What 1963 Roy Lichtenstein painting depicts a woman about to drown?

Roy Lichtenstein’s 1963 painting of a woman about to drown is titled “Drowning Girl.”

The oil-and-synthetic-polymer painting shows a tearful woman partly submerged in rough water. Her thought bubble declares that she would rather sink than call Brad for help, turning a dramatic romantic crisis into a deliberately heightened, comic-book scene.

Lichtenstein based the image on a panel from the DC Comics romance title Secret Hearts #83, illustrated by Tony Abruzzo. He cropped and enlarged the source, simplifying its composition and using heavy outlines, flat colors and Ben-Day dots that imitate commercial printing. The result is both an instantly readable melodrama and a commentary on how mass-media images manufacture emotion.

The painting belongs to Lichtenstein’s early-1960s series of distressed women, alongside works such as “Hopeless” and “In the Car.” It is sometimes confused with “Whaam!”, another important 1963 Lichtenstein work, but that diptych depicts an aerial combat scene. “Drowning Girl” is held by the Museum of Modern Art, which acquired it in 1971.