Flat Love: The Painting (I).

Girl with Ball. 1961. Work of Mr. Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997).  

Lichtenstein was inspired by an advertisement of a lodge for honeymooners, in the Pocono Mountains. The black and white ad, like the painting, shows the stereotypical 50's American girl (the pin up), with wavy shiny long hair, open mouth with full lipstick, a healthy and curvaceous body and a direct, "I'm having a good time" attitude. The advertisement people were selling the same thing they are selling now: sex.

So Lichtenstein takes the stereotype and pushes it beyond itself, creating a pop idol of an American pin-up. The girl from the advertisement is transformed from a photorealistic dull pin up into a comic book effigy of XX century American femininity.