Appropriated from a book he enjoyed reading to his kids, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1961 painting Look Mickey shows Mickey Mouse stifling a laugh as Donald Duck pulls on a fishing line stuck through his own shirt and says, “Look Mickey, I’ve hooked a big one!!” Like Andy Warhol‘s first soup cans, the piece was a shot across the bow of abstract expressionism, and it placed Lichtenstein squarely at the center of the pop art movement. It’s only right that he announced himself with a children’s cartoon, since much of his work is characterized by playfulness.
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Opens Tue 5/22. Through 9/3: daily 10:30 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8), Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artinstituteofchicago.org, $12-$18, free to children under 14, free to Illinois residents on the first and second Wednesday of each month.
