Roy Lichtenstein, pop, and the face of painting in the 1960s

This dissertation examines the work produced by the American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923--1997) between 1956 and 1972. Tracing Lichtenstein's development into and through his "classic" pop oeuvre of the early sixties, the thesis argues that his production of these years is motivated by a sustained investigation of the place of the body---encompassing that of represented figure, practicing artist, and active spectator---in late modernist art.; The dissertation's four chapters proceed chronologically. The first studies the specific moves that led Lichtenstein to his pop idiom, focusing in particular on the importance of his early lessons at Ohio State University with Hoyt Sherman. Sherman's teaching stressed both the integrative potential and fundamental corporeality of the painterly act; Lichtenstein's path to pop at the close of the 1950s, the chapter contends, was fueled by his conflicted desire both to realize and negate his mentor's aesthetic principles.; The second chapter explores the terms of this project as they emerged in Lichtenstein's 1960s oeuvre by focusing on a single image, 1961's Look Mickey. Repeatedly cited by the artist as his first pop work, Look Mickey, the chapter argues, can be read as both a self-portrait and re-telling of the story of Narcissus. Concentrating on the tension between sensation and numbness driving the painting's pictorial narrative, the chapter situates it in relation to a broad set of discourses about the body and aesthetic possibility at the onset of the 1960s.; The dissertation's third chapter builds on this analysis by reexamining Lichtenstein's paintings of 1961--64 through the lens of Look Mickey's corporeal dialectic. The artist's work of these years, the chapter argues, is structured around a similar tension, evident in both form and iconography, between sensory fullness and depletion.; The final chapter traces Lichtenstein's shift of focus after 1964 to the bodies of his own viewers. The chapter closes by looking at Lichtenstein's mirror series of 1969--1972, arguing that these works figure a dissolution of painter and spectator alike---and in doing so, effectively conclude the sustained bodily investigations of the artist's 1960s oeuvre as a whole.