"Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself." Roy Lichtenstein
"Sixteen artists created poster designs in an official series for the XXIIIrd Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1984. The selection includes internationally known American artists as well as several young “emerging” artists with a special emphasis on those who work in Los Angeles. Ranging from photo realism to pure abstract styles, each design represents a personal approach to the idea of sport and Olympic Games. Participating artists included Roy Lichtenstein, Sam Francis, David Hockney, Rauschenberg and others." (Art and Sport: Images of the Olympic Games) The Red Horseman (Study)
"In "The Red Horseman" Roy Lichtenstein paraphrases the painting of the same name by futurist Carlo Carrà created in 1913 (image below), a homage to motion and speed. Lichtenstein quotes the famous original not as a famous object of high culture but as a randomly accessible part of a mass culture that no longer distinguishes between popular and high culture. Futurist Carlo Carra's watercolor The Red Horseman, 1913
"Among the many subjects that form a cogent part of Lichtenstein's dialogue with art is the Italian twentieth century Futurist Carlo Carra's watercolor The Red Horseman, of 1913, which formed the basis for the artist's monumental Red Horseman. Lichtenstein uses an image that symbolized the Futurist movement, especially its fascination with the dynamics of speed and its unequivocal glorification of war.
Lichtenstein liked the idea of capturing the look of a movement. He wanted to make his work about a movement look like an imitation while at the same time allowing himself enough room to make his own statement. He appropriated the Futurist imagery as a part of his own formal vocabulary and enhanced Carra's signal Futurist work by completing it. He enlarged its scale, altered its color relationships, and anchored the image to the canvas with a network of intersecting black vectors. In this extraordinary painting one dazzling image recalls the other." (roylichtenstein.com)
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