Isaac Hull Esq. 1953

Here is a black ink woodcut print on paper by Roy Lichtenstein, called Isaac Hull Esq. You can tell it’s early Lichtenstein because it’s from 1953, before he hit the big time with his Pop paintings. I love the way he’s used the woodcut to create a figure out of black and white lines; it’s so bold and graphic. I can imagine him carving away at the wood, figuring out how to suggest form and depth with just a few, simple marks. He probably looked back to German Expressionist woodcuts like Kirchner and Heckel for inspiration, but he adds a uniquely American flavor. It reminds me of Stuart Davis, too, with its jazzy rhythms and flat planes. It must have felt radical to be making images like this back then! Lichtenstein kept exploring the boundaries of representation, questioning what images are and how they function. We can see in this early print he was already beginning to ask those questions. It's like he's saying, "let’s see what happens!"