Lecture: Professor Ellen Lupton on Pop Art and Graphic Design

Summary

The presentation focuses on pop artist Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and how their techniques of enlarging halftone dots and Benday dots made visible printing textures usually designed to disappear. It illuminates how Warhol's distinctive ink line was derived from a tracing paper transfer process. It explains Lichtenstein's painstaking method of applying uniform Benday dots with stencils versus gestural artists like Pollock. It shows both artists appropriating commercial art subjects like ads, comic books and celebrities considered 'feminine'. The talk explores how their interrogation of printing processes and commercial imagery was considered subversive yet hugely influential on graphic design.

Takeaways

• 😀 Andy Warhol invented his own distinctive ink drawing style using a blotted line technique
• 👩‍🎨 Warhol's mother Julia Warhola did lettering for many of his commercial illustrations
• 🔎 Roy Lichtenstein blew up and exposed the benday dot, making visible this previously overlooked printing technique
• 🖌 Lichtenstein used perforated metal stencils and a toothbrush to mechanically apply uniform dots to his canvases
• 👄 Both Warhol and Lichtenstein featured dramatically enlarged lips in their pop art
• 🌇 Adele Weber used rubber stamp lips to create prints and painted over them, playing with ideas of traces and prints
• 🇺🇸 Jasper Johns flag paintings were things seen but not examined - the graphics of flags rendered in paint
• ✊🏿 Faith Ringgold’s political posters of bleeding and violent American flags confronted laws against desecrating the flag
• 🎨 Ringgold developed a color theory she termed 'black light' using deep, vibrant hues to celebrate black skin
• 👩‍💻 'Old ladies' working for minimum wage manually produced the benday dots that colored the comic books Lichtenstein appropriated

Q & A

What technique did Andy Warhol invent to create his distinctive ink drawing style?

Warhol created a process where he would make a drawing on tracing paper and then ink the back of the tracing paper with wet India ink. The tracing paper was then pressed onto a piece of illustration board to create a print, leaving gaps and blobs that became part of his signature style.

How were Ben Day dots used in commercial printing?

Ben Day dots were used in commercial printing to reproduce illustrations, comic books, maps, and fashion illustrations. They were applied by hand using a complex mechanical contraption to create tone and texture.

How did Roy Lichtenstein differ from pop artists in his use of Ben Day dots?

Unlike other pop artists who used enlarged halftone dots from photographs, Lichtenstein used uniform benday dots. He had to invent his own method of transferring them to canvas using perforated metal stencils and pressing paint through with a toothbrush.

What was unique about Adele Weber's use of lips in her pop art?

In a drawing covered in stamped lips, Weber painted a businessman silhouette over the top, symbolically showing lips as a sexualized feminine 'mark' or conquest being covered up and controlled by male authority.

How did symbols like flags feature in pop art and graphic design?

Pop artists like Jasper Johns used common symbols like flags to explore things seen but not examined. Graphic designers in the 1960s then adopted flag motifs to make stark, printed political posters.

How did Andy Warhol's mother Julia collaborate in his commercial illustration work?

Julia Warhola worked side-by-side with Andy, sometimes doing ink drawings and lettering for commissions. She received credit under the name 'Andy Warhol's Mother'.

How was photo reproduction used in creating pop art works?

Many pop artists appropriated images from mass media like newspapers and advertisements and blew them up as a basis for paintings, often preserving and accentuating the halftone dots.

How did Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein represent different approaches to creating pop art?

Warhol embraced imperfect mechanical reproduction while Lichtenstein invented meticulous manual techniques to create the illusion of perfect mechanical dots and crisp commercial style.

How did graphic designers respond to pop art innovations?

Graphic designers immediately adopted pop art motifs like blown-up dots into campaigns for products like the 5up soda brand identity.

How did Faith Ringgold's 'Black Light' posters relate to pop art?

Ringgold's psychedelic color theory for celebrating black skin related to trippy San Francisco rock posters, building on modernist color theory Ringgold learned as an art student.

Outlines

00:00

😃 Warhol's signature line drawing technique

Paragraph 1 discusses Andy Warhol's unique line drawing technique he invented as a college student to create a distinctive style. He would make a drawing on tracing paper, ink the back with wet India ink pressed to illustration board to print it. This made prints with missing gaps and blobs that reproduced well. His assistants helped produce the drawings using this technique.

05:00

📚 Warhol's early commercial illustration work

Paragraph 2 shows examples of how Warhol applied his signature line drawing technique to commercial works like book covers. He likely also did the lettering on some. The prints have more depth than the final drawings. Other designers integrated his illustrations into designs, like the book cover lettered by his mother Julia Warhola.

10:00

👵🏻 Julia Warhola's lettering and collaboration

Paragraph 3 discusses Julia Warhola's lettering work on promotional books Andy Warhol made as gifts for clients. She lettered and illustrated some books like a cookbook with Andy's gourmet food illustrations. She was credited as "Andy Warhol's mother" when his work won awards.

