''As I Opened Fire'' (sometimes ''As I Opened Fire...'') is a 1964 oil and
magna on canvas painting by
Roy Lichtenstein. The work is hosted at the
Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
. The source of the subject matter is
Jerry Grandenetti's panels from "Wingmate of Doom," in ''All American Men of War'', no. 90 (March–April 1962),
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
.
Detail
Measuring 170 cm × 430 cm (68 in × 168 in), ''As I Opened Fire'' is a
triptych
A triptych ( ; from the Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided ...
with verbal and temporal continuity. In 1972, it was regarded as "...perhaps Lichtenstein's most ambitious exercise in strangely uniting, visually (as well as figuratively) warring elements." Depicting a short few seconds during an aircraft battle, the painting is based on three panels of the original narrative which Lichtenstein has altered to improve its formal coherence. This piece represents his affinity toward the high school "...highly emotional content, yet detached impersonal handling..." ''As I Opened Fire'' exhibits Lichtenstein's "formal imagination". We see successive tighter views of the gun muzzles in action accompanied by an
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
, which provides cinematic flow despite the varying skies. ''As I Opened Fire'' is regarded as a "very uncompromising military triptych".
Lichtenstein desired his paintings to look as mechanical as possible despite being painted by hand. He chose as his subjects teen and action
comics because he valued the impersonal quality of their artwork, the products of teams of illustrators. The similarities to the original source are extensive: narrative text and general message of the gunfire. However, he made the joint image more coherent by repositioning the second and third panels for better alignment.
Along with ''
Whaam!
''Whaam!'' is a 1963 diptych painting by the American artist Roy Lichtenstein. It is one of the best-known works of pop art, and among Lichtenstein's most important paintings. ''Whaam!'' was first exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New ...
'' (the other of his monumental war paintings), this is regarded as the culmination of the dramatic war-comic works of Lichtenstein. Compared with ''Whaam!'', ''As I Opened Fire'' is more abstract. Lichtenstein commented on his war imagery:
A minor purpose of my war paintings is to put military aggressiveness in an absurd light. My personal opinion is that much of our foreign policy has been unbelievably terrifying, but this is not what my work is about and I don't want to capitalize on this popular position. My work is more about our American definition of images and visual communication.
Lichtenstein's alterations from the original source change the uniform perspective of the images, causing it to flow "like a series of movie clips".
The work is considered relatively lacking in unity of its narrative progression. The narrative of the first frame seems unrelated to its graphics and the other frames are equally confusing: It is not clear which frames represent an enemy or an ally, or whether the speaker is the enemy, an ally or the viewer. In general the work is misleading in "spatial, temporal and psychological viewpoint".
See also
*
1964 in art
Events from the year 1964 in art.
Events
* May – Pablo Picasso paints his fourth ''Head of a Bearded Man''.
* July 28 – Fondation Maeght museum of modern and contemporary art at Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the Alpes-Maritimes of France, designe ...
Notes
References
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External links
Lichtenstein Foundation websiteLichtenstein Foundation details website
{{Roy Lichtenstein
1964 paintings
Military art
Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein
Aviation art