Along with Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselmann and Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein was one of the leading proponents of Pop Art. In the late 1950s, he began using comic strip characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny in his works. His 'Look Mickey' from 1961 was the first work with a comic-type grid technique and speech balloons. To make it, Lichtenstein combined aspects of mechanical reproduction with manual drawing. Although at the time the artist was criticised for its alleged banality, works such as this have now long been considered icons of Pop Art. The strategy of artistically transforming images taken from popular culture addressed the trivialization of life as a result of mass society and forced an increasingly stereotype society to think about its clichéd image that it had put in circulation itself.
