Episode Details

In the early 1960s a national magazine asked whether Roy Lichtenstein was the worst painter in America. Decades later one of his paintings sold privately for $165 million. This episode follows the quiet New York kid who sketched jazz musicians at the Apollo Theater, trained as a military draftsman, hid Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse inside abstract expressionist canvases, and in 1961 answered a challenge from his own son by painting Look Mickey.

The hosts explain the mechanics of his industrial painting style, the plagiarism controversy that still shadows his legacy, and the eclectic second act that ran from Van Gogh remakes to three-dimensional sculptures painted with flat shadows.

• What Benday dots are, why comic printers used them, and how Lichtenstein reproduced them by hand with perforated metal screens and quick-drying Magna paint
• The 1962 solo show that sold out before opening and the 13-foot diptychs of war and romance panels that horrified critics
• Why working comic artists paid $15 to $20 a page received no credit or royalties, and the defense of transformation offered by his supporters
• The 1965 pivot away from comics toward reproductions of Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso, art deco motifs, and painted sculpture
• His move to Southampton, his marriage to Dorothy, his death in 1997, and how proceeds from the 2017 sale funded criminal justice reform