Lichtenstein’s Superheroine

Fashion x Art #13

HAPPY NEW YEAR and thanks to all of you who consult this blog regularly, or simply peep here and there!

Now a few days into the new year, some of the resolutions we invariably took are starting to fade. I probably will not be meditating everyday or keeping my desktop perfectly neat this year… We are all human after all! But sometimes we like to feel – and wear – our superpower, because we all have at least one. Be it the ability to listen, reflect and grow or simply to be present for ourselves or the people we love when they need us.

Humanity’s obsession with superpowers has ancient roots, from the divinity of the Saints to Joan of Arc to superheroes populating comic strips and filling box offices. Roy Lichtenstein, the famous pop artist of the second part of the 20th century made popular comics one of his favorite tropes. He developed a personal technique using stencils, primary colors, thick outlines and Benday dots to recreate the look and aura of commercial printing processes as exemplified in Girl with a Hair Ribbon.

Not necessarily representing superheroines, his works strike a balance between the contradiction of the vibrant and bold colors he uses and the distress expressed by his feminine characters, often trapped in images where they are objectified and deprived of agency. More recently, the figure of the superheroine has been presented with more feminist undertones, as for example in the latest cinematic edition of the Wonder Woman franchise realized by a woman, Patty Jenkins.

Bold, empowering and frankly fun, superheroine outfits can be worn in the streets to make a statement like no other!