Abstract art through comics

Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006 | 8:04 a.m.

The Las Vegas Art Museum's Roy Lichtenstein exhibit provides a look at the artist's work from his 1956 "Ten Dollar Bill" to the "Cubist Cello" print he was working on when he died.

It showcases his explosive cartoon works - such as "Crying Girl" (1963) and "WHAAM!" (1967). But the more than 80 prints cover the breadth of Lichtenstein's career and act as a not-so-subtle reminder that it didn't begin and end with cartoons.

Inspired by Picasso and Klee, Lichtenstein saw himself as an abstract artist who used cartoon imagery and other graphic mediums as a sophisticated art form and conduit for irony. The artist's sense of humor comes through in "Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-97."

The exhibit includes landscapes, interiors and surrealist and cubist works. There are examples from his Bull Profile Series, a deconstruction from figurative to abstract as well as Lichtenstein's graphic take on Monet's series on haystacks and the Rouen Cathedral.

The prints belong to Jordan Schnitzer, a developer from Portland, Ore., whose foundation mounts artist retrospectives for smaller museums in "midsized communities" and universities in the West and Pacific Northwest.

Schnitzer, a lifelong collector, said he considers art to be one of the "last bastions of independent thinking" in today's media age and considers himself to be a steward for contemporary artists.

Affordable prints have been the cornerstone of his efforts: "As exciting as it is to see a Roy Lichtenstein painting that sells for $14 million, I learn the most when I go to a retrospective," Schnitzer said by phone from Oregon.

The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collection includes works by Frank Stella, David Hockney, Jim Dine, Cindy Sherman, Robert Motherwell and Ed Ruscha. In addition to the Lichtenstein show, Schnitzer's traveling exhibits include "Andy Warhol's Dream America" and the 30-artist "Pressure Points."

Schnitzer sums up Lichtenstein by placing him in the advertising era that launched him: "For the first time, we had mass marketing starting to dominate our lives. You had these ticky-tacky houses. You have everyone buying the same cars. Suburbs were exploding. Television was starting to market products."

He credits Lichtenstein as the first artist to use the themes of mass marketing and said the artist's inviting medium forced us to look at his work and then explore our own views and prejudices.

"With cartoons, you get a smile on your face," Schnitzer said. "They're secure for us. We're all comfortable with the comics. They're nonthreatening. So what does Roy Lichtenstein do? He uses that technology for these very complex and difficult themes."