Drowning Girl is a 1963 pop art painting with oil and synthetic polymer
paint on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein (pictured). Utilizing the
conventions of comic book art, a thought bubble conveys the thoughts of
the figure, while Ben-Day dots echo the effect of the mechanized
printing process. Part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent
collection since 1971, the painting is considered among Lichtenstein's
most significant works, perhaps on a par with Whaam!, his acclaimed 1963
diptych. Drowning Girl has been described as a "masterpiece of
melodrama", and is one of the artist's earliest images depicting women
in tragic situations, a theme to which he often returned in the mid-
1960s. The painting shows a teary-eyed woman on a turbulent sea,
declaring that she would rather sink in the ocean than call Brad.
(Several Lichtenstein works contain text referring to an absent "Brad".)
The narrative element highlights the clichéd melodrama, while its
graphics reiterate Lichtenstein's theme of painterly work depicting
mechanized reproduction. The work is derived from a 1962 DC Comics
panel, while also borrowing from Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa
and from works by modernist artists Jean Arp and Joan Miró.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_Girl>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
313:
The Edict of Milan, an agreement between Constantine the Great
and Licinius to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire,
was posted in Nicomedia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan>
1886:
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was found dead in Lake Starnberg near
Munich under mysterious circumstances.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_II_of_Bavaria>
1952:
Soviet warplanes shot down a Swedish military Douglas DC-3A-360
Skytrain carrying out signals intelligence gathering operations, which
was followed by the shootdown of a Catalina flying boat searching for
the Skytrain three days later.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalina_affair>
1971:
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers, a
7,000-page top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the
nation's political and military involvement in the Vietnam War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers>
2010:
The Japanese Hayabusa (model pictured) space mission became the
first to return samples of an asteroid (25143 Itokawa) to Earth for
analysis.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
soundly:
In a thorough manner; in manner free of defect or deficiency.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soundly>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Trouble shared is trouble halved.
--Dorothy L. Sayers
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers>