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
_______________________________ 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
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
soundly: In a thorough manner; in manner free of defect or deficiency. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soundly
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Trouble shared is trouble halved. --Dorothy L. Sayers https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_L._Sayers
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