Roy Lichtenstein (1923 - 1997) was among the New York artists who created a seismic shift in painting in the early 1960s by taking the artiness out of art. One of the founders of the Pop Art movement, he invented many of the strategies in art that we now take for granted, such as irony and the appropriation of commercial images. And it was his series of "girl paintings" - beautiful young women lifted almost line for line and Benday dot for dot from the comics - that put him on the map. A group of 16 paintings and related works from this series are now on view at Gagosian Gallery's Madison Avenue quarters.

Left: Roy Lichtenstein, photo copyright Bill Ray; right: "Blond Waiting," 1964, by Roy Lichtenstein; courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

"More like the comics than the comics themselves" is how critic Adam Gopnick described these paintings; and this particular selection of works in various media gives an in-depth view of Lichtenstein's approach. Once the image, based on a detailed drawing, had been penciled onto the canvas, he applied the Benday dots that create the rosy skin tones of his subjects. In the early pieces, Lichtenstein painted the dots by hand; later on he had studio assistants apply the dots using a stencil. The crisp graphic outlines defining the figures look as if cut from rubylith, a pre-digital graphic arts standby, whereas they were painted by hand and given three coats. "It's kind of like housepainting," he wryly said in a 1987 New York Times interview with Deborah Solomon.

Lichtenstein's use of primary colors plus black enhances the graphic style and surface uniformity that is further enhanced by the vacuous sameness of his pretty young women, who pine for romance or humor their men. In some cases, the colors have dulled a bit over time, but the three pieces done in porcelain enamel on steel retain their vivid hues.

The compound irony of imitating a mechanically produced medium - printed comics - and executing borrowed images at a huge scale, by hand, was just the beginning of a long career in which Lichtenstein also recreated masterpieces by Picasso, Braque and Matisse in his trademark colors and dots. One of the sculptures currently on exhibit, the glazed ceramic "Head with Red Shadow," pays homage to Picasso's ceramics and stands as a prequel to Lichtenstein's 1970s riffs on Picasso.

"Roy Lichtenstein: Girls" is on view at the Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue through June 28. Several works by Lichtenstein are included in Christie's Post-war and Contemporary Art auction on May 13.