Woman III

In the 1960s Roy Lichtenstein began replicating by hand the dots and hatch marks of cheap printing processes; often the subjects of these paintings were the generically beautiful women of romance comics and advertising illustrations. Two decades later Lichtenstein used his signature mode to mimic the style and subjects of another artist entirely: Abstract Expressionist painter Willem de Kooning. In Woman III Lichtenstein injected both humor and a Pop Art chill into the older painter’s wriggling swaths and slashes of bold color while playing directly on de Kooning’s series of confrontational “Woman” paintings. The fierce figure is denoted by two eyes, an elfin ear, nose, lips, bared teeth, and a patch of red dots that stand in for a rouged cheek.