Whitney Museum's Roy Lichtenstein exhibition

Artefuse wrote about an exhibition of the art of Roy Lichtenstein, a now famous artist who drew inspirations from comics artwork, at the Whitney Museum, and the odd thing about this review is that the writer says Lichtenstein "appropriated":

Roy Lichtenstein was a real New Yorker. There are not many of those anymore. He was born and raised on the Upper West Side in a middle-class family and eventually became one of the most recognizable artists of the Pop Art movement, but his work extends beyond the comic-book paintings most people associate with him. [...]

The exhibition includes plenty of famous works, mixed with lesser-known pieces that, according to the Whitney, have not been seen in a long time. The appropriation is part of what makes the exhibition interesting: cartoons imitating life, life imitating art, and then back to life again. The main dark room on the west side has one of the best layouts. It keeps the story moving, almost like a storyboard, except this is Lichtenstein’s own comic-book retrospective of his art. The images pull you in, but the longer you look, the more you realize how carefully everything has been constructed.

Appropriation makes Lichtenstein’s work more interesting and complicated to me, and this is where the exhibition really has something to say. He borrowed from comic strips, advertisements, and other artists, transforming familiar popular images into something that looked unmistakably like his own. The images still look mechanical, but up close, they are handmade. But that raises a question that still follows contemporary art: when does borrowing become an original act, and who decides?

Oh, for heaven's sake. This sounds like an attempt to minimize the impact of his art, even as he does speak favorably of Lichtenstein's portfolio. I think what he drew in his time is impressive, does a good service for comics by extension, and to make it sound more like he "borrowed" yet isn't being original is trivializing his influence. On the other hand, they should consider how comics artwork today in the mainstream became much duller, perhaps as a very regrettable effect of the cancel culture and censorship of the past decade. I've seen some examples from Lichtenstein's art that are much livelier than say, the dark crime noir overrated comics writers like Ed Brubaker are producing, and what Lichtenstein turned out makes for a far better source of inspiration.

So could we please consider that artists like Lichtenstein are the figures we should really look to for what makes great art and what to emulate? I think that's what should be considered now. And the news site's writer shouldn't be implying the late artist was "unoriginal". On the contrary, Lichtenstein had a very idea of what to draw inspiration from in his time.