It started at the Times Square Station where resides a mural by
Roy Lichtenstein. His paintings are blow ups of the dotted images in the comics.
I remembered that the process for dotted reproduction (
Ben-day dots) was named after printer Benjamin Day. Depending on the effect or optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely-spaced, widely-spaced or overlapping.
1950s and 1960s pulp comic books used Benday dots in the four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to inexpensively create shading and secondary colors such as green, purple, orange and flesh tones. This is where
Lichtenstein comes in.
Then I went to
MOMA saw the current design show and saw a hilarious take on the Ben-day dot in the Design area, where each image dot is a crazy icon/pictograph.
And....on my way downtown, I saw a film poster for a Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino film,
Righteous Kill. A black and white dotted Ben-Day image.
Thinking about dots and getting dotty in the heat--is there a country song in this?
"It's a place where you can let your freak flag fly." This comment from one of the marchers in Coney Island's annual Mermaid Parade said it all. The spectacle was so colorful, hot, sweaty and wonderful that it took me back to a time when canned experience was rarely the norm. Thus it moved me towards nostalgic and luminous black and white.
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