Whaam! 1963

This is Roy Lichtenstein’s huge painting, Whaam!, on two canvases. He made it in the 1960s and, boy, does it explode with Pop Art energy! I can imagine Lichtenstein, so methodical, projecting comic book frames onto these massive canvases, meticulously filling in those Ben-Day dots. It’s like he’s saying, "Hey, even a mass-produced image can have impact. Even a comic can be monumental." And it is monumental! That ‘WHAAM!’—those yellow letters piercing the red and white explosion—it hits you right in the gut. You can almost feel the heat, the force. I wonder if Lichtenstein ever thought about the actual pilots, the real danger, behind these images? Is it a celebration, a critique, or just a ‘whaam’ of pure visual sensation? Whatever it is, it definitely makes you think about the power of images and how they shape our world.