Roy Lichtenstein - Drowning Girl

1963
MoMa - New York

171.6 x 169.5 cm
Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas

(click to enlarge)

Reduction leaves a lot of space for distinctive interpretations, being them illustrative or contextual, few have achieved such hypothetical stimulus like Lichtenstein. The enigmas are like orphan frames just cropped out of a comic book, quite intriguing when you can't read the rest of the episode, loads of questions pops up: "How did she get into this?", "Is she sad, afraid, angry or just proud towards Brad?" or yet "Who the hell is Brad?"



Misrepresentation and distortion were rather hip in the sixties, the origin of "The drowning girl" traces back to the episode "Run for Love!" from DC Comics (click to enlarge). Lichtenstein's re-creation are big coloured surfaces, a mix of the threatening wave of Hokusai with Stan Lee's comic facial pattern, a text element is added in a melodramatic close up, all painted manually and even though, simulating the benday dots of mechanical imagery press.

It could be a catch on sexism, also feverish at the time, analysing the pop era however, the high industrialization and trade, it makes more sense to consider it closely related to our psychological mutations provoked by crescendo individualism in modern society, which is itself, closed related to physical comfort as the highest value: Once lonely, much more prolific and therefore, egoist.

Individualism is the most effective economic booster system known, it paradoxically leads to collective wealth and prosperity. After Adam Smith, that would be an economic good consequence of our egoism. Nevertheless, just to counterbalance the whole thing, Emile Durkheim points out individualism statistically connected to growth in suicide rate.

Hence we have the price of a general flourishing life: A damage of mental and emotional conditions, paranoia, vanity and apathy. Even though, the development of this inflated self-esteem are indeed necessary nowadays. So what to do now?

Shall we put our whole social circle in a balance to see who still carries a droplet of fraternity or who is already totally contamined by conditional exchange? How to separate emergency from foolish emotional matters? Who is stronger enough to face its own mess and deal with it? The evolution is taking us to a extrem form of social independency, is that a good thing? Well... "I don't care! I'd rather sink -- then call anybody for help!"