Brushstroke Stamp

Pop art is often described as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism was introspective- it aimed to reveal the mental processes of the artist and relied on the essence of the paint itself; Pop art turned these ideals on their heads, depersonalizing the artist from the art and looking outward to objects of pop culture. As a founding father of Pop art, Lichtenstein is no different: even the motivation for his inescapable “Brushstroke” image initially came from a comic strip he saw in the 1960s. His interest in and projection of the image would last until his death in 1997.

Lichtenstein’s fixation on the brushstroke allegedly stemmed from his perception that the brushstroke was the symbol of painting itself. He applied a Pop art spin to this object in multiple ways: First, he chose to use the broad stroke of a house-painter’s brush instead of an inherently “artistic” brushstroke. Second, he then took this image, enlarged it, reproduced it, and applied it onto the Benday dot code used in mass-produced newspapers. Because of this satiric spin, his Brushstroke series is described as an “instance of Abstract Expressionism recycled through conventions taken from mass media.”