deartraveller

“In the car” is a 1963 pop art painting, by Roy Lichtenstein.

Objectively, it portrays a blonde woman and a dark-haired man driving a car. It was painted on a large canvas (172 cm × 203.5 cm) and the colors in it (such as red, yellow and blue) are vivid and draw the public’s attention. To convey the sense of movement, Lichtenstein used horizontal and parallel lines. Throughout the years this painting was interpreted as a tense, melodramatic graphic single-frame depiction of a romantic dialogue between the two characters. Another of the techniques used by the artist was the so-called Magna, which is a type of acrylic paint easily removed with turpentine that shows, in Lichtenstein’s perspective, color better than many water-based acrylic paints.

Since it is no more than the reproduction of a comic book series “Girl’s Romance” strip, this work conveys perfectly the message of the Pop Art movement: that art may derive from any everyday object and should be accessible for everyone, regardless of their social status. In the 60’s, Pop Art broke free from the previous conceptions that art was destined to an elite. This movement made it clear that anyone may enjoy art, because every object may be considered a product of art: the commonplace was turned into art.

Érica