Art is a racket

Yeah, I know that yesterday was a big news day. Monday will be as well. But this blog occasionally looks at non-political subjects on the weekends, and I've been itching to write about art.

A fellow by the name of David Barsalou has created a site called Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein. Barsalou actually likes Lichtenstein, who made millions painting enlarged versions of comic book panels. Barsalou made it his business to track down the original comic books for comparison.

Personally, I can't stand Lichtenstein, whom I consider the biggest fraud in the history of art, with the possible exception of Walter Keane. Whenever I see a Lichtenstein hanging in a museum, the spirit of Lazlo Toth starts whispering in my ear, telling me to grab a hammer and do my part to improve the culture.

Lichtenstein devoted himself to capturing everything that was shoddy and gaudy about the comics of the 1950s and 1960s. He focused on the crappy reproduction and the flat, limited color.

(Comic book and comic strip coloring is infinitely better in the computer age. Old-timers like yours truly recall what it was like to cut rubylith. If you don't know what that phrase means, I can't explain it to you here -- but trust me, it was a rotten system.)

What Lichtenstein could not capture was the solid draftsmanship on display in the original comic book panels. Roy gave those old pros a black eye by misrepresenting the nature of their work to the "highbrow" art world. Lichtenstein simply could not draw -- yet he made millions. Meanwhile the victims of his robbery -- who could draw -- received a tiny page rate. Some comic book artists of that generation spent years in poverty.

Examples follow. Click on each image for a larger version. To see still larger versions, visit the above-linked website.

I don't know who did the original nurse on the left. But it's a perfectly competent drawing. The artist has subtly indicated the upward tilt of the head and the direction of the light. The hair is handled rather well -- not great, but good enough, with shading in the correct places.

Lichtenstein transforms the hair into a bizarre rubbery substance. The mouth no longer lines up with the nose, and the chin slides even further leftward. Look at the way the clothing drapes. Does that make sense to you?

The original piece (artist unknown to me) is a very nice little drawing. I like the delicate feathering around the eyes. Following the style of the day, the hatch marks flow with the surface, creating a nice illusion of depth. (Check out the black fingernails -- I didn't know they had goth girls in the '50s!)

The Lichtenstein version is a mess. That isn't hair; that's rust-colored fettucini. The fingernails come to razor-sharp points. The index and ring fingers are seen from the front, while the ring and pinky fingers are seen from the sides. Hands aren't built that way. (Look at your own.) There's no feathering around the eyes. Lichtenstein offers very little variation in line weight, and thus creates no illusion of depth.

If I recall correctly, a fanzine in the 1970s had already found this one, and identified the artist of the original as Don Heck, co-creator of Iron Man. Heck is rarely considered a fan favorite. But he was a true pro, especially when compared to our boy Roy.

In Heck's original, the wings of the aircraft are accurate and convincing -- whereas Lichtenstein's jet is hideously mis-drawn. Look at the numeral 3 on the Lichtenstein: Does it look like it is resting on a curved surface? The shadows make sense in the original but not in the enlarged version.

And how did the pilot turn into Andre the Giant?

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In the original, the villain's head is seen from slightly above and slightly behind. Lichtenstein changes this to a straight-on profile. Why? Because straight-on profiles are easier to draw. And what the hell happened to the index finger on the right hand?

In both versions, the big electrical switch is rendered in poor perspective; Lichtenstein makes a bad situation worse. Again, notice how all the lines are given equal weight in the revised version, destroying much of the charm of the original.

Lichtenstein simply cannot understand that eyeballs are round objects set within the socket. All competent comic book artists know how to indicate the round "shape beneath the skin" of the eyelid with relatively few strokes of ink. You never see that skill in a Lichtenstein.

The hair flows very nicely in the original, with highlights and recessed areas deftly indicated. Now look at what Lichtenstein does to this poor lady's hairdo -- especially at the bottom! He adds a curved line beside her nose to establish her cheek. But the cheek would form that shape only if she were smiling.

Now this one really pisses me off. Anyone of my generation who grew up reading comics will recognize the work of the great Joe Kubert, known for his fluid and organic linework. The cross-hatching on the soldier's sunken cheeks conveys form, energy and drama.

Look at the hand: With a few deft strokes, Kubert indicates not just the contour but the underlying bone structure. Kubert also understands that the helmet, the upper lip and the nose must cast shadows.

Meanwhile, Lichtenstein -- well, hell, just look at that ghastly thing. What incompetence!

I believe that the original comes from one of Harvey Kurtzman's war comics. Like wartime cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Kurtzmann thought in terms of light and shadow, not contour. Those quickly-applied huge black shadow areas are true art. Those brush-strokes have life -- yet they are also under perfect control.

The Lichtenstein is an atrocity. Compare the rifles! Compare the mouths! Compare the quality of the linework! And what the hell is that shadow under the left eye in Roy's version?

I don't recognize the original artist here, but the style looks very familiar. I want to say Gray Morrow, but I don't think that's it. Whoever did it, it's a well-executed drawing; I especially like the way the lips are handled.

Roy batters the poor girl's face out of shape. The eyelid no longer has any relationship with the eyeball. The lips experience left-ward drift. The hair has no sense of volume or flow. And what's with the guy's jacket? Did you ever see suit material drape in that fashion?

I could go on, but you get the point.

What I don't understand is why Lichtenstein did not simply enlarge the originals, using the "square up" device known to artists since the Renaissance. Even if he insisted on re-drawing his swipes by hand -- why did he make so many drawing errors? The originals were right there in front of his eyes!

The pros who turned out the original pages would have been overjoyed to received one-tenth of the money Lichtenstein received when he sold his Pop Art mess-terpieces to collectors who possessed more funds than taste. Even today, a Lichtenstein can fetch millions. Art historians will tout his work using that meaningless catch-all term "irony," as though irony excuses an utter lack of craftsmanship. (Say what you will about Warhol: The guy was, at the very least, a perfectly satisfactory silk screener.)

And if "irony" doesn't suffice to justify this garbage, historians and critics will focus on Lichtenstein's gaudy subject matter. They do so because most art historians are really English majors who wandered into the wrong classroom. They reduce everything to literature.

I've no sympathy with phony critics and poseur historians. My sympathy goes to bread-and-butter illustrators who know how to suggest three dimensions in a two-dimensional medium. In comics, the demands of both printers and deadlines disallowed fussy cross-hatching, yet the artists still found ways to create form, volume, light and shadow, using the fewest possible strokes.

This is not a lost art, even in an age when printing and production techniques are much improved. Modern comic book artists have masses of talent; they know how to perform the old magic, and they can also do lots of new magic. But for some reason -- starting around sixty years ago, and continuing up to the present day -- the kind of people who spend time in museums, galleries, and auction houses stopped caring about the fundamentals of good draftsmanship.

It's time they got the news: Subject matter doesn't matter. The ability to draw matters.

I wonder -- whatever happened to Don Heck?