1 June 2006
Thursday 1 June 2006 21:30-22:00 (Radio 3)
Paul Allen celebrates another great cultural landmark, Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam!
Roy Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!' (1963)
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/ DACS 2005
Playlist
The Canadian novelist and British artist discuss a landmark of the culture, Roy Lichtenstein's pop art classic Whaam!
In garish cartoon style reds and yellows a US jet blows another jet out of the air to the words 'I pressed the fire control ... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky...'
It is a seminal piece of the work, emblematic of a body of artistic ideas that infused Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton as well as Lichtenstein himself.
With its themes of the virtual nature of reality, of technology and destruction it is perhaps more relevant now than ever.
Douglas Coupland, who has nominated the piece, thinks so and will be telling Paul Allen why Whaam! deserves to be a Night Waves cultural landmark.
'Whaam' is on display at the in London.
Douglas Coupland's new novel JPod is published by Bloomsbury on the 8th June.
