Lichtenstein Quotes & Sayings

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard. — Roy Lichtenstein

We scatter small parts of ourselves as we journey through life, pieces that are stored by others and about which we may have no memory. — Olivia Lichtenstein

I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. — Roy Lichtenstein

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it. — Roy Lichtenstein

Appropriation was the language of my generation in many ways. It came out of Duchamp, Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein. — Deborah Kass

The things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire, — Roy Lichtenstein

I started from nothing in Lichtenstein. The country is so small, and the only 'celebrity' type people who are from there are skiers. — Al Walser

Personally, I feel that in my own work I wanted to look programmed or impersonal but I don't really believe I am being impersonal when I do it. And I don't think you could do this. — Roy Lichtenstein

All my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons. — Roy Lichtenstein

David, dear. But you look the best when you wear your smile. There is no beauty like the one that comes from inside you. — Olivia Lichtenstein

The only thing the Pop Artists had in common is that we all had been commercial artists in some manner. Lichtenstein was a draftsman; I was a billboard painter, but we didn't work together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964. — James Rosenquist

Your opponent, in the end, is never really the player on the other side of the net, or the swimmer in the next lane, or the team on the other side of the field, or even the bar you must high-jump.
Your opponent is yourself, your negative internal voices, your level of determination. — Grace Lichtenstein

Use the worst colour you can find in each place - it usually is the best. — Roy Lichtenstein

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things, and I'm interested in the way I think other people see things. — Roy Lichtenstein

In America the biggest is the best. — Roy Lichtenstein

It was not possible for us to produce the same optimism and the same kind of humour or irony. Actually, it was not irony. Lichtenstein is not ironic but he does have a special kind of humour. That's how I could describe it: humour and optimism. For Polke and me, everything was more fragmented. But how it was broken up is hard to describe. — Gerhard Richter

Adventure can be an end in itself. Self-discovery is the secret ingredient ... — Grace Lichtenstein

The big tradition, I think, is unity. And I have that in mind; and with that, you know, you could break all the traditions- all the other so-called rules, because they are stylistic.. and most are not true. As long as the marks are related to one another, there is unity. Unity in the work itself depends on unity of the artist's vision. — Roy Lichtenstein

Pop Art is industrial painting. I think the meaning of my work is that it is industrial, it's what all the world will soon become. Europe will be the same way, soon, it won't be American; it will be universal. — Roy Lichtenstein

If Abstract Expression reached for the sublime, Pop turned ordinary imagery into icons. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol illuminated the transformative power of context and the process of reproduction. Claes Oldenburg's soft ice-cream cones and hamburgers changed sculpture from hard to soft, from stasis to transformation. — Arne Glimcher

I'd always wanted to know the difference between a mark that was art and one that wasn't. — Roy Lichtenstein

Outside is the world; it's there. Pop Art looks out into the world. — Roy Lichtenstein

I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way. — Roy Lichtenstein

My work sanitizes it (emotion) but it is also symbolic of commercial art sanitizing human feelings. I think it can be read that way ... People mistake the character of line for the character of art. But it's really the position of line that's important, or the position of anything, any contrast, not the character of it. — Roy Lichtenstein

There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Mir= and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney. — Roy Lichtenstein

I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don't really want it to carry one. I'm not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way. — Roy Lichtenstein

I think that most people think painters are kind of ridiculous, you know? — Roy Lichtenstein

David stood up and said: Sorry Lichtenstein, but I am not here to change the world. I am changing the world because I am here. — Marianne Williamson

When I met Steve Kaufman, I thought he was Gene Simmons, but what an artist talent he is. He will be an art force in the art world to deal with. — Roy Lichtenstein

When I was in Congress, I worked with Joe Kennedy to rename the Justice Department for Bobby, and when I retired, Teddy Kennedy sent me this Roy Lichtenstein print of his brother, inscribed: 'Bobby would have been proud of you.' — Joe Scarborough

I don't think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art. — Roy Lichtenstein

I then discovered the Pop Art of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Peter Max. I was inspired that these fun and colourful images could be presented seriously on canvas. — Joe Average

People think one-point and two-point perspective is how the world actually looks, but of course, it isn't. It's a convention. — Roy Lichtenstein

Little in American culture, politics, or business encourages the institutionalization of a collective employee voice. — Nelson Lichtenstein

Telling people that I wanted to make dance music, or be on the radio, they looked at me like I was crazy because there was nothing like that in Lichtenstein when I was getting started. That's why I went to Germany, because there is industry there. — Al Walser

But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes. — Roy Lichtenstein

My use of evenly repeated dots and diagonal lines and uninflected color areas suggest that my work is right where it is, right on the canvas, definitely not a window into the world. — Roy Lichtenstein

It was around this time that I'd begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people's minds. I'd figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn't know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I'd talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I'd talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I'd talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I'd talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. — Ryu Murakami

Work for a cause David, not for applause.
Remember to live your life to express, not to impress, don't strive to make your presence noticed, just make your absence felt. - Lichtenstein — Grace Lichtenstein

I don't think that I'm over his influence but they probably don't look like Picassos; Picasso himself would probably have thrown up looking at my pictures. — Roy Lichtenstein

Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence. — Roy Lichtenstein

I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. — Roy Lichtenstein

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself. — Roy Lichtenstein

Yeah, you know, you like it to come on like gangbusters, but you get into passages that are very interesting and subtle, and sometimes your original intent changes quite a bit. — Roy Lichtenstein

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms. — Roy Lichtenstein

There must be something about art ... almost all cultures have done art. It's a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that. — Roy Lichtenstein

The first piece I ever collected was a Roy Lichtenstein: a sculpture called 'Surrealist Head II'. There was a waiting list. I remember Steve Martin wanted one, and I wanted one. I got the 'Surrealist Head', and I was thrilled. — Jeff Koons

I don't have big anxieties. I wish I did. I'd be much more interesting. — Roy Lichtenstein

Organized perception is what art is all about. — Roy Lichtenstein

I take a cliche and try to organize its forms to make it monumental. The difference is often not great, but it is crucial. — Roy Lichtenstein

That morning David realized that grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.
Laugh when every time you can Mr Lichtenstein. Apologize when you should, and let go of what you can't change. — Marianne Williamson

I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and all the colors around it and what it will really look like. — Roy Lichtenstein

Painting stems from a sense of organisation, the sensed positions of contrasts. Not that it is about this. — Roy Lichtenstein

But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it. — Roy Lichtenstein

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about. — Roy Lichtenstein

The biggest troublemaker David will probably ever have to deal with, watches him from the mirror every morning. — Olivia Lichtenstein

I'm never drawing the object itself; I'm only drawing a depiction of the object - a kind of crystallized symbol of it. — Roy Lichtenstein

Yes, you know sometimes, we started out thinking out how strange our painting was next to normal painting, which was anything expressionist. You forget that this has been thirty five years now and people don't look at it as if it were some kind of oddity. — Roy Lichtenstein

I'm sorry Mr Lichtenstein, but your January birthday means only one thing and that's you're probably conceived
on April Fools Day. — Olivia Lichtenstein