Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Filed under the name Roy · February 13, 2026
Roy Lichtenstein took comic strips, the kind of thing most people considered disposable entertainment, and turned them into some of the most recognized paintings of the whole twentieth century, dots and all. I've listened to a lot of history audiobooks on long hauls, and pop art always struck me as an argument about what actually counts as 'serious' art versus what people just decided wasn't worth taking seriously — a question I have complicated feelings about, being a guy who reads a lot but never finished a degree myself. Lichtenstein basically forced the art world to reconsider something it had already written off, blown up huge and painted with total seriousness. There's a town I pass through in the Midwest with an old Lichtenstein-style mural on the side of a diner, probably unlicensed, and every time I see it I think about how far a comic panel traveled to end up respected in a museum. Sometimes the thing everyone dismisses turns out to be the thing that lasts.