0:00:04 > 0:00:07It's 1961.
0:00:07 > 0:00:13You are a mild-mannered, frustrated 37-year-old art teacher, whose career in art is going nowhere.
0:00:13 > 0:00:17You believe American art doesn't reflect the excitement of America.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21You decide what DOES reflect that excitement is comic-book art -
0:00:21 > 0:00:23the imagery of the commercial world.
0:00:23 > 0:00:28You apply high-art techniques, your paintings hang in a major gallery.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32You are Roy Lichtenstein. You are a major figure in American art.
0:00:32 > 0:00:37You have changed the direction of American art. You have superpowers.
0:00:38 > 0:00:41'Roy Lichtenstein, Pop Idol.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45'See Roy's incredible rags-to-riches story.
0:00:45 > 0:00:51'The man who blew away the art world with his fabulous and super-cool paintings and made millions.
0:00:51 > 0:00:53'It wasn't always that way, folks.
0:00:53 > 0:00:58'In the early years, Roy struggled against poverty, obscurity and failure.
0:00:58 > 0:01:00'How will Roy get out of this one?
0:01:00 > 0:01:04'All this in Roy Lichtenstein, Pop Idol.'
0:01:09 > 0:01:14Roy Lichtenstein is best known for his detached, ironic comic paintings
0:01:14 > 0:01:17of chiselled-jawed men and weeping girls.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20When the work first appeared in 1962,
0:01:20 > 0:01:24it seemed someone had dragged images off the billboards outside
0:01:24 > 0:01:27and stuck them up on the walls of the gallery.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30Lichtenstein challenged people's conceptions of art,
0:01:30 > 0:01:35and in doing so became one of the defining image-makers of the 1960s.
0:01:39 > 0:01:44Roy Lichtenstein was born in 1923, and grew up here in the Upper West Side of New York,
0:01:44 > 0:01:48when it was home to a community of affluent Jewish emigres.
0:01:48 > 0:01:51His father was a property developer.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55His sister remembers how they lived next door to a Russian composer.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59There's a plaque there to Rachmaninov.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02I can remember we would sit on the indoor steps -
0:02:02 > 0:02:08the steps inside the building - and listen to Rachmaninov practise.
0:02:08 > 0:02:11But life in the Lichtenstein home was quiet.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15'My mother was very funny,'
0:02:15 > 0:02:18but she kept her distance.
0:02:18 > 0:02:20She wasn't emotional,
0:02:20 > 0:02:24'and I think not very concerned about us.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27Roy grew shy and withdrawn, but quietly determined.
0:02:30 > 0:02:36As a teenager, he felt the need to spend more time away from home, to escape into an exciting new world.
0:02:36 > 0:02:39'Roy develops an interest in jazz
0:02:39 > 0:02:44'and spends his evenings up in Harlem, listening to Count Basie and Lester Young at the Apollo.
0:02:44 > 0:02:51'These performances inspire his first paintings, Picasso-style portraits of jazz musicians.'
0:02:51 > 0:02:55But his parents still didn't take him seriously.
0:02:55 > 0:03:00'They didn't think he was destined for greatness. I'm afraid not.'
0:03:00 > 0:03:05It would be a miracle if he finished college, and heaven knows what he'd do after that!
0:03:06 > 0:03:12When America joined the Second World War, all questions about Roy's future were put on hold.
0:03:12 > 0:03:14He was drafted into the Air Force.
0:03:14 > 0:03:19Unlike the heroic pilots he painted later, he never got to fly a plane.
0:03:21 > 0:03:26Instead, he landed a desk job as a map maker.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30Roy's artistic skills gained the attention of his commanding officer,
0:03:30 > 0:03:34who ordered him to copy newspaper cartoons to stick on the mess wall.
0:03:34 > 0:03:37Lichtenstein later remembered finding the job stupid.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39Cartoons weren't his idea of art.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42At least, they weren't yet.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46Roy finally got to see some action in 1944,
0:03:46 > 0:03:52when he was called up for the Battle of the Bulge, the largest American offensive in the war.
0:03:52 > 0:03:58He spoke about being in combat, at one point, and it was incredible.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01He saw incredible things happening -
0:04:01 > 0:04:05the sky lighting up, the firing of the guns,
0:04:05 > 0:04:07and he stood up.
0:04:07 > 0:04:11Somebody pulled him down, and said, "You wanna get killed, you fool?!"
0:04:11 > 0:04:14Because it was just so incredible.
0:04:14 > 0:04:17He said that he was taken by the beauty of it.
0:04:18 > 0:04:23After Armistice, Roy was stationed in Paris and visited the galleries.
0:04:23 > 0:04:28By now, he was intent on becoming an artist. He even tried to visit his hero Picasso.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32But his awe for him was so great that he got scared
0:04:32 > 0:04:36and ran away without even knocking on the studio door.
0:04:36 > 0:04:41Coming back to America after the war, retaining a youthful belief in the power of art,
0:04:41 > 0:04:45Lichtenstein seemed a long way from the irritant who, 15 years later,
0:04:45 > 0:04:49was vandalising galleries with what appeared to be anti-art.
0:04:49 > 0:04:54In 1946, he enrolled at Ohio State University, majoring in art.
0:04:54 > 0:04:58Sculptor Tom Doyle was there with him.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02Everyone knew he was going to be a champ, you know what I mean?
0:05:02 > 0:05:06He was like the star of the art department out there.
0:05:06 > 0:05:10He was just so...so different than everybody there.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14He had that kind of knowing something,
0:05:14 > 0:05:17like he knew something you didn't, you know what I mean?
0:05:17 > 0:05:19It's like someone who has a secret.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22Already, Roy was known for his satirical humour,
0:05:22 > 0:05:28poking fun at American institutional life, particularly the military.
0:05:28 > 0:05:32We were in a class, a drawing class, when MacArthur resigned
0:05:32 > 0:05:38and made that great speech, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."
0:05:38 > 0:05:42Roy and I laughed like hell! We were laughing.
0:05:42 > 0:05:48And all the other students were just horrified that we are laughing at this great general, you know.
0:05:49 > 0:05:52This playfulness features in Roy's early work.
0:05:52 > 0:05:57Superficially, this painting may look like another art-school Picasso imitation,
0:05:57 > 0:06:03but look in the top left-hand corner, and you see that it's taken from an advert for corned beef.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06In the year 1954,
0:06:06 > 0:06:12I was assigned to write about an artist called Roy Lichtenstein,
0:06:12 > 0:06:16whom I had never heard of before, nor had anybody else.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19There was a picture of a dollar bill,
0:06:19 > 0:06:24and a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware,
0:06:24 > 0:06:28but these relatively vulgar subjects were executed
0:06:28 > 0:06:34in a kind of tired, you know, modern, art-school style.
0:06:34 > 0:06:39Lichtenstein seems only a step away from his later pop work.
0:06:39 > 0:06:45He had to shed the self-consciously arty style in which he painted these commercial images. He wasn't ready,
0:06:45 > 0:06:48nor was the abstract expressionist art world.
0:06:48 > 0:06:55Its major figures - Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning - were like a holy trinity of gloom.
0:06:55 > 0:07:02The images of everyday life were inadequate for representing the tragedy of the human condition,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05replaced with wild splashes and sweeps of paint.
0:07:05 > 0:07:11In 1949, an article in Life magazine called Pollock "the greatest artist in America".
0:07:11 > 0:07:16Ever since then, most younger avant-garde painters imitated his expressive style.
0:07:16 > 0:07:22By comparison, Lichtenstein's early work seems stubbornly childish.
0:07:24 > 0:07:30At odds with the art scene, the champ of Ohio State College slipped out of the limelight.
0:07:33 > 0:07:38He'd married in 1949, and he and his wife Isabel had two sons.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41Lichtenstein could only find work teaching in Oswego,
0:07:41 > 0:07:44right up in the mountains by the Canadian border.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47It was not a good move.
0:07:48 > 0:07:51He had the kids, you know, and he had the dog,
0:07:51 > 0:07:53but it didn't seem...
0:07:53 > 0:07:57I don't know, it seems like he was kind of, like, floating or something.
0:07:57 > 0:08:00I didn't feel like he was all that happy.
0:08:00 > 0:08:06She wasn't happy. She was really unhappy when they went to Oswego, you know,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09because no-one would ever visit them there.
0:08:09 > 0:08:11It's like way to hell...
0:08:11 > 0:08:13It's like Siberia, or something.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Isabel became depressed and turn to alcohol.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20In the evenings, Roy took refuge in his studio.
0:08:20 > 0:08:24But knowing that his style was at odds with the mood of the times,
0:08:24 > 0:08:26he was suffering an identity crisis.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29What should he paint?
0:08:29 > 0:08:33Craving success and recognition, he dabbled in abstract expressionism.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37It was a compromise, and the paintings from this time
0:08:37 > 0:08:41lack the energy and gentle humour of his best work.
0:08:41 > 0:08:43He never really was interested
0:08:43 > 0:08:49in the abstract expressionist paintings
0:08:49 > 0:08:53that he was doing. I think they probably felt false to him,
0:08:53 > 0:09:00but he did feel as if he was stuck in the boondocks,
0:09:00 > 0:09:02and he was.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05But Roy was secretly working on something different.
0:09:05 > 0:09:11To his mind, American society was in a state of rapid change, and he wanted to reflect this in his work.
0:09:11 > 0:09:17Enjoying economic boom, the country was beginning its obsession with consumerism.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20The images were no longer in the art gallery,
0:09:20 > 0:09:23but on television, billboards and comic books.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26Lichtenstein instinctively felt
0:09:26 > 0:09:29that art must come out of its ivory tower,
0:09:29 > 0:09:32and respond to this visual challenge.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35In a series of sketches from the late 1950s,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39he began to experiment with familiar cartoon characters.
0:09:39 > 0:09:41'I was doing them
0:09:41 > 0:09:44'sort of immersed in abstract expressionism.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47'It was a kind of abstract expressionist image
0:09:47 > 0:09:51'with these cartoons within this expressionist image.
0:09:51 > 0:09:57'It's a little hard to picture, I think, and the paintings themselves weren't very successful.'
0:09:57 > 0:09:59He was right, they weren't.
0:09:59 > 0:10:03He had yet to find a way of using the images of the commercial world
0:10:03 > 0:10:06without concealing them in the house style of American art.
0:10:06 > 0:10:11So, for the time being, he continued with his lightweight abstract work.
0:10:11 > 0:10:15Throughout the '50s, Lichtenstein's determined quest
0:10:15 > 0:10:18to get the attention of the art world was going nowhere.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22Every tack he pursued was greeted with lukewarm response.
0:10:22 > 0:10:26As 1960 approached, he was in his late 30's, and getting desperate.
0:10:31 > 0:10:35As the new decade began, Lichtenstein's luck changed.
0:10:35 > 0:10:39He got a teaching post at Douglas College, just outside New York.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42He was back at the heart of the avant-garde art scene.
0:10:42 > 0:10:47There were other artists like him, sick of abstract expressionism,
0:10:47 > 0:10:50and keen to engage with the world around them.
0:10:50 > 0:10:54In Flag, Jasper Johns took America's most beloved image
0:10:54 > 0:10:57presenting it in faded tones, looking ragged and worn.
0:10:57 > 0:11:01Robert Rauschenberg used materials often outside of the artist's reach,
0:11:01 > 0:11:06using newspaper and magazine cuttings to add texture to the background of his work.
0:11:06 > 0:11:12An underground art scene based at Douglas College held live performances or happenings
0:11:12 > 0:11:16that challenged people's conceptions of what was and was not art.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18Change was in the air.
0:11:20 > 0:11:26This move also shook up Lichtenstein's personal life, and he separated from Isabel.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31Letty Lou Eisenhauer became a close friend and later his lover.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34'He came to Douglas'
0:11:34 > 0:11:39and he met all of these people who had a whole different vision of what art was.
0:11:39 > 0:11:43It took him a while to acclimate and then, I think,
0:11:43 > 0:11:46he slowly began to move in a new direction.
0:11:46 > 0:11:51I think he was beginning to see that there was something else there
0:11:51 > 0:11:55that you could make art out of, besides abstract ideas.
0:11:58 > 0:12:03Lichtenstein realised that his abstract painting had taken him down a creative cul-de-sac.
0:12:03 > 0:12:09Seeing how dated his work was in comparison with other New York artists, he had a breakthrough.
0:12:09 > 0:12:11One day, in the spring of 1961,
0:12:11 > 0:12:16he returned to the cartoon imagery he'd been toying with for so long.
0:12:16 > 0:12:20But this time, he was to do something very unusual.
0:12:20 > 0:12:26'In doing these paintings, I had, of course, the original strip cartoons to look at,
0:12:26 > 0:12:32'and the idea of doing one without apparent alteration just occurred to me.
0:12:32 > 0:12:37'I did one really almost half seriously, only to get an idea of what it might look like,
0:12:37 > 0:12:41'and I kind of got interested in organising it as a painting, really,
0:12:41 > 0:12:46'and brought it to conclusiveness as an aesthetic statement,
0:12:46 > 0:12:50'which I really hadn't intended to do to begin with.'
0:12:50 > 0:12:53The result of this experimentation was Look, Mickey.
0:12:53 > 0:12:58If the unaltered cartoon image didn't represent a manifesto for a new art form in itself,
0:12:58 > 0:13:00then the text made it clear.
0:13:00 > 0:13:05Roy, in the guise of Donald Duck, told the world he was onto something big.
0:13:05 > 0:13:11But while the painting was bold, Roy's characteristic caution made him hesitant.
0:13:11 > 0:13:17I was with Roy, and we were in the car going to pick up some beer,
0:13:17 > 0:13:20and Roy is telling me about the Donald Duck painting.
0:13:20 > 0:13:26And I'm saying, "Yeah, yeah, turn here. Stop there, so I can get the beer."
0:13:26 > 0:13:30And he's saying, "What do you think of this idea?"
0:13:30 > 0:13:33He wasn't sure whether it was art or not.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37The curious thing, he said, is that when he looked at this painting,
0:13:37 > 0:13:40he was appalled by it,
0:13:40 > 0:13:46and that, in a way, he had to get beyond his own taste
0:13:46 > 0:13:52to be able to continue to do that, because it looked so unlike art.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02But Roy overcame his reservations, and during the summer of 1961,
0:14:02 > 0:14:05worked at a feverish pace on the first of his "pop paintings".
0:14:05 > 0:14:11He copied the images of newspaper adverts and comic strips, and the techniques which created them.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15The wild gestural brushstroke of the abstract expressionists
0:14:15 > 0:14:19gave way to a simple illustrative line.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22His palette was one or two primary colours,
0:14:22 > 0:14:24and sometimes no colours at all.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28He often abandoned the paintbrush in favour of stencils and rollers.
0:14:28 > 0:14:33The word looked as if it was created by a machine rather than a human being.
0:14:36 > 0:14:41Miniature benday dots are used in newspaper ads in various densities
0:14:41 > 0:14:44to create the illusion of modelling in light and shadow.
0:14:44 > 0:14:49Lichtenstein enlarged them absurdly, and they became his signature.
0:14:49 > 0:14:55They demonstrated how he relished the drama of abstraction, but transformed it into a cartoon.
0:14:55 > 0:15:01But while Lichtenstein had managed to convince himself, would he be able to convince others?
0:15:01 > 0:15:07The Castelli Gallery, here on the Upper East Side, was an important gallery in New York at the time.
0:15:07 > 0:15:12Leo Castelli had made Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns famous.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15If Roy got a show here, this new art might take off.
0:15:19 > 0:15:23At the time, Ivan Karp was Castelli's right-hand man.
0:15:23 > 0:15:29A friend called him and asked him to look at the work of Roy Lichtenstein.
0:15:29 > 0:15:32On the landing, just before the gallery levelled,
0:15:32 > 0:15:35was this young man in front of some canvasses.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39I said, "Are you the person who was sent by my friend out in New Jersey?"
0:15:39 > 0:15:41He said, "Yes, I'm Roy Lichtenstein."
0:15:41 > 0:15:46I asked him to deploy his works, wherever spaces there were,
0:15:46 > 0:15:52between the paintings on display, and I had a rather startling reaction.
0:15:52 > 0:15:57I said something like, "I'm not sure you're allowed to do things like this!"
0:15:57 > 0:16:01I think that was the phrase that I issued forth at the time.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07They were so startling and so contrary to the general prevailing current of the art at the time,
0:16:07 > 0:16:11and they were, in a sense, immediately buoyant and refreshing.
0:16:11 > 0:16:13I wanted Leo to see them.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16And when Leo saw them, he was not appalled.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20He said, "This is so dead-centre American, isn't it?
0:16:20 > 0:16:24We'll leave some paintings here and see the reaction.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27There was a certain buzz in New York.
0:16:27 > 0:16:30Unbeknownst to each other, a number of different artists
0:16:30 > 0:16:34started creating similar work at EXACTLY the same time.
0:16:34 > 0:16:40An artist and a friend of his came in, and I took out the painting of the beach-ball girl of Roy's,
0:16:40 > 0:16:43and showed it to them, and they were enthralled.
0:16:43 > 0:16:48One of them who had a mop of grey hair and a very mottled complexion said to me,
0:16:48 > 0:16:54"I'm doing work very, very much like this. Would you come to my studio and look at it?"
0:16:54 > 0:16:56It was a man named Andy Warhol.
0:16:56 > 0:17:01Andy Warhol was known only as a successful commercial illustrator.
0:17:01 > 0:17:06In private, he also made some of his own cartoon paintings, not unlike Lichtenstein's.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10Through the autumn of 1961, Roy waited on tenterhooks
0:17:10 > 0:17:13as Castelli considered the work of both artists.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17He said it's between me and another guy. I said, "Who's the other guy?"
0:17:17 > 0:17:22And he says, "Andy Warhol." I said, "Who the hell is Andy Warhol?!"
0:17:22 > 0:17:24I'd never heard of Andy Warhol.
0:17:24 > 0:17:28He does, "Miller Shoe ads." I said, "Forget about that guy!
0:17:28 > 0:17:30"You'll never hear from him again!"
0:17:32 > 0:17:36Leo Castelli found Warhol a little too exotic as a personality,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40and decided to do a show of Lichtenstein's work alone.
0:17:40 > 0:17:45Warhol realised that without Castelli's patronage, he'd look like a follower of Lichtenstein,
0:17:45 > 0:17:49so he abandoned his cartoon work for something different.
0:17:49 > 0:17:54The result was the bold graphically enhanced Campbell's soup cans.
0:17:54 > 0:17:59The distinctive repetition of this mundane everyday image was to make Warhol famous.
0:17:59 > 0:18:05And in the spring of 1962, Lichtenstein had his legendary debut at the Castelli gallery.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11He had hoped that his work was unusual, but he never anticipated the outrage it would cause.
0:18:11 > 0:18:15There was profound hostility to his work.
0:18:15 > 0:18:17The formal arts press...
0:18:17 > 0:18:23There was nobody - except possibly Professor Robert Rosenblum - who was positive about it.
0:18:23 > 0:18:28When you first saw the works, they looked unspeakably ugly,
0:18:28 > 0:18:34er...which of course could be either a point of fascination or repulsion.
0:18:36 > 0:18:38You're really forced
0:18:38 > 0:18:42to look at how creepy, strange,
0:18:42 > 0:18:45a woman in a dishwasher ad really looked.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50I had just never seen anything like it.
0:18:50 > 0:18:52There was no place for me
0:18:52 > 0:18:58to compare it to or rationalise for or against it.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02I was just confused, like I said.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07And it was a very pleasant feeling.
0:19:08 > 0:19:13Lichtenstein's intention was not just to undermine the hallowed notion of art.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18For years, he'd searched for ways of expressing his real self.
0:19:18 > 0:19:19This was it.
0:19:19 > 0:19:25The comic paintings hung on the wall were cool, ironic, even fetishistic.
0:19:25 > 0:19:27For Roy, a cool, ironic kind of guy,
0:19:27 > 0:19:31this was the most honest, personal form of expression he could find.
0:19:31 > 0:19:34Gone was the artist as tortured mystic.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37To his critics, the work seemed banal.
0:19:37 > 0:19:40Two collectors bought all the works,
0:19:40 > 0:19:43at very humble prices, as you can imagine.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46Hundreds of dollars for a painting.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49We considered it a success that anybody bought these works.
0:19:49 > 0:19:54They were so disconnected from prevailing modes. It was shattering.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58And so it was a commercial success in that regard.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03Lichtenstein's quest for artistic success had reached a climax. He was no longer the underdog.
0:20:03 > 0:20:07He had outwitted Mickey Mouse. He had beaten up Bluto.
0:20:07 > 0:20:11He had avoided the bullying tactics of the abstract expressionists.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16His tone and technique were finer and had infinite possibilities.
0:20:16 > 0:20:21As an artist, he could see clearly, because he was the King of New York.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24He was now the hero that he'd always wanted to be.
0:20:28 > 0:20:34Lichtenstein's success meant he could afford studio space in New York and assistants to help him.
0:20:34 > 0:20:38The next few years were his most productive period,
0:20:38 > 0:20:42resulting in the war paintings and crying-girl series.
0:20:42 > 0:20:48The comic-book paintings weren't an indifferent manufactured exercise in appropriation and objectivity.
0:20:48 > 0:20:50They could be violent, melodramatic.
0:20:50 > 0:20:54They were an intensification of the excitement the subject had for him.
0:20:54 > 0:20:58They enabled him to play out a series of satisfying fantasies.
0:20:58 > 0:21:04Through the paintings, he told stories of his personal life and life as a painter.
0:21:06 > 0:21:13I have a feeling that the male figures are often Roy himself,
0:21:13 > 0:21:16these handsome gorgeous figures.
0:21:16 > 0:21:18Roy wasn't handsome.
0:21:18 > 0:21:24This is a fantasy about who you want to be and what you want - the beautiful girl.
0:21:24 > 0:21:26He got the beautiful girl.
0:21:26 > 0:21:31You want the elegant life of these people. You got that, then.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35In the early-'60s, there was the end of his marriage, girlfriends.
0:21:35 > 0:21:42While the women in his life changed, there was one consistent image he painted - the crying girl.
0:21:42 > 0:21:48Perhaps the girl was crying because of Lichtenstein's disappointment in the cliches of romantic love.
0:21:48 > 0:21:52Perhaps the girl was crying because Roy Lichtenstein was saying,
0:21:52 > 0:21:58"I want a beautiful girl to cry over me the way these girls are crying over the men in their lives."
0:21:58 > 0:22:02Then again, it's possible that Lichtenstein empathised more
0:22:02 > 0:22:06with the submissive girls than their heartbreaking hunks.
0:22:06 > 0:22:12We had a game we used to play, where I would burst through the door from having come in from graduate school,
0:22:12 > 0:22:17and say something like, "I'm going to grab you and rape you!"
0:22:17 > 0:22:19And he would go, "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!"
0:22:19 > 0:22:23And run around the room very slowly so I could catch him.
0:22:28 > 0:22:32In 1965, he was able to leave behind the commercial imagery
0:22:32 > 0:22:38that had satisfied all sorts of psychological and artistic needs, and return to high-art subjects.
0:22:38 > 0:22:43The big brushstroke painting tamed the passion and spontaneity
0:22:43 > 0:22:47of expressionist brushstroke into something cool and simply an image.
0:22:47 > 0:22:50He had turned abstract expressionism into a cartoon,
0:22:50 > 0:22:54both as a tribute, but to announce that he'd found a style all his own,
0:22:54 > 0:22:57and he could do anything with it that he wanted.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00And that's just what he did.
0:23:00 > 0:23:06For the next 30 years, he presented a sort of history of the world according to Roy Lichtenstein.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09There were landscapes with benday dots,
0:23:09 > 0:23:11imitations of art with benday dots,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15still lifes with benday dots, interiors with benday dots.
0:23:15 > 0:23:19Some paintings just seemed to be benday dots alone.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23Meanwhile, Roy himself became a well-known society figure - elegant and reserved.
0:23:23 > 0:23:26In 1968, he married again -
0:23:26 > 0:23:29the beautiful Dorothy Herzka.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32He finally had the Brad lifestyle he'd always wanted.
0:23:32 > 0:23:38He used to joke and say someone's going to shake him on the shoulders and say,
0:23:38 > 0:23:42"Mr Lichtenstein, Mr Lichtenstein, get up, it's time for your pills!"
0:23:42 > 0:23:46He'll have been in a coma or something!
0:23:46 > 0:23:50He'll still be living in Oswego!
0:23:50 > 0:23:55But the more well-known Roy became, the more difficult he was to read.
0:23:56 > 0:24:00This self-portrait is revealing in that it is NOT revealing.
0:24:00 > 0:24:05His head is significantly a mirror to the world around it, reflecting nothing.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09It was as if he wanted to keep his personality out of his art.
0:24:09 > 0:24:11Insofar as he had become Brad,
0:24:11 > 0:24:17he was in danger of having reduced his life and his work to two dimensions.
0:24:19 > 0:24:25He got an idea, did it, but then he was unwilling to move on.
0:24:25 > 0:24:29You can take the idea to the next place, to a new step.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32He didn't do that.
0:24:32 > 0:24:38So was Lichtenstein just a one-hit wonder, intent on reducing everything to a cartoon?
0:24:38 > 0:24:44To his admirers, the concept grew to become a style in itself, like Impressionism or Cubism.
0:24:44 > 0:24:49Jeff Koons is one of America's most famous artists today,
0:24:49 > 0:24:53largely because like Lichtenstein, he exploits commercial, pulp images.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56Sometimes people say, "He didn't change.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00"It was always like more of one line."
