Craig

Roy Lichtenstein was a pioneer of the Pop Art movement, best known for his adaptations of commercial images into monumental paintings personalized by bold black outlines and Ben-Day dots. "I take a cliché and try to organize its forms to make it monumental," he said. "The difference is often not great, but it is crucial."

From 1963 to 1965, Lichtenstein worked on "Girls," a series of paintings based on comic book images of attractive young women. The AMAM painting Craig represents a single frame with a pretty blonde shown with her eyes wide and mouth partially open. Lichtenstein's choice of a narrow vertical canvas emphasizes the close-up of her face.

Lichtenstein's working method was documented by photographer and art editor John Coplans, whose conversations with Lichtenstein focused on the artist's use of a projector to transfer preliminary drawings to canvas, to which he applied Ben-Day dot halftones. In early paintings like Craig, Lichtenstein placed the dots by hand. He later used a commercial screen for the dots, which were often applied by his assistants. Lichtenstein filled in the hair and primary colors and painted the black lines last. Craig is executed in oil paint and Magna, a brand of synthetic permanent colors mixed with turpentine and mineral spirits that dries quickly and has a matte finish.

Oberlin College Professor Ellen Johnson acquired Craig in 1964 and gave it to the AMAM in 1979 in memory of her friend Ruth Roush (OC 1934). In 1998, Johnson bequeathed an important Lichtenstein pencil drawing, Study for Kiss II (1963), to the AMAM as part of her major bequest to the museum of more than three hundred works of modern and contemporary art.