PRESENTLOCATION: Cologne Museum, Ludwig.
Roy Lichtensteins comics were predominantly war or romance themed. Lichtenstein did many comic style images depicting scenes of war. Some of these were Whaam (1963), Takka Takka (1962) and As I Opened Fire (1964). Lichtenstein said this of his war paintings: "A minor purpose of my war paintings is to put military aggressiveness in an absurd light. My personal opinion is that much of our foreign policy has been unbelievably terrifying, but this is not what my work is about and I don't want to capitalize on this popular position. My work is more about our American definition of images and visual communication." Lichtensteins war images are taken from action comics. They are close-up radically cropped views of land and air battles. This keeps the viewer from really understanding what is going on and whether or not the "right" side is winning. The paintings looked as if to be "celebrating war". Children were laughing at his war comic paintings because the adults were using children's toys as weapons. To everyone's surprise the tactic worked on a social level, but only eventually, partially and much later.# .
Lichtensteins work Takka Takka, 1962 is war themed. This is another comic style image by Lichtenstein. The sides of the conflict are not shown so that there it is universal. When you compare Lichtensteins painting to the source print material his elimination of certain parts of the text and image becomes clear. The original battle was fought by the American Marines on the Guadalcanal but Lichtensteins is an unidentified battle. Lichtensteins battle is fought by "soldiers". In the original comic there is a shaking hand held near the weapons mouth. Lichtensteins weapons are not visibly manned and the weapons themselves seem to have taken over the fighting themselves. Lichtenstein uses simplified definite shapes and colours in Takka Takka.