THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM…

More or less every one of us, at least when we are young, like
to have them, to read them or simply to look at them; for a moment to escape to another world – striking, colorful, imagina- tive, and easy to read: comics. But what happens when comics become reality?

At the time when Roy Lichtenstein was copying a small picture from the comic: “THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM…”* (1964) it was a time of big changes, life was changing, life was becoming more and more like the pictures on huge street billboards or like on TV. Art was changing too. Art was no longer dealing just with “serious” topics, art was becoming a part of the commer- cial system. Different products were becoming themes for artworks, comics were one of them.

Over 20 years later, on another continent, a group called FILOART was copying a copy. This copy of a copy (“THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM…” 1986) was made in one country (a post-authoritarian country with several nationalistic units) which was going through big changes of values. Vulgarity and banality existed noticeably in everyday life. Hate-speech against “the others” was becoming a best-selling product. Sometime it was enough to change only one small sign to change the entire meaning of something. THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM… 1986 by FILOART is almost identical to Roy Lichtenstein’s work 1964, except for one difference. In the 1964 work the machine guns are firing in the same direction, in the 1986 work the machine guns are firing against one another. While people were buying silk ties with pop art motifs of Lichtenstein’s works on one side of the globe, on the other people were getting ready to make copies of his (comic book inspired) paintings (without knowing him or his work). But is it a “copy”, if people don’t know the existence of the author and his work (a big part of the population really didn’t know). Perhaps, the country where this work was made (“THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM…” by FILOART), became (tragi-) comic? Starting with bellicose dogs(1), shouting captains (2), shut guns(3), exploding airplanes(4), until the crying women (5), everything was getting ready for the big show (the war) that will take place four years later, after the presentation of “THAT MY SHIP WAS BELOW THEM…” 1987.

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