectrum using only a limited number of primary hues. Lichtenstein as a painter and not a mass production printer is able to avoid this, achieving his individual color tones without blending existing hues. Instead, for each color that he wanted to include in a work, he used that color paint. Lichtenstein made several alterations to the original work: he eliminated various figures and rotated the dock so that Donald looks off the side rather than the end. At the same time, he kept Donald and Mickey in almost the same positions as they were in the original. Lichtenstein not only redesigned the space, but also altered the position of Donald's body and fishing rod and eliminated signs of stress and exertion. He also adds a speech balloon, making Donald seem unaware that he has failed to cast his rod.

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

said about Donald Duck: "He's got a big mouth, a big belligerent eye, a twistable neck and a substantial backside that's highly flexible. The duck comes near being the animator's ideal subject." Lichtenstein's painting reflects many of these physical features. Compared to the original source, Donald leans further forward towards the water, and Mickey less so. Mickey's face is more flushed. The composition incorporates some of the foibles of comic book printing, including misalignment of the contours of the waves with the yellow sky to give rise to an area of white space.

Interpretation

The large scale reproduction of a comic strip frame was considered radical and revolutionary at the time. Critics applauded the work's playfulness, inherent humor and irreverence. According to Diane Waldman of the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, "''Look Mickey'' is broad comedy and falls into the category of slapstick ..." In Lichtenstein's obituary, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' critic Christopher Knight described the work as "a slyly hilarious riff on Abstract Expressionism". Lichtenstein's slight alterations to its "linear clarity and colour", the critic writes, add to its aesthetic value and grandeur, reinforced by his choice of scale. A common misconception about Lichtenstein comes from the fact that in his best known works, his meticulous approach to painting is purposely disguised because he superficially seeks his paintings to appear as if facsimiles of industrial produced pop culture icons. Graham Bader wrote that "Lichtenstein's painting in fact appears more the product of industrial manufacture than the very pulp image on which it is based." ''Look Mickey'' is considered

self-referential Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philos ...

in the sense that the artist is painting something through which the viewer may see elements of the artist. Narcissus-Caravaggio (1594-96) edited

Bader observes that ''Look Mickey'' is concerned both with the artistic process and Lichtenstein's new painting techniques. He believes it can be considered a self-portrait in the sense that it "explicitly situates the painting's maker himself within the self-enclosed narcissistic circuit at its center". The painting shows Donald looking into the reflective water at Lichtenstein's blue 'rfl' signature "as a kind of surrogate for the image's creator", in a manner that is reminiscent of

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

's '' Narcissus'', in which the subject gazes at his own reflection on the water. This is viewed as an allegory of Lichtenstein's position as an artist trained to develop his realist instincts despite the prominence of

. When viewed this way, Mickey serves as the "vanguard

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

superego The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical con ...

towering over Lichtenstein and laughing at his retrograde efforts. Lichtenstein uses red Ben-Day dots to color Mickey's face. According to some art critics, this gives the character the appearance of

blushing Blushing is the reddening of a person's face due to psychological reasons. It is normally involuntary and triggered by emotional stress associated with passion, embarrassment, shyness, fear, anger, or romantic stimulation. Severe blushing ...

. Other interpretations are that the coloration is merely skin pigmentation or that it is the hue associated with a "healthy glow," since Mickey has historically been viewed as a creature with skin rather than fur. Another interpretation – supported by the original source in which Mickey says that if Donald can land the fish he can have it for lunch – is that Mickey's face is red due to the exertion necessary to contain his disbelief and laughter while he experiences his amused superiority. Those adhering to the blushing interpretation are bolstered by the uneven blotchiness of the red dots, but others are quick to point out that Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dot technique was still in a primitive stage. He did not develop the use of a stencil (i.e. the technique of pressing the liquid paint onto the surface through a screen of dots) to present uniformly distributed dots until 1963. Graham Bader, describing it as the engine of the painting's narrative, notes the intrigue created by the juxtaposition of Donald's heightened sense of visual perception as it relates to his anticipated catch, and his deadened sense of tactile perception as it relates to having a fishing hook in the back of his own shirt. In this sense, Lichtenstein has chosen to depict a source that has as its subject a divide between raised visual awareness and an absent sense of touch: Lichtenstein frequently explored vision-related themes after he began to work in the pop art genre; early examples include '' I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It!'' and ''Look Mickey''. In this painting, Donald's large eyes indicate his belief that he has caught something big while Mickey's small eyes indicate his disbelief that Donald has caught anything significant. Like Lichenstein's works with subjects looking through a periscope ('' Torpedo...Los!''), a

mirror A mirror or looking glass is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the ...

(''

Girl in Mirror ''Girl in Mirror'' (sometimes ''Girl in the Mirror'') is a 1964 porcelain-enamel-on-steel pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is considered to exist in between eight and ten editions. One edition was part of a $14 million 2012 lawsuit reg ...

'') or a

peephole A peephole, peekhole, spyhole, doorhole, magic eye, magic mirror or door viewer, is a small, round opening through a door from which a viewer on the inside of a dwelling may "peek" to see directly outside the door. The lenses are made and arr ...

(''I Can See the Whole Room ... and There's Nobody in It!''), ''Look Mickey'', with a subject looking at his reflection in the water, is a prominent example of the theme of vision. He uses narrative to emphasize this motif, while presenting several visual elements.

Legacy

The painting was included in Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition at The Leo Castelli Gallery, a show in which all the works had pre-sold before its opening in February 1962. The exhibition, which ran from February 10 through March 3, 1962, included ''

Engagement Ring An engagement ring, also known as a betrothal ring, is a ring indicating that the person wearing it is engaged to be married, especially in Western cultures. A ring is presented as an engagement gift by a partner to their prospective spouse whe ...

'', '' Blam'' and ''The Refrigerator''. He included the painting in his '' Artist's Studio—Look Mickey'' (1973), showing it hanging prominently on the wall of the pictorial space intended to depict his studio as the ideal studio, and implying that his popularity with critic and public ratifies his choice of popular culture subject matter. Reflecting on ''Look Mickey'' many years later, he said: The painting was bequeathed to the Washington

after Lichtenstein's death in 1997, following a 1990 pledge in honor of the institution's 50th Anniversary. It remains in the gallery's collection, where, , it is on permanent view.

Harold Rosenberg Harold Rosenberg (February 2, 1906 – July 11, 1978) was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. Rosenberg is best known fo ...

once described Lichtenstein's reworking of the comics source as follows: "...the difference between a comic strip of Mickey Mouse and a Lichtenstein painting of the same was art history, or the fact that Lichtenstein paints with the idea of the museum in mind."

Notes

References

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External links

National Gallery of Art Collection websiteLichtenstein Foundation website
{{Featured article 1961 paintings Collections of the National Gallery of Art Donald Duck Birds in art Mickey Mouse in art Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein Water in art