Little Big Painting, by Roy Lichtenstein
Little Big Painting is a 1965 oil and Magna on canvas pop art painting by Roy Lichtenstein. It is part of the Brushstrokes series of artworks that include several paintings and
sculptures. It is located at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. As with all of his Brushstrokes works, it is in part a satirical response to the gestural painting of
abstract expressionism.
Little Big Painting is quite attentive to the "physical qualities of the brushstroke" relative to other Brushstrokes series works. It is an example of the use of overlapping forms
rather than a single form or distinct adjacent forms, which seems to create a more dynamic feel to the shallow space. However, since Lichtenstein does not uses shading or contrast, the
monochromatic strokes with just bold black outlines are void of certain elements of depth. The work contains no narrative, leaving just the comic book form of Benday dots presented according
to a plotted outline. Later Brushstrokes works such as Big Painting No. 6 and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes go one step further in terms of canvas size and dynamic activity that was presented
earlier in Little Big Painting.
Lichtenstein presents work that resembled the abstract expressionism that the contemporaneous viewing audience had become accustomed to seeing, however, his result is completely flat,
without any trace of the brushstroke or the artist's hand. Meanwhile, the work references mechanical printing with the Ben-Day dots background, which enables Lichtenstein to parody his
predecessors and make a "powerful abstract composition".