15:02

🔎 Making halftone dots and patterns visible in art

Paragraph 4 explores pop artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein using halftone dots and benday patterns, designed to disappear in printing, but made visible. Warhol blew up photographic halftones and Lichtenstein invented ways to apply benday dots. Other earlier graphic design works had experimented with visible dots.

20:05

🤓 Understanding benday dots and production

Paragraph 5 dives deep into what benday dots and patterns are, how they were produced for illustrations using an intense hands-on process over a century. It evolved from a complex lithographic technique to a cheaper acetate method done by women minimum wage "dot makers" working for comic color separators.

25:07

🎨 Lichtenstein's benday dot technique and reception

Paragraph 6 examines how Lichtenstein developed ways to perfectly reproduce benday dots on canvas using stencils and a toothbrush. This mechanical process is compared to the more respected Jackson Pollock's expressive dripping paint technique as polarity between commercial vs fine art.

30:10

👄 Lipstick prints and kissing imagery in pop art

Paragraph 7 analyzes use of lipstick prints and lips as sexual marks and evidence of conquest in pulp fiction and pop art. It traces possible origins of Warhol's repeating lip images to earlier graphic design works like a Herbert Bayer magazine cover.

35:14

🇺🇸 Flags - things seen but not examined in pop art

Paragraph 8 discusses Jasper Johns' early pop flags series as recreations of the graphics of a flag, rather than pictures of flags. Later pop artists built on this with prints and posters of flags infused with political messages, exploring commercial reproduction.

40:16

🎨 Faith Ringgold's poster works on state violence

Paragraph 9 highlights Faith Ringgold's powerful political posters like The People's Flag Show which led to arrests for using flags. Cooper Hewitt is acquiring these works which build on a history of activist graphic design poster work to spotlight injustice.

45:18

🤔 Discussing Lichtenstein's inspiration and methods

Paragraph 10 examines questions on whether Lichtenstein was more inspired by commercial subject matter or stylistic graphic qualities to use dots. The discussion explores his choice of already degraded and feminized source material and how he transformed it through an ironic lens.

50:18

💭 Conversations on reviving pop art and its legacy

Paragraph 11 considers whether now is a good time to revitalize pop art given our highly commercialized visual culture. It notes contemporary painters especially create related commentary on media, products and capital, though different than classic pop art.

Keywords

💡commercial art

Commercial art refers to art that is produced for commercial purposes, such as advertising, illustration, and graphic design. In the video, commercial art is discussed in the context of Andy Warhol's early career as a successful commercial illustrator. Ellen Lupton notes the irony that while commercial art was created for reproduction, it still relied heavily on hand processes and techniques at that time.

💡dots

Dots are a key visual element that Ellen Lupton analyzes throughout the talk. She discusses two main types of dots used in pop art - halftone dots that Warhol enlarged from printed photographs to reveal the underlying printing process, and benday dots that Lichtenstein based on the patterns used in commercial printing and comics. The visibility of dots in pop art highlights processes and textures that are normally invisible.

💡lines

Lines refer to the distinctive ink lines that Andy Warhol devised early in his career to give his commercial illustrations a unique handmade and imperfect quality, while still making them easy to reproduce. The gaps and inconsistencies of Warhol's lines became part of his signature visual style.

💡lips

Lips are discussed both as a common pop art motif, such as in Warhol's paintings of Marilyn Monroe and other stars, as well as a symbol of femininity, sensuality, and sexual conquest in commercial illustrations and pulp media. The video analyzes how lips take on these layers of meaning in different artworks.

💡flags

Flags are addressed late in the talk, in relation to Jasper Johns' encaustic paintings of the American flag and Sturtevant's replica of Johns' flag. Ellen Lupton analyzes how artists like Faith Ringgold also adopted the flag in political posters to directly recreate and engage with this national symbol and its meanings.

💡mass media

Mass media, including commercial advertisements, consumer magazines, popular films, and romance comics, served as source material and inspiration for many pop artists. By borrowing mass media imagery, pop art questioned and revealed media stereotypes and consumerist values.

💡photomechanical reproduction

Photomechanical reproduction refers to printing processes utilizing photography to mass produce graphic images and text. As discussed regarding halftone dots, pop artists like Warhol enlarged and called attention to textures caused by commercial photomechanical reproduction that normally go unnoticed.

💡graphic design

As a graphic designer herself, Ellen Lupton provides insights into how principles of graphic design shaped styles and techniques seen in pop art. This includes Warhol's integration of image and text, Lichtenstein's sharpening of comic book panels into clear graphic compositions, and use of simplified graphic forms as in Jasper Johns' flags.

💡appropriation

Appropriation is a key strategy behind pop art, as artists borrowed and repurposed commercial imagery, advertising slogans, comics, product packaging, and other examples of mass media and consumer culture. By recontextualizing such appropriated elements, pop artists commented on their ubiquitous presence in society.

