Roberta Smith writes: “Roy Lichtenstein: Girls,” at the Gagosian Gallery, presents 12 of Lichtenstein’s early paintings of the female creatures otherwise known as women. Based on cartoons and mostly blond, they are anonymous, beautiful and often unhappily bothered, usually by men. Or, if you like, by boys.

“Forget It! Forget Me!” (1962) (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

Title aside, the show is terrific. Just when you thought you’d seen enough Pop Art to last a lifetime, this selection proves otherwise. It reveals Lichtenstein honing his indelible yet impersonal style. And ultimately only an ogre would deny that Lichtenstein’s portrayals in some way glorify the American woman by giving innocuous images of her generic concocted self and her roiling emotions such blazing formal power.

“Girl in Mirror” (1964) (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

After all, as Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist’s widow, remarks in an interview in the show’s catalog, “Roy adored women.” And the anonymity of his subjects has exceptions. The smiling woman in “Sound of Music” is clearly Julie Andrews about to burst into song — although her cheer is undercut by the sharp black shadow that divides her face into areas of red and blue, not unlike the stripe of green in Matisse’s Fauve portrait of his wife in a hat.

“Sound of Music” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

These paintings are themselves bursts, hot flashes of composition, America, humor and color galvanized and made one by pictorial intelligence.

“Happy Tears” (1964) (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

Black on white balloons of speech or thought (or music) have a complex visual and cognitive role. The paintings that lack them can seem too mute, but, then, stillness is their point.

In “Blonde Waiting,” