Girl with Hair Ribbon ヘア・リボンの少女

Lichtenstein became one of the most notable artists to represent Pop Art in the early 1960s with his distinctive paintings in which a frame from a comic strip is greatly enlarged and reproduced in oil. From 1963 to 1965, he produced a series of works, including this piece, featuring a closeup of a girl's face. The girls are typical heroines from comic strips and TV dramas, who are behaving as the women were generally expected to behave in those years, shedding tears and showing a surprise within the fictional world of their romance. Their facial expression, enlarged to cover the whole large surface, emphasizes the banality of hackneyed plots and stereotyped expressions of emotions. In this painting, the artist did not attempt simply to elevate a popular image into high art in a challenge to the existing concept of art, but tried to create a picture that is clear and sophisticated with a carefully built taut composition and the use of only the three primary colors. This work, which has long been kept in the collection of the artist as a favorite piece, is a masterpiece in which the lovely image of a girl representing the contemporary popular taste and the artist,s pursuit of the artistic perfection beautifully come together.