Girl in Mirror (section)

Those tiny colored dots covering the woman's face are no accident. Roy Lichtenstein borrowed the Ben-Day dot printing method straight from the cheap comic strips and ads of the 1950s and 60s, then blew the whole thing up to a grand scale. As a key player in the Pop Art movement, he pulled his subjects from the throwaway world of popular culture. This blonde figure, with her parted red lips and just barely dramatic look, could have stepped right out of one of the romance comics he loved to draw from.

This particular image comes from a larger work called "Girl in Mirror," featuring the sort of glamorous, emotional heroine Lichtenstein painted over and over. Not everyone was impressed. Some critics grumbled that he was simply lifting other people's drawings, though that reaction was almost the joke he was after. By taking a disposable comic panel and reworking it by hand at enormous size, he forced people to actually see the pictures they usually skimmed past. Her true thoughts stay hidden behind that cool, printed surface, which leaves us guessing about the story behind her expression.