💡serial imagery

Serial imagery refers to the repetition of a single visual motif or source image across a body of work or multiple works, as exemplified by Warhol's serial paintings of Campbell's Soup Cans, Marilyn Monroe, and other subjects. This mechanically-inspired approach contrasts with the gestural expressionism prevalent in abstract art at the time.

Highlights

Kelly Montana introduces Ellen Lupton, emphasizing her role in shaping the perception of everyday objects through design.

Ellen Lupton's exploration of Andy Warhol's unique line creation process, which involved a combination of hand processes and mechanical reproduction.

Discussion on Warhol's transition from commercial illustrator to pop artist, highlighting the blend of handcrafted and mechanical elements in his work.

Lupton's insight into the collaborative nature of Warhol's early work, including contributions from his mother, Julia Warhola.

The exploration of halftone dots in Warhol's art, revealing the technique of making visible the typically unseen texture of reproduced images.

Analysis of Roy Lichtenstein's adoption of the Benday dot technique to emulate and critique commercial art aesthetics.

The technical challenge and process behind Lichtenstein's precision in recreating dot patterns to mimic mechanical reproduction.

Comparison between Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein's Life magazine features, highlighting the differing public perceptions of their art processes.

The impact of pop art on commercial graphic design, with examples such as the 7UP identity redesign that incorporated enlarged dot patterns.

The role of lips as a recurring motif in pop art, symbolizing various themes from femininity to consumer culture.

Jasper Johns' approach to painting flags as objects of everyday life, challenging viewers to see familiar symbols in new ways.

Sturtevant's meticulous recreation of Jasper Johns' flag paintings, questioning the nature of originality and reproduction in art.

The use of the American flag in art as a medium for political expression and critique, as seen in works by Faith Ringgold and others.

Lupton's discussion on the continuous relevance and evolution of pop art themes in contemporary art, particularly in the context of digital media and societal critique.

The lecture's emphasis on the intertwined relationship between art, design, and commercial culture, illustrating how artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein blurred these boundaries.

Transcripts

hi good evening everyone

i'm kelly montana i'm the assistant

curator here at the manila drawing

institute and i'm really thrilled to see

so many of you here with us tonight

before i begin i'd like to remind

everyone to silence or even consider

airplane mode your cell phones please we

are recording this talk and it will be

posted online in the coming weeks

i'm delighted to be hosting this event a

lecture by ellen lupton in conjunction

with our exhibition draw like a machine

pop art 1952-1975

the show is overwhelmingly drawn from

the museum's permanent collection with

key loans from collectors based here in

houston some of whom are with us this

evening

the exhibition galleries will remain

open for a brief period after the talk

ends for anyone that would like to visit

and we are especially grateful that

ellen could travel from maryland to be

here with us tonight there will be time

for a short q a following her

presentation and please hold your

questions until then

and now it is my pleasure to introduce

ellen lupton

ellen is a writer curator educator and

designer

she is the betty cook and william

steinmetz design chair at the maryland

institute college of art in baltimore

and the senior curator of contemporary

design at the cooper hewitt

the smithsonian design museum in new

york

her newest exhibition at the cooper

hewitt is design and healing creative

responses to epidemics

a prolific writer her recent

publications include the co-authored

extra bold a feminist inclusive

anti-racist non-binary field guide for

graphic designers

and her texts mother tongue the script

of julia warhola and how posters work

were especially critical for me in the

exhibition on view this evening i

returned to them time and again

for me the through line in ellen's work

is how she closely attends to the

journey we are all on with the often

overlooked yet often necessary things of

our lives

she unpacks with incredible specificity

why an object or an image makes you feel

joy frustration or total indifference

and her work always assures that you

know it is a person that designed it

they made it with intention and they are

quite literally shaping your world

in short ellen's mind is an exciting one

that i am sure will make you see much of

it anew and i will turn it over to her

please join me in welcoming our guest

ellen lupton

thank you kelly it was so much fun to

see this show

it's a real delight to be here so thank

you

so my my lecture title looks a little

bit like a basic design lesson you know

we start with lines

and then we do dots

but then all of a sudden we're like sex

and politics right that's how it works

so

um

i'm a graphic designer i'm not an art

historian but i love art and i loved

looking at all the

beautiful works on paper with kelly

today

and

everything i do in the field of design

somehow comes back to how things are

made i'm just really interested in that

it often interests me more than what it

means

sorry

right basic design

so we're going to start talking about

these lines and this is from

andy warhol's early career

he was a very successful commercial

illustrator

for the first decade of his career in

new york city and he studied commercial

art at the carnegie institute in

pittsburgh now carnegie mellon

university

[Music]

