As a young artist in the 1960s, Roy Lichtenstein was repelled by the rules of “good taste” in the art world. To show his contempt for this, he sought out what he thought of as the “dumbest” or “worst” visual images he could find, and then used them in his own art. He would paraphrase images – especially “despised” images; that is, he would use such images in almost identical form to the original, but now seen in some kind of ironic way. What others dismissed as trivial, fascinated him. This quickly led to his use of comic strips – then a favourite form of popular culture in America. He isolated the visual conventions of comics – for instance, the way the cheap newsprint-technique created a dot pattern, the exaggerated emotions, and the tricks that convey noise, explosions, crashes, the WHAAM! and BLAM! These became his subject matter