Literature of New Jersey Class Creates Pop Art

This week, students in Lisa Tilton-Levine’s “Garden State of Mind: Literature of New Jersey” class saluted modern artist and former Rutgers University professor Roy Lichtenstein by creating their own pop art masterpieces in the School’s Center for Innovation & Design.

Lichtenstein, who taught at Rutgers University from 1960 to 1964, was a key figure in the pop art movement and beyond. He grounded his inventive career in imitation – often borrowing images from comic books and advertisements in the early 1960s. In his process, he used perforated templates to replicate and often exaggerate the dot patterning commonly used in printing imagery. Known as Ben-Day dots, this patterning became a signature element of his style.

To create their works of art, the MBS students incorporated three key elements of Lichtenstein's style: an onomatopoeic word, a limited palette of primary colors, and a dot pattern. They then took the project a step further by adding a 3-dimensional element to their piece.