and when he was in school

he

set upon himself the challenge

to invent his own line

because if you're going to be a

commercial illustrator

you had to have your own line

and i think this gets to some of the

the ironies and

fascinating contradictions in kelly's

show

of how

commercial art

although it was created for reproduction

had at its basis

these hand processes

that even when

the graphic artists were striving for

something more mechanical

there's still these hand processes

at the bottom

and so how did andy warhol

make his very special line

well he

created this process where he would

make a drawing on tracing paper

and then on the back of the tracing

paper he would

ink it with wet india ink

and it was hinged to a nice piece of

illustration board

and then he would press the two things

together

in order to create this print

and so what you see on the left in each

case

is the print the final drawing and what

you see on the right is the

ink original

which oddly enough it has like more

detail and more depth and

and it's fascinating to me that often in

the print

some of the character actually

disappears

um and what he was trying to create was

this very distinctive line that has

little gaps and blobs in it

and another advantage of this method is

that it was very easy to

photomechanically reproduce so in all

the reproduction methods of the era

including today

a pure black line on a white

ground is easiest to print and so to

make his unique line it also had to be

very print friendly

so the line is kind of printed

and it's kind of drawn

and it's kind of there

and it's kind of not there

parts are missing

but they're missing by accident

and it's a kind of wonderfully warholian

design um

and often his assistants would actually

do the inking

and sometimes the entire drawing for him

and this is in the 50s when he was a

commercial illustrator later of course

we know he had a factory but really the

factory started in his townhouse

in manhattan where he lived with his

mother

and where his assistants often helped

him with the drawings

and learned how to do the process that

he invented when he was a college kid

um

and so i found some examples and there

are many where he applied this drawing

style to commercial pieces he did a lot

of book covers which are really

wonderful

and here's one where he likely also did

the lettering

and there's a wonderful integration of

the lettering and the illustration and

the

kind of textured uh background

he did many book covers and you can

buy these for not too much money

it's a kind of fun collector's beginning

collectors pieces if you're into that

um

this one

most likely another designer added the

type

i don't see any evidence in warhol's

work that he knew how to do typography

per se

but it's quite beautifully integrated

into this wonderful drawing and you can

see his

line right his distinctive signature

line he had a couple of other lines as

well but this is the one that he's most

known for and there's wonderful examples

of it in the exhibition which is really

fun to see

he certainly didn't design the book

cover he did the illustration

and another designer would have

reversed it you know created this

dramatic

layout with it

and in this case using this typewriter

type

to

create

that feeling of rawness

and roughness

that goes with the line and there's

always a challenge for graphic designers

working with illustration

is how do you make illustrations look

okay with type

because type is hard and fixed

and has sharp edges and often looks

really bad with illustrations so

kudos to this uncredited designer who

actually did the cover design featuring

the illustration

um

and sometimes we can look inside the

books and see who designed it with andy

warhol

so here's a book cover

um

with with this

image of a piano on the cover

but the

designer has really taken that

illustration and turned it into this

uh you know photo montage essentially

and inside the book

is andy warhol's drawing kind of left

as it is um

[Music]

so really cool

um and and this cover is lettered by

andy warhol's mother

julia warhola

who did much lettering during this

period

there in the townhouse where the studio

was where she and andy lived and where

everybody worked

creating these things

um and that's andy and julia

together a really

whoops

beautiful and moving picture

and he kind of credited her in a way

he would sometimes credit her as andy

warhol's mother

including getting a prize from the art

directors club of new york

which went to andy warhol's mother

so

if you're a mother as i am

it's kind of getting credit

it's kind of being erased yet again

right

um and andy warhol crea during this

commercial period

created these wonderful promotional

books

that were sent out to clients and

friends as christmas gifts and this was

a very common practice for commercial

artists at the time and even today some

of us still do that i'm usually at some

ugly jiff

and always sent on new year's day not

christmas

and this one is entirely illustrated and

lettered

by julia warhola

and this beautiful

cookbook which was commercially produced

and was co-authored with susie frankfurt

features andy warhol's illustrations of

outrageous gourmet food as it was called

at the time and they're really making

fun of these extravagant recipes

and all of the lettering is by julia

warhola

and you could even get it as press type

so if there any survivors of the

pre-digital graphic design industry in

the room

press type was a way to create

typesetting when you didn't have the

money or time to send it out and get

galleys made and cut them up and paste

them on a board

and so this press type actually features

julia warhola's lettering

it is quite cool

and i wish we could still get it but

this is not not easily found

okay let's talk about dots

um

[Music]

so dots are a big feature of pop art

and of course they're a big

feature of commercial graphic design

and andy warhol started

using enlarged dots

in these silk screen paintings the

series called most wanted men from 1964.

and the paintings

were originally an installation on a

building

in the new york world's fair of 1964.

