Girl in Mirror, 1964, encapsulates Roy Lichtenstein’s innovative Pop aesthetic. Executed in porcelain enamel on steel, the work depicts an idealized blonde woman smiling at her reflection in a mirror. The work adheres to Lichtenstein’s intentionally limited palette of primary red, yellow, black, and white, with red Ben-Day dots to articulate the woman’s skin tone. The present work dates to the peak of Lichtenstein’s investigation of Pop aesthetics in the early 1960s; beneath its shiny surface, however, Girl in Mirror provides a trenchant commentary on commodification and femininity in the early 1960s.

 

Lichtenstein is best known for his cartoon-based approach to Pop Art, whereby, in a proto-Appropriationist move, he based his compositions on panels from newspaper cartoons and comic books. The young woman of Girl in Mirror recalls characters like Betty Cooper from Archie, and fashion comics such as Katy Keene aimed at young female audiences. Beyond the aesthetics of comic book art, however, the composition of Girl in Mirror reveals the strictures of performing femininity in the United States in the early 1960s.

 

 

Within Girl in Mirror, the girl’s face is only visible in the cosmetic mirror she holds towards the viewer, a compositional move which places the visual interest on her body, rather than her face—the girl herself is, quite literally, in the mirror. Her blonde hair, which dominates the left half of the composition, is intentionally artificial, its classic 1960s swoop echoing the curve of the mirror. Even her hand is perfectly manicured, to an unreal degree. As Lichtenstein explained, the artificiality of his characters is part of his artistic experiment.

“Female stereotypes of the postwar era…are to Lichtenstein what Liz and Marilyn were to Warhol, our society's clichés, though without any true identity of their own. They are products of a culture that puts celluloid glamour and consumer objects before human dignity or collective achievement."
—Diane Waldman

In Lichtenstein’s hand, his female protagonist is part of the surface—“the kind of girls I painted were really made up of black lines and red dots,” he said. He sees them “that abstractly;” for Lichtenstein, there’s a clear distinction between real women and cartoon women, but he also plays with the ways in which beauty standards and art(ifice) distort our perception of the human form.ⁱ Within Girl in Mirror, the female form, especially the made-up, make-believe woman of 1960s cartoons, is simply that: a form, a figure to play with on the painted surface, not unlike the brushstrokes of Lichtenstein’s Abstract Expressionist peers. His wife, Dorothy, corroborated this, explaining how her husband rotated his work on the easel, so that the formal elements of the painting were effective, no matter the work’s orientation.ⁱⁱ

 

 

With Girl in Mirror, Lichtenstein engages the long history of pairing beautiful women with mirrors in Western art. Taken together, the visual elements of Girl in Mirror embody the theme of vanitas, or (the futility of) vanity, which Lichtenstein, working in the post-War, consumerist boom of mid-century America, surely saw reflected in the world around him. The second wave of feminism was still in its infancy when Girl in Mirror was created, with Betty Freidan’s seminal The Feminine Mystique only published one year prior. Akin to Lichtenstein’s New York World’s Fair mural of the same year, Girl in Mirror interrogates themes of vanity, surface, and the commodification of the self, the hallmarks of Lichtenstein’s strongest period of Pop art.

 

 

Lichtenstein’s use of Ben-Day dots in Girl in Mirror provides duly formal and symbolic meaning. The Ben-Day dot is a printing technique, popularized at the turn of the 20^th century, used to inexpensively add color to newspaper illustrations, particularly cartoons. Over time, cartoonists adapted to the process, and soon began to dot their own work to represent shading and depth; the mechanical process thus becomes an aesthetic choice. As Roberta Smith writes, Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots make the work “both more and less artificial;” they not only “signify mechanical reproduction, but they also add suggestions of light and reflection, shifting colors and variations.”ⁱⁱⁱ In other words, the shifting quality of Ben-Day can recall the effect of viewing one’s reflection from varying angles; the idiosyncrasy of their application in Girl in Mirror to the girl’s face and hand suggesting variations in texture, a glimpse of humanity in an intentionally flat and industrial surface.

 

Beyond subject matter and technique, Lichtenstein’s material choices for Girl in Mirror are emblematic, as well. The work is made of steel and porcelain enamel, two materials is closely tied to the advent of modernity in the Industrial Revolution; Lichtenstein’s modern America, so ironically captured by his Pop sensibility in Girl with Mirror, could not exist without the very materials of the present work. The shiny surface of Girl in Mirror holds the reflection of the material foundations of the 20^th century up to the viewer.

 

 

ⁱ Roy Lichtenstein, quoted in “Girls,” Gagosian, 2008, online.

ⁱⁱ Roberta Smith, “The Painter Who Adored Women,” The New York Times, Jun. 11, 2008.

ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid.