united states of americaconcept:era contemporary
Whaam!
Magna on canvas diptych (1963) by Roy Lichtenstein, reproducing a panel from a 1962 DC Comics war comic (All-American Men of War) at monumental scale using the Benday dot printing process.
Scholarly Significance
Lichtenstein's Whaam! is the defining Pop Art image of mass-media appropriation and comic-strip aesthetics. Anchors Pop Art's critical dimension of consumer culture and war imagery.
Notes
- ·Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) based this diptych on a panel from the DC Comics war comic All-American Men of War (no. 89, February 1962), drawn by Irv Novick.
- ·The left panel shows a fighter jet firing a rocket; the right panel shows the target exploding in a blaze of yellow, orange, and red. The speech bubble reads: 'I pressed the fire control... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky...' and the explosive 'WHAAM!'
- ·Lichtenstein enlarged the composition to monumental diptych scale, rendering the industrial Benday dot process by hand.
- ·The work enacts Pop Art's core operation: elevating commercial mass-media imagery to the status of fine art, stripping it of emotional content and aesthetic hierarchy.
- ·The source comic panel depicted heroic military action; at monumental museum scale, the violent imagery becomes ambiguous — celebratory, ironic, or both.
- ·Purchased by Tate Gallery in 1966 for £3,932.