BARBARALEE DIAMONSTEIN
89
fundamental thing about art. There is no such thing as color
without shape. A co lor has LO end somewhere. I've n ever seen a color
organization that had no form.
Diamonstein:
How would you characterize the use of words in your
painting?
Lichtenstein:
The words are usually absurd statements. They form an
area of gray pallern-black lelt ers against white. The statements they
make arc usually too simple or too complicated or mildly funny in
some way.
Diamonstein:
Roy, how great is the influence of phoLOgraphy and film
on your work?
Lichtenstein:
Well , I think photograph y had an influence, quite an
influence on my ca rtoon things, and I think it had an influence on
my work because photography had an influence on ca rtooning itself.
Airplane ballles and things like that are not something you see at eye
level in the normal course of painting a st ill life or portrait. So LO see
a man in an airp lane is obviously the result of having seen a
phoLOgraph somehow.
Of
course, I saw the cartoon, but I think those
sort of cinema-like shorts which are used a lot in cartoons themselves
influenced the character of some early work of mine. I'm not
particularly interes ted in photography-I mean, as an art form. The
photographic thing plays some part in the printing process, the dots
and all that kind of-something vaguely to do with photography.
That's probably what you mean.
Diamonstein:
Who was Ben Day? What's the origin of that term?*
Lichtenstein:
I have yet to find out.
It
would be the invention of having
some way of, instead of making the gray, making lillie black and
white dots on a screen, and they could be indicated by the artist that
this would be a forty percent screen-
Diamonstein:
You slip the Ben Day dot in .
Lichtenstein:
And the printer puts the Ben Day on it. What I've been
imila ting more than lhat is something like art type, which is a
primed dOL on a transparent paper of some sort that has a wax on it,
and you burnish it down on your drawing, which some ca rtoonists
usc, I guess. But it's supposed LO imilate printing, of course, that part
of printing comes through phoLOgraphy in a way.
Diamonstein:
How did you become a painter, Roy?
>II<
Note: The printcr credited with tht' shading effect through th e U'it' of dots was Benjalllin
Day.
Jr. ,
th e son o f th e fo under of the
New York Sun
(circa 1832), the first of the pClln)'
dreadfuls. Incidentall y, h e was a lso th t' father 01 Clarence Day who wrotc
L ife With
Fathn.
