Look Mickey

''Look Mickey'' (also known as ''Look Mickey!'') is a 1961 oil on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Widely regarded as the bridge between his abstract expressionism and pop art works, it is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as well as being the first example of the artist's employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery as a source for a painting. The painting was bequeathed to the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art upon Lichtenstein's death.

Building on his late 1950s drawings of comic strip characters, ''Look Mickey'' marks Lichtenstein's first full employment of painterly techniques to reproduce almost faithful representations of pop culture and so satirize and comment upon the then developing process of mass production of visual imagery. In this, Lichtenstein pioneered a motif that became influential not only in 1960s pop art but continuing to the work of artists today. Lichtenstein borrows from a Donald Duck illustrated story book, showing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck during a fishing mishap. However, he makes significant alterations to the original source, including modifying the color scheme and perspective, while seeming to make statements about himself.

The work dates from Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition, and is regarded by art critics as revolutionary both as a progression of pop art and as a work of modern art in general. It was later reproduced in his 1973 painting '' Artist's Studio—Look Mickey'', which shows the painting hanging prominently on a facing wall of Lichtenstein's studio.

Background

During the late 1950s and early 1960s a number of American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of comic strips into their work. Lichtenstein was among them, and in 1958 began to make drawings of comic strip characters. Andy Warhol produced his earliest paintings in the style in 1960. Lichtenstein, unaware of Warhol's work, produced ''Look Mickey'' and ''Popeye'' in 1961. Lichtenstein's 1961 works, especially ''Look Mickey'', are considered a minor step from his earlier comic strip pop art.

According to the Lichtenstein Foundation, ''Look Mickey'' was based on the Little Golden Book series. The National Gallery of Art notes that the source is entitled ''Donald Duck Lost and Found'', written in 1960 by Carl Buettner and published through Disney Enterprises. The image was illustrated by Bob Grant and Bob Totten. An alternative theory suggests that ''Look Mickey'' and ''Popeye'' were enlargements of bubble gum wrappers. This image marked the first of numerous works in which Lichtenstein cropped his source to bring the viewer closer to the scene.

A number of stories purport to tell of the moment of inspiration for ''Look Mickey''. Critic Alice Goldfarb Marquis writes that the artist recalled one of his sons pointing to a comic book and challenging: "I bet you can't paint as good as that". Another says that the painting resulted from an effort to prove his abilities to both his son and his son's classmates who mocked Lichtenstein's hard-to-fathom abstracts. American painter Allan Kaprow once stated, in reference to a Bazooka Dubble Bubble Gum wrapper, to Lichtenstein, "You can't teach color from Cézanne, you can only teach it from something like this." Lichtenstein then showed him one of his Donald Duck images.

During the comic book phase of his career, Lichtenstein often slightly altered the colorization of the original source. According to Marco Livingstone, his early comic subjects comprise a "loose and improvised style clearly derived from de Kooning