WHAAM!

The veteran arts writer and biographer focuses readers’ attention on the life and oeuvre of Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein. As in her other well-received books, Rubin mixes a flair for the telling detail with a clear understanding of what sorts of information will have interest and meaning for her readers. The design, too, is part of the pleasure here: The cover features several of Lichtenstein’s most emblematic comic-inflected images in bold primary colors. Further, the book is a handsome 10” by 10” square with bright yellow endpapers. Each page is bordered with Lichtenstein’s signature Benday dots—the actual manner in which colors and tone were built up in newsprint comic books. The author carefully places her subject within the continuum of postwar American art and ably compares and contrasts the work of the Pop Art movement with the more frenetic drip-painters such as Pollock and De Kooning. In all, this will have strong visual and intellectual appeal for today’s lovers of graphic novels and be particularly welcomed in libraries and museum bookstores. (Biography. 10 & up)