Oversimplification as Remediation: Roy Lichtenstein’s Paintings and 1960s Comics

Within the Pop Art scene, the work of Roy Lichtenstein has been unquestionably associated with the language of comics. One of the approaches that could further contribute today to the discussion about the relationship between Lichtenstein’s paintings and comics may come from a comparison with the media studies of Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin. Their notion of remediation could help scholars to reframe Lichtenstein’s work in terms of a remediation of comics. However arguable this formula might be, this notion will allow us to better re-connect Lichtenstein’s formal strategy with the media culture and context of his period. In the first part of this essay I will try to describe the formalistic hybridization between comic style and the painting agenda carried out by Lichtenstein. In the second part I will explain on which basis this hybridization reveals some modernist contradictions about mass culture. Then in the third part, I will examine how Lichtenstein attempted to reform some aspects of comics in order to re-use them in his painting. Finally, I will speculate about the hypothetical audience addressed by Lichtenstein. Joining together different media, all along his career, he ended up reforming not only his favorite medium but both media, painting and comics at the same time.