and they were very big and you would see

them from a great distance and you

wouldn't see the dots

and they were painted over almost

immediately they were considered

scandalous

a man wanting men and they're criminals

it could not be

but then andy warhol

made these paintings to show in a

gallery using the exact same screens

and he saw that the dots were big

and looked cool

and it became a big part of his style

and these are halftone dots so taking a

newspaper photograph or any kind of

reproduced photograph and blowing it up

so he made visible this texture

that we that is designed to go away

right that you're not supposed to see

and now you can see it even more it's so

beautiful

and it's a technical process it was

invented in the 1880s and it is all

around us

and we don't see it but andy warhol

helps us see it by making it big

and he was not the first person to do

that of course there were other artists

who had done it

and others who had done it in a

commercial

context and i thank blake gopnik for his

wonderful article what the dots mean in

andy warhol's pop art

for this beautiful

book cover

for arthur rambo's illuminations

designed by

andy warhol's friend ray johnson um

for new directions press which was one

of andy warhol's clients and so he

likely saw it

maybe maybe not but

i love these two beautiful men together

in dots

gorgeous

this is a

much older poster this is from 1934

and it's a poster by zanti shivinsky

who was a

student at the bauhaus

and left germany in the early 30s

to go to italy where he became a very

successful

graphic designer and did fantastic

commercial work for olivetti and many

other

companies but he also did this poster

for mussolini

with dots

and it's quite a striking

use of the halftone

to

illustrate really the theory of fascism

so we have the head of the charismatic

leader

sitting on a body

made up of the masses of the people

right so his power

comes

from the devotion of the math

and

a photographic halftone its unity

comes from the invisible dots right

whose individuality

is erased

in the name of the larger image

and shivinsky in this amazing poster

sort of brings the dot into visibility

many years before andy warhol or ray

johnson but there were others who did it

too and now there's roy lichtenstein

who made a different kind of dot not a

half tone dot

but dots that are all the same size

and this is called a bend a dot

and

wow

more big dots and bend a dots are used

not in photography

but for reproducing illustrations and

particularly comic books

and maps and fashion illustrations

and the bend a dot is designed to

disappear

and it was also invented in the 1880s

and is all around us and yet we do not

see it

but now we see it

because roy lichtenstein made it big

um and so these are two very different

dots with a very different

texture and a different uh impression

upon us

and i you know roy lichtenstein he

really made this his signature

and he made something visible that we

had never noticed before

and in fact he made the word benday dot

like part of conversation right like

don't you walk around and talk to people

about ben day dots well

it's because of roy lichtenstein not

because

you know jack about graphic arts

production right

so

what is it anyway

um

if you do some internet searching as we

are prone to do you will find

definitions like this from the moma

website

incorrectly hyphenated because ben day

was a person

not a hyphenation

and we see some examples under there

some of them are by roy lichtenstein and

they have bende dots

but the others are halftone dots

okay so we got to get serious about this

because they're very different dots

and if you go on grove art online you

learn

again about the guy who used bend a dots

in the 60s right

and not the whole history of like how

this actually has changed

commercial printing

it's his brand right the ben day dot

became

equated with roy lichtenstein

over and over it's fascinating

he owns it

but what went on before so i wanted to

learn more about what really is a

band-aid dot

and i knew i couldn't rely on art

historians for this because they don't

really care about graphic arts

production they care about roy

lichtenstein

so i had to go to the source

which is a guy named legion of andy

who has an obsessive excellent

beautifully footnoted and researched

website that goes on for page after page

after page

about bend a dots and i will not get too

deep in the weeds

but just to show you like bend a dots

have a lot of variety they were created

with this physical screen this physical

invention

that actually required an enormous

amount of hand skill

to apply to drawings

um this

device a contraption

that would be attached to this

lithographic stone at a slight distance

from the uh surface and then a stylus

would press

the greasy inked

dotted piece of celluloid to the stone

and leave an impression

and it was you know quite an involved

technique

that was used for over a hundred years

really in exactly the way that mr

benjamin day junior intended it

um you would mask out the part of the

drawing that didn't get dots

and they weren't just dots they were

lines um

uh and here's a beautiful so all kinds

of you know different textures

some of them emulating the more handmade

stipples of copper plate engraving

and some of them very regular

and in the mid 20th century those

regular dots became more popular because

of the presence of halftone printing

being so ubiquitous

that you really wanted your

ben day dots to look more photographic

and less like old-time print making

and this is what the ben day department

looked like in a engraving studio in

chicago in

1921 so lots of guys hunched over

equipment

working hard

at creating this invisible texture

you could put it on anything

and then by by 1960 the process was

quite a bit different it was done with

layers of acetate and was a different

technical process that anybody who's

really excited can ask me exactly how

that worked because now i know because i

am into legion of andy

the new process was cheaper

and it was mostly done by women whoops

keep going too fast um

and one of the this is for comic book

production uh these studios they were

called color separators and one of the

companies

referred to as employees as

old ladies who worked for minimum wage

and these were the women who are

responsible for translating all of the

colors in a comic book

into ben day dots

so roy lichtenstein didn't know anything

about that

or how to make color separations or how

a comic book was actually produced

he had to invent his own

quasi-mechanical way

to get these dots onto a drawing or onto

a canvas

i never thought about it before

so thank you kelly montana

because now i will never get it out of

my head how did roy lichtenstein get

those dots on the canvas like andy

warhol we know

he just blew up the photograph

and made those dots bigger but roy had

to think of a way to get perfect uniform

dots

onto a canvas

now the people at life magazine were

very interested in this question too and

they published this article

in 1964 is he the worst artist in the

u.s question mark

wow imagine that being your article in

life magazine

and they wanted to know

roy

how do you make the dots

and how do you get these big comic books

to be on the canvas

and so he took them step by step through

the process

and actually showed how to create this

this very famous painting that

where is my image duplicator

um

and so we would start with a little

comic book

and he would make his own sketch

and all the art historians are very into

pointing out that he changed the sketch

and made it better

it was transformation and it's true he

designed it he made it like more crisp

neat beautiful design

and he blew it up with a projector which

was a common way to make things big

um

projector

source material

and then

he masked out

the part of the painting that wasn't

going to get dots and he used a piece of

perforated metal as a stencil

and forced paint

with a toothbrush

through the stencil onto the canvas

some 15 years earlier jackson pollock

also had his own article in life

magazine

and

his process was a little more heroic

right a guy with a cigarette

dripping house paint

on the floor

squatting

versus

roy with a toothbrush

and a stencil on a table what a drag

anyway i had to go look at what

what pollux magazine article looked like

as well really beautiful graphic design

amazing love it with the

freeze you know and there he is looking

so manly against

uh his canvas

but then where are the photographs of

jackson pollock

doing his masculine on the floor

that's what that looks like

okay

at least roy got his own spread right

without any ads

and so the pop artist kind of took

that part the feminized part the mass

media part

and said you know what let's do that

instead

and so

amazing quote

by roy lichtenstein it was almost

acceptable to hang a dripping paint rag

like jackson pollock

everyone was accustomed to this

the one thing everyone hated was

commercial art

um

right so he took the ads which nobody

liked

comic books everybody actually likes

comic books

but not the comic books that roy picked

the romance comic books those were for

girls

ah

um and he really tried to recreate that

texture

um an amazing piece by molly nesbitt

sort of taking apart the different

quality of dots right

how did roy learn to do beautiful dots

so these are kind of rough

these dots are in the exhibition and

it's fabulous to look at them up close i

love this drawing

and these he made by rubbing so he found

a screen that had a nice kind of dot

texture to it

and rubbed it to get that dot feeling

and we can see that in some of his

drawings

but it's not perfect doesn't really look

printed and he really wanted to like

capture that feeling of print

and got a much better effect with these

stencils these perforated

stencils that he could push paint or

graphite through the holes and get more

mechanical dots

which now we know is an extremely

labor-intensive hand process

whether you were doing it as roy

lichtenstein or as an old lady in new

jersey working for a color separator it

was a laborious hand process

so it gets slicker and more perfect

and then he would make collages where he

would have his own uh papers made with

these nice and large dots

to kind of work more

quickly and graphic designers use these

sort of materials too

rub downs and stick-ons that would allow

you to put dots directly on your

illustrations

without having to work with the old

ladies in new jersey

the graphic design world responded

immediately they just loved it they saw

themselves reflected

but in a cool way

and almost immediately we see commercial

graphic design with big dots

this is from 7up 1975.

and that identity was actually created

by thomas miller a designer at morton

goldschall associates in chicago who

created this amazing identity for 7up

that really has his own take on dots so

his dots aren't just bend a dots

blown up they're

electric lights

and they're soda bubbles

they're the uncola

they're so cool

and so another take on the dot

and then of course many artists were

using the enlarged halftone dot which

was you know just often for expedience

because if you had a little tiny picture

that you got from a magazine you want to

make it big the dots are going to get

big

and you can make that beautiful and part

of the aesthetic of your work and i

think the pop artist really opened up

that idea that that availability of

making the dot visible

and having that be acceptable having

that be part of the texture of the thing

and then there were political designers

activists

who were simply doing it out of pure

expediency you know where the newspaper

image

is what you have and it has that texture

of media

emery douglas was the minister of

culture for the black panther party in

the 1960s

and he used these beautiful

ben day dots

and all the cup front covers and back

covers of the black panther magazine

uh and use them to beautiful effect and

and definitely amplifying that texture

of the dot

and letting it be seen letting the

invisible be seen

and this spectacular piece of original

artwork

from the collection of meryl c berman

lets us see emery douglas working

and see how he put together this

mechanical artwork for the black panther

magazine

and he would have used one of these

stick on or rubbed down dot

patterns to fill in his illustration

which is cut out and pasted on acetate

over the mechanical board of the

magazine

using a product such as that

now we have all these as digital

products

which are fun okay lips

i love the lips

in this exhibition

um and this work by adele weber was

really illuminating to me i had not seen

her work before and this little drawing

in the show is really about the size of

a comic book cover

and it is covered with lips

which are rubber stamped onto the

surface

um and then this silhouette of a salary

man is painted on top of it or under it

obliterating the lips

and so this idea of the lips as a kind

of trace and a print

um

a print of uh female conquest of the

sexual mark that a woman puts on another

person

um is a big trope in comic book art and

movies and

you know pulp fiction

um

and her work is

creates these kind of iconic images of

new york work life

and here's some comic books playing with

this trope where you know the lipstick

print

as a kind of

body print

mechanical print created by this ink

right this sexualized ink on the face

is evidence of infidelity it's evidence

of

sexual conquest it's the signature

right the unique mark

of the um of the woman

and not always a woman

there are beautiful um drawings of of

andy warhol's friend gene swenson in the

exhibition

which make incredible detailed sensual

focus

on the lips of the model

in some cases really taking over the

whole drawing becoming what the drawing

is all about

and andy warhol also did portraits of

his friend otto fenn wearing lipstick

and then there are his amazing images of

marilyn monroe and her lips

and my friend michael dooley who's a

graphic designer did this research

showing the origins of some of andy

warhol's lip fascination

in this magazine cover by herbert beyer

who was a graphic designer from the

bauhaus

one of my fav guys

who came to new york and was an art

director and designer in new york

and andy warhol

maybe saw this maybe traced it

maybe used it as the basis of this

um

this icon that he he drew this over and

over through his career even up until

the 80s this this woman's face uh

repeated

um that may have come from herbert buyer

and this beautiful printed book from

1964 of just the lips

right and the kind of frightening

intensity of the lips

okay flags is my last chapter

this is jasper john's first painting of

a flag

in a period when he was discovering this

idea

of creating paintings of quote things

seen and not looked at

not examined right so we've just been

looking at dots

designed not to be seen not to be

examined but blown up and exposed and

for john's things like a flag or a

letter or a number or a target where

these things that have no scale

you don't have to make a picture of

right it is what it is

um and so he made these paintings

um

it's not a picture of a flag it is a

flag right it is the graphics of a flag

rendered

in his own

materials

and this is a very precise copy by a

fascinating artist named stur tabant and

this is in the show here

where she meticulously recreated

jasper john's and other people's works

using the exact materials that they had

used in the precise scale

so is it a picture of the painting or is

it just the painting right

um

and the flag comes up a lot in the

exhibition uh sometimes as americana

as a trinket right as a little thing

like at a parade

right

a toy

and in the 1960s

many graphic designers made political

posters

based on the flag and i think they were

directly referencing jasper johns and

making the poster simply be a flag

so not interpreting the stars and

stripes as a motif

but really recreating the flag

but infusing it with this political

content

at the scale at the proportion of the

real thing right of the actual flag

this one is

stunning

and in 1969 jasper johns was asked to do

a poster of a flag

um to raise money for the anti-war

effort in a way i think it is less

interesting because it has this big

caption underneath

maybe the gallery owner added that or

something it just seems to take away

from the purity of the idea of the thing

being the thing and not having this edge

around it

this is a poster by faith ringgold from

1970 and she did it

uh advertising

a show

at judson church in new york city called

the people's flag show which was an open

call

unjuried exhibition where any artist

could submit

artwork using the american flag and

contesting

the laws against desecrating the flag

and so she's created a poster

that is the flag that is the shape of

the flag and she's a fascinating amazing

artist who

used graphic design in her work because

it was useful

but also to create low-cost art that

people could buy

and i'm very proud to say that cooper

hewitt is in the process of acquiring

this and several other posters by faith

ring gold

and they make i think a really beautiful

kind of final chapter to this story

about drawing

and reproduction

three of the artists who were exhibited

in this exhibition were arrested

for desecrating the flag

and this was the painting one of the two

paintings that she exhibited in that

show in 1970

the flag is bleeding

and that's faith wrangled in the

exhibition with these artworks around

her

and there's abby hoffman with a

that's a flag

and three artists were arrested

including faith ringgold who became

known as the judson 3

for their

confrontation with the flag

there's another faith wrangled poster

that cooper hewitt is acquiring

it's called united states of attica

and it's about violence against

prisoners in all the states of the of

the u.s

and other violence against black people

by the state

state violence against black people

it's an incredible poster

um and cooper hewitt is really proud to

be acquiring this from faith ring gold

and it speaks to a history of such

posters including this one

this work

led by ida b wells who did this

map studying lynching in the united

states and was used as evidence in

promoting an anti-lynching

law in the u.s congress and senate

so graphic design doing stuff

there's another beautiful poster by

faith ring gold

and it's using these two colors that are

very close in value the purple and green

and it reflected a theory a color theory

that she was developing at the at the

time

that she called black light

and of course that was a psychedelic

kind of term

some of us had black lights in high

school to make things glow and look cool

and so she was she was drawing on that

psychedelic meaning

but she wanted to use these intense

colors deep and dark and jewel-like and

close together to celebrate the beauty

of black skin

and so this poster

here we can see the physicality of how

it's made

with cut paper

the poster is building on this painting

that she did in 1969

also using lettering but in this in this

case it's a oil painting with these very

close and value colors

and she did portraits

in this series i love these where the

figures are cropped like magazine

photographs

or this beautiful portrait of a black

man with these intense rich colors

exploring this this color theory of

black light

and it's a theory not unlike what the

psychedelic poster artists of san

francisco were doing

with their silk screen posters

celebrating the experience of

rock and roll

often using colors that were very close

in value an idea that

was taught by joseph albers in his basic

design classes at yale

where victor moscoso was a student so

this high modern

bauhaus design theory became the basis

of

trippy psychedelic posters

and to see this interpretation of it

with a different register and a

different seriousness and meaning behind

it

i think is a beautiful way to end

the evening thank you

[Applause]

would you like to take some questions

ellen

sure

so just raise your hand i'll bring a mic

around to you

this is uh more of an observation that i

wanted to ask you about but the two

articles about pollock and uh

yeah they were the titles intentionally

referencing each other

well i would i would think so so the

pollock articles from 1949 and the title

was is he the greatest artist in america

and then 15 years later roy's article is

he the worst artist in america i would

think that the good people at life

magazine

were

playing on that and the article about

pollock was you know so popular and so

upsetting to people you know my

six-year-old could do that

right it just enraged people

that that would be considered

art but also was obviously fascinating

and world changing

and pop art enraged people too

and your six-year-old couldn't do it

because it's actually really hard

harder than it looks and i have to say i

never really thought about how did roy

lichtenstein make his paintings

and it is really it's quite a challenge

to make things look like a machine made

them and he would go in and retouch the

dots if they weren't right

and

the replicator one whatever it's called

duplicator

you can see how he's added um let me

just get to it

well i don't remember where it is but he

actually adds like paints highlights on

the eyes

which i i don't think it's legitimate

yeah i have to

follow up on that lichtenstein

yeah

kind of observations

was the origin of his

kind of work really

where he was inspired by

aesthetics and style of

commercial graphics such as comic books

therefore

kind of

the subject matter of comic books and

advertisements just followed suit

through that or was he

really

you know inspired by

you know kind of statements that

commercial work was saying about society

and he was trying to show like a lot of

the work with like the

romance comic books about women and

their relationship with men and

just to be consistent you know if that

was he was reading he was inspired or

the advertisements

that

the dot the ben day dot was just

something that seemed to suit

what he was seeing and was inspired by

by what the subject matter was so was it

style before

the subject or did they go together or

was he really just interested by what

all the

media was

communicating about society and then as

a result that's

where the style came from

i mean i think it has to be both

if he was just interested in the subject

matter

he would have had a different result

and i think

he understood the subject matter to be

debased

right that it wasn't serious

even comic book people

didn't like these comics

you know

so they were already like out of date

and um

seen as the decline of the art of comics

right they were the worst comics ever

and those are the ones that he picked

or like the washing machine

um

right nobody likes the washing machine

this is not anybody's idea of a good

time

so he's choosing something you know

feminized which immediately makes it not

cool

right this is women's stuff

and

um

it's hard for me to imagine that he

likes the subject matter or that he even

never did any laundry for that matter

right he probably had the privilege of

other people doing his laundry

but you know so he's making fun of this

culture

but also

enjoying it right

and the irony is that people loved those

comic book paintings

people that maybe didn't like the comics

themselves loved the paintings they were

just you know i love these paintings

yeah

um this might be like kind of a bloated

question but uh do you think that right

now is like a good time for

um like pop art to um

i guess kind of be like revitalized uh

because like for like example like with

warhol um

a lot of his paintings were of like

celebrities and like advertisements

you know since we're constantly on like

on our phones now

like hundreds of advertisements like

every day so like wouldn't it be

um

interesting to see like new artists uh

take that and

i don't know

bring it back

i think so i think artists are bringing

it back

i think um

there's incredible richness and

figurative painting

especially african-american painters

portrait painters and figurative

painters

i wouldn't call them pop artists

but i think there's a way in which pop

art never died it sort of brought the

image back and

allowed it to be

interrogated as media and as a product

of

society and not like a window onto the

world but

you know something processed and

mediated and

subject to capital and monetization and

all that so

i think pop art is being revived

like i like your question thanks

i was

struck by that a lot of the source

material they're looking at actually

seems to be from it's not contemporary

to when they're working it's actually

seems to be about 20 years before um

just looking at you know andy warhol

looking at the life mag at the magazine

from the 1940s

um these ads don't necessarily look you

know they look like they come from

the jackson pollock 1940s magazine i'm

just i'm curious if you have any if you

have any thoughts of that and if that's

something you you saw as well for

example linkedin science comics or those

contemporary to when he was i think they

were contemporary it's just that they

weren't

they weren't the comic at the edits

essence so like even comic book artists

there was a great article by adam gopnik

about this

but that even the comic book artists who

had to do those romance comics

all dreamed of getting another job

and the other job was doing superhero

comics

so like these were

i think the reason they look like

they're out of date it's because

they were they were what teenage girls

read they weren't the hardcore

comic art that people were the comic

aficionados were

committed to

okay good all right thank you very much

it was super fun dots

[Applause]

you