Focus on this artwork and discuss the Description.
The two images garnered attention among critics by highlighting the nuances between copying and creating art, between real and fake art. As Andy Warhol challenged the status quo by "humanizing mass-produced product", Lichtenstein dehumanized masterpieces. Portrait of Madame Cézanne demonstrates "that the quotation of popular culture was not the sign of intelligence suspended but rather the shape of thought."The publication of this work was considered by some observers as more sacrilegious than Duchamp's revisions to the Mona Lisa. Loran wrote two hot-tempered letters in response, which were published in September 1963 issues of ARTnews and Artforum. His articles were written after Lichtenstein's first Pop exhibition in Los Angeles, which featured the two life-sized works depicting Loran's images. Loran, whose text was by this time over twenty years old, even attempted to sue Lichtenstein. According to David Deitcher, "The angrier of the two tracts appeared in Art News, where Loran openly expressed his contempt for Lichtenstein's work and hinted at his desire to sue.":
In a recent sell-out exhibition at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, he [Lichtenstein] gave the title of Portrait of Mme. Cézanne to the black and white line drawing on bare canvas reproduced here. Sale price: $2000, or more. I suppose I should be flattered that a diagrammatic sketch of mine should be worth so much. But then, no one has paid me anything—so far.
One critic noted that although Loran was making instructive points with his diagram, Lichtenstein's was an artistic statement. However, Loran was joined by Brian O'Doherty, a critic with The New York Times, in ridiculing the defense of Pop art as transformative rather than appropriationist art. In 1963, O'Doherty wrote his belief that Lichtenstein's work was not art in The New York Times saying, he was "one of the worst artists in America" who "briskly went about making a sow's ear out of a sow's ear." Loran felt Pop art paled in comparison to the aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism. Lichtenstein did not accept the transformation defense. Other critics got involved in the matter, with Gene Swenson querying Lichtenstein "about the charges of antagonistic critics 'that Pop Art does not transform its models." Lichtenstein responded that art forms but does not transform. Max Kozloff opined that Loran was being mocked and that while Lichtenstein's product had didactic content, its purpose and need was questionable. Kozloff worried in The Nation that Lichtenstein's work may lead to the values that modern art held being rejected moving forward.The painting is regarded as "another of his comments on the way in which we view art."  The work, along with his Femme au Chapeau from 1962 mark the beginnings of Lichtenstein's presentations of art about art because it was among his first paintings that drew upon a predecessor artist. Lichtenstein noted his objection to the attempt to reduce art diagrammatically: "I wasn't trying to berate Erle Loran ... but it is such an oversimplification trying to explain a painting by A, B, C." He also noted that "The Cézanne is such a complex painting. Taking an outline and calling it Madame Cézanne is in itself humorous, particularly the idea of diagramming a Cézanne when Cézanne said, '... the outline escaped me.'"Lichtenstein obtained legal validation that his work was original when Loran's lawsuit was dismissed, clearing the way for artists to elaborate on images produced by others.
Artforum The New York Times oversimplification The Nation Mona Lisa Max Kozloff Pop art Duchamp ARTnews Cézanne Andy Warhol Brian O'Doherty Erle Loran