Pop Art began on the late 50s and the the early 60s bringing with it what would be a groundbreaking movement at the time. Like everything that starts from scratch, it was sightly criticized and even more in this case, because Pop Art took pieces of art from classic world and them into modern pieces of art. That made people think they were copying when they were recreating.
'Pop Art Myths' and the 'MYTHS & HEROES' Notion
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| Roy Lichtenstein, Look Mickey, 1961 |
A myth is a popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal.
There are two possible definitions for the Pop Art hero, at least, for this Roy Lichtenstein's painting. The nearest one would be, the protagonist of a story, the principal male or female character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation. The second one, but that could fix as well in this kind of hero, is a character with noble qualities who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice- that is, heroism - for some greater good of all humanity. Both of them fix in because here we are talking about two characters that are made to teach little kids. These characters must face problems to teach children how to resolve them. And of course those characters are the main characters, if these adventures will happen to other characters would be meaningless series. We are going to talk about myths because for children and actual adults and teenagers Mickey's adventures became almost mythological.
This Roy's painting based on the famous drawing illustration of Bob Grant and Bob Totten from Walt Disney Studios called, Donald Duck Lost and Found. This illustration was made on 1961 by Roy Lichtenstein. It illustrates one of the most famous Myths in the world, the Narcisus' myth. Dolnald's fishing with Mickey and the rod has taken his T-Shirt at the back, while he is focusing on the water. Obviously it must be difficult to make this "fish" get out of the water that's why he says "Look Mickey, I've hooked a big one!". In a psychological way we could say that he is overestimating himself. Like Narcissus did with his pretenders, before Nemesis made him drown in the pool because of his reflexion. Like in the myth, Narcissus/Donald is the only character of the story that doesn't see what's really happening because he is focused on his reflexion. One doesn't see he is drowning and the other doesn't see his fishing the back of his T-shirt. Like every Pop Art painting, here, Roy takes an ancient or mythic story and renews it to make it maybe more famous or more accessible to people. Here, it's even double renewed, because Walt Disney Studios already did it with the original myth.
Sincerely I loved this image illustrated by the painting. Myths are things that really interest me. I really love Greek mythology and it interests me very much to know where all those myths come from. But I also have to say that I prefer much more the original painting because even if I really like the Pop Art version I'm a fan of Disney's creations and much more of retro ones. So I think that here, my opinion it's not the most objective one. Anyways, I love this kind of movements that bring again things that happened a long time ago adapting the way to bring it to the people's way of life.
OK!
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