Artist Birthdays- Roy Lichtenstein

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Oct 272026
 

Roy Lichtenstein, “Live Ammo (Blang)”, 1962 Oil and Magna on two canvas panels

Roy Lichtenstein was born today, October 27th, in 1923. His painting Live Ammo (Blang) is part of The Broad’s permanent collection.

From the museum:

Live Ammo (Blang) is an early example of Lichtenstein’s use of comic book imagery, part of an artistic strategy employing images and themes from popular culture that came to define his career. At the time it was painted, the United States was experiencing multiple wars: the spectral uncertainty of the Cold War and the nostalgia for valor from World War II coming into conflict with the twisted realities of the escalating war in Vietnam. Taking images directly from comics such as G.l. Combat, All American Men of War, and Our Fighting Forces, Lichtenstein willfully exaggerated wartime heroics to their breaking point, using caricature to test and render absurd the clean lines between hero and villain. The message was social but also insular to the world of painting, for Lichtenstein detected these macho postures in the American triumphalism of abstract expressionism. Additionally, Live Ammo (Blang) caricatures the spontaneity and “action” of this approach to art.

The Whitney museum’s current exhibition of his work, Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, is getting great reviews and is on view at the museum until 5/10/27.

Artist Birthdays- Jean-Michel Basquiat

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Drawing, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters
Dec 222025
 

Jean-Michel Basquiat was born today, December 22nd, in 1960. The painting above, Untitled (1981) is currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles.

From the museum about this work-

Many of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s paintings are in some way autobiographical, and Untitled may be considered a form of self-portraiture. The skull here exists somewhere between life and death. The eyes are listless, the face is sunken in, and the head looks lobotomized and subdued. Yet there are wild colors and spirited marks that suggest a surfeit of internal activity. Developing his own personal iconography, in this early work Basquiat both alludes to modernist appropriation of African masks and employs the mask as a means of exploring identity. Basquiat labored over this painting for months — evident in the worked surface and imagery — while most of his pieces were completed with bursts of energy over just a few days. The intensity of the painting, which was presented at his debut solo gallery exhibition in New York City, may also represent Basquiat’s anxieties surrounding the pressures of becoming a commercially successful artist.

In the video below (also from The Broad) LeVar Burton discusses the work and its possible connection to Basquiat’s childhood and family.