March 14: It is Enough, Gun Violence and Art

As I wrote last month, on the 14th of every month, this group is turning its attention to the issues of gun violence.  I'm doing my part by writing what I know--art.

Today's work is

Roy Lichtenstein, Pistol, 1964 (print on banner, dimensions: 82 x 49")(in the collection of MOMA)

I have always been a fan of Roy Lichtenstein and the Pop Art Movement.  But I want to argue the complexity of this work in detail.

It is clearly referencing comics and the art that appeared in the newspaper.  The use of dark outlines, Ben Day dots (print process reproduced here by stencil), and the simplified abstraction of anatomy and objects all point to the comics.  Lichtenstein was clearly influenced by the issues of perception--hence the draw of Pop Art where comic art was taken from its pulp original and turned into "high art".   This work of art is all about our perceptions.

Comics carry with them connotations and the weight of our day-to-day and mass culture perceptions of ourselves.  The stories in the comics are the stories we tell ourselves about needing superheroes, seeing children who are loved and loveable despite their hijinks, recognizing the personalities of our pets.  Even comics that aren't topical can reflect our concerns about our job security and global situation.  They come with a recognizable vocabulary, often relying on humor to set us at ease with a story that may be uncomfortable otherwise.

I don't know what comic this came from.  Lichtenstein used a lot of the pulp comics, especially war, westerns, and superhero comics.  But here's why Lichtenstein's image is supposed to frighten us:

There is no setting.  Just a red wall.  Red like blood.  Red like anger.  Unrelenting.  There is nowhere else to turn, nowhere to imagine a scene and a story to diffuse this gun.

The gun points right at us.  There is no getting away from the black center of the barrel.

The hand--its finger clearly on the trigger--is disembodied.  There is no brain telling the shooter to not harm you.  There is no reluctance.

The size is huge.  There is no getting away from this threatening hand and the poised violence of the gun.

There's a lot of discussion in the gun control debate about what role culture plays in the psychology of guns.  Many gun owners argue that they put the gun in its "correct" context--teaching safety, using locks, limiting access--and that it is only when the gun is taken from that "correct" context--used by the criminal or the insane or the suicidal--that it should be limited.  Many folks argue that the context of guns in video games particularly accustoms children to guns as part of toys (part of comic mobs and criminals) and that it desensitizes them to the actuality of violence.  I suspect that the reality is some combination of all of these. 

Ernest Busche in the Lichtenstein bio linked here writes: "The theme basic to all of Lichtenstein’s work ...explicitly questioned the assumption that the function of representational art was to reflect reality. Throughout his work in all media, he continued to affirm that the arrangement of forms and colours obeyed pictorial rules independent of the subject portrayed. The succession of styles alluded to in his art, rather than being taken for granted as a self-perpetuating system, thus becomes an instrument for understanding art as the expression of an ideal state."  Lichtenstein is explicitly taking the gun from the removed state of the comics and returning it to the one where it is a tool of violence.

IT IS ENOUGH.  Now is the time not just to limit the horrific violence of the Sandy Hook shootings but to consider the casual access that allows over 80 deaths daily in the US by gun violence.  Our legislators are talking; make them act.  I wrote to CT. Senator Richard Blumenthal this morning.  What will you do?