Happy birthday to the king of Ben-Day dots, Roy Lichtenstein!

Although trained as an abstract painter, Roy Lichtenstein became a pioneer of Pop art famed for paintings based on generic romance books and war comics. Lichtenstein transferred the clichéd comic-book compositions to canvas with a projector and simplified them; the resulting paintings mimic the impersonal appearance of cheap four-color printing, despite being meticulously handmade. Characteristic of this work are the enlarged benday dots that would become Lichtenstein’s signature mark.

Lichtenstein abandoned working on comics paintings by the mid-1960s, but he retained a lifelong interest in the mass media. His later work often addressed how an artwork’s meaning changed when it was reproduced and distributed as a commercial image.

(via SFMOMA | Explore Modern Art | Our Collection | Roy Lichtenstein | Interior with Chair, from the Leo Castelli 90th Birthday portfolio)