Lichtenstein: Whaam!

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam! is a work of art that defines an era. Not just that period of art history known as 'pop art', but an era in the history of the world. To me this work, more than any other that I can think of, defines the whole 20th century. Encompassing as it does, the historical evolution of the era of mass production, the era of mass destruction through total war, and the birth of modern mass media.

Yet if you look at the painting, you may be tempted to see it in its simplest form as merely a reflection of a 1960s comic cartoon strip, a snapshot of an American pulp product. On first sight you could be forgiven for thinking this piece merely represents an era in print publishing.

This article is based on a talk I gave in 2023 at Tate Modern museum in London, where I volunteer as a visitor host

Look again and, particularly if you are able to see the painting in person at the Tate Modern museum in London, you will see so much more.

Lichtenstein's Whaam! is one of the first works of art I took note of as a boy, when I first visited the Tate Gallery (as it was then known) in London with my father in the 1970s. It captured my attention then, I think, partly because of the size of the work (I like big art) and partly the subject. The painting is in two panels – a diptych – is bright, brash, and made an obvious connection with the kind of comic-strip magazines I read as a young boy. This work therefore has a great deal of personal meaning for me and, in a way, helped to plant in me the early seed of a later interest in art.

Standing in one of the Tate Modern's pop art galleries, looking up at Whaam! we can see that there is no doubt about the immediate subject of the painting. In the left-hand panel, a single-seat fighter aircraft is in the act of firing a rocket weapon from below the wing. There is a cartoon speech bubble at the top of the panel, which gives the pilot's point of view description of what he has just done - fired the rockets. The right-hand panel depicts the effect of the attack, with another and opposing fighter aircraft being destroyed in an exploding ball of flame.

There is only a single word "Whaam!" which appears out of the explosion. Onomatopoeic use of the word is emphasized by the double "A" which also serves to draw out the imagined sound of the explosion.

So much for the obvious. A closer look at the paintings can tell us a little more. We have already seen that Lichtenstein's painting reflects a comic-strip design. This, Lichtenstein copied from All-American Men of War issue number 89, published by DC Comics in February 1962. I can only presume that the reason the artist copied an existing comic strip was to ensure the authenticity of his subject. The fact that the image is copied from an existing media depiction of war is so much more important than that, however. Whaam! is widely seen as a commentary on the mass media of the 1960s, before the age of internet and social media.

A closer look at the painting also emphasizes the way in which Lichtenstein represents the print medium. If you look at the following close-up image

from the painting you will see that the red, blue and black colors have been applied by brush. The blue dots, on the other hand (and less obviously), were added with the aid of a stencil. The purpose of the blue dots is to represent the 'Ben Day' dots (as they are known) that were used in the mechanical printing process of the day. So although this picture is a painting, it is very much mimicking not just the look of a printed image but the process used to print color images in cheap newsprint publications. Stepping back and looking at the whole painting, seeing these dots together gives the impression of a pale blue sky.

In the printing process for pulp products, the dots also serve another purpose and that is to provide the means of creating other colors. As the

other detailed close-up demonstrates, the area of apparently purple shading of the aircraft shows in this close up as two matrices of overlapping dots, one set red, one set blue. From a distance, this creates the impression of purple. The reason this is used is that this printing process had only three colors available plus black. The only way to create other colors was to use a combination of dots from two or more colors.

Given these features and the trouble the artist went to, in order to create an image of a mass media product, there can be no doubt that the painting represents, not just a single comic strip, but the concept of a mass media, printed comic-strip publication. The 20th century is marked by the growth of mass media and mass production in general. Aimed at providing a growing city-based population with entertainment products of a kind that were cheap to produce, throwaway, and low-brow in content. The subject matter and storylines were trivial.

Lichtenstein, far from merely representing a simple comic strip, appears to be entering into a debate about the nature of mass media, in much the same way that other artists of his time, such as Andy Warhol, did. This is one of the common features of pop art. On the one hand the artist, by depicting a print product on a painted canvass, could be attempting (as some other critics have suggested) to elevate the comic to a higher art form. On the other hand, by doing so, the artist may be achieving the opposite, to expose mass media for what it is (in the artist's view).

To understand this, we need to know more about how the subject is depicted, by which I mean the story or action sequence shown in the cartoon frames. Taking the frame on the left, you will notice if you step back from the painting, that the perspective is taken very much from the cartoon pilot's point of view. As viewers, we may feel we are sitting with the pilot, seeing the world as if from the cockpit. The capital letters in the speech bubble suggest an immediacy and excitement at the point of attack that we share with the pilot.

In the right-hand frame all we see is the explosion and the effect that firing the weapon has had. The other aircraft, on an opposing flight trajectory, is stopped in an instant, disintegrating in a ball of flame that covers the whole of the frame. The "WHAAM!" in huge letters, emphasising the devastating effect of the explosion. All we can see of the pilot is the barest cartoon representation of his face (assuming the pilot is a man). He has no identity, he is merely the personification of "the enemy" whoever that may be. We do not know if the enemy pilot is dead at this point but, with a wing blown off and engulfed in flame, he is unlikely to survive. How does this make us feel? Unlike when we look at the pilot in the other frame (whose viewpoint we take) we are not invited to share the experience of or to empathize with this man, who is dying. He is the enemy and our point of view is drawn towards the victorious pilot.

Of course this single confrontation can be seen as a representation of warfare in general. It is, however, depicted in a way that trivializes the fact of the killing of one person by another, which can be multiplied millions of times over if we consider the number and scale of all the wars that took place in the last century. In a way, we don't really care about the dying pilot, because we are looking at something that is remote and unreal. The dying man is just a cartoon figure. Nobody is really getting hurt and, if they are, they are too far away and too indistinct for us to worry about. This, I think, is the whole point of the painting. By viewing war and death through the lens of mass media, we do not see the reality of mass destruction, we only see this single victory over defeat. What's more, the victory is ours, we share it with the victorious pilot and we rejoice at whatever enemy 'we' have defeated. In this way, says this painting, mass media have desensitized us to war and suffering, encouraging us to connect only with the need to overcome an enemy while ignoring the consequences of conflict and victory.

Lichtenstein, Whaam! to me, sums up the whole of the 20th century. It epitomizes the century of mass media, mass production and total war. It is also a condemnation of the way in which mass media and mass entertainment allow many of us to distance ourselves from the effects of war while consuming entertainment products that exploit the excitement of warlike themes.

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• Looking up at art two: Bacon
• Looking up at art one: Constable

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• Art for our sake
• Art for our sake: Two
• Art for our sake: Three
• Art for our sake: Four

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