0:25:00 > 0:25:02I think just the opposite.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06I think, "Look at all the different approaches he made to his work,
0:25:06 > 0:25:12"going from very kind of modernist-style paintings
0:25:12 > 0:25:19"to the different type of cartoon images to the two-dimensional sculptures, but a very wide variety."
0:25:19 > 0:25:23How do we make sense of Roy Lichtenstein's career?
0:25:23 > 0:25:25His later works were like a good album tracks.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28They're not as sexy, as immediate, as his early pop hits.
0:25:28 > 0:25:33In a way, they are more absorbing and definitely more mature.
0:25:33 > 0:25:37I mean, look, this guy, all he ever wanted to do was paint, right?
0:25:37 > 0:25:39He worked his ass off, all the time.
0:25:39 > 0:25:41That's all he ever did.
0:25:41 > 0:25:45He liked cars, he liked to play tennis a little bit, I guess, but...
0:25:45 > 0:25:48I think he's a fantastic worker.
0:25:48 > 0:25:53By the mid-1980s, Lichtenstein was one of the most successful artists in the world.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58His public sculpture and murals were all over the United States.
0:25:58 > 0:26:04The Lichtenstein style, once so controversial, became mainstream. His works sold for a vast amount.
0:26:04 > 0:26:09In the '90s, his marriage to the establishment was consummated
0:26:09 > 0:26:13with a commission of prints to go on the walls of US embassies worldwide.
0:26:13 > 0:26:17I don't know what to say. I'm completely overwhelmed.
0:26:17 > 0:26:23Nobody screamed or got sick or anything when it was unveiled, so...
0:26:23 > 0:26:25Thank you all tremendously.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31Roy Lichtenstein never cultivated a celebrity as other pop artists did.
0:26:31 > 0:26:37But he had enough of an ego to allow many everyday images that he had turned into high art
0:26:37 > 0:26:42to be returned to the commonplace, to come off the gallery walls back to the outside world.
0:26:42 > 0:26:45These tended to be items produced in collaboration
0:26:45 > 0:26:49with museums that put on major Lichtenstein shows.
0:26:49 > 0:26:54At the openings, Roy never wore one of his ties, but Jasper Johns did.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57In return, Roy wore a Jasper Johns tie.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01I imagine somewhere in New York, Jeff Koons is having a cup of tea
0:27:01 > 0:27:04out of a Roy Lichtenstein teapot.
0:27:04 > 0:27:10In fact, Lichtenstein's reputation has suffered because of his extraordinary success.
0:27:10 > 0:27:16His images are so widespread that we forget how disconcerting they were when they first appeared.
0:27:16 > 0:27:21Pinnacle Art Press in New Jersey are doing yet another run of posters
0:27:21 > 0:27:24to satisfy the demand for his work.
0:27:24 > 0:27:29I am the first pressman on this machine. My son is my operator.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33They are popular mainly because of the bright colours.
0:27:33 > 0:27:37There's a lot to look at, there are things to read on it.
0:27:37 > 0:27:41Overall, it's just an eye-catching piece.
0:27:43 > 0:27:49It's large... It would look really nice framed up, I think, along with a couple of other ones.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53"Why, Brad, darling, this painting is a masterpiece!
0:27:53 > 0:27:57"My, soon you'll have all of New York clamouring for your work."
0:27:57 > 0:28:00I like it.
0:28:00 > 0:28:03I'd hang it on my wall.
0:28:03 > 0:28:09By the time he died in 1997, the one-time enfant terrible of the New York scene
0:28:09 > 0:28:12had become the mellow old man of art.
0:28:12 > 0:28:18The world of commerce that he had plundered over 30 years before had swallowed him back up and moved on.
0:28:20 > 0:28:25While the world outside the gallery has got more and more garish and spectacular
0:28:25 > 0:28:30since Lichtenstein had his big idea, his work DOES retain its power.
0:28:30 > 0:28:35He took American art out of the gallery and into the everyday world.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39Ironically, you now have to return to the quiet of the gallery,
0:28:39 > 0:28:43away from the commercial chaos he predicted to see that Lichtenstein
0:28:43 > 0:28:47produced some of the best paintings of his time.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57Subtitles by Sarah Aitken BBC Broadcast 2004
0:28:57 > 0:29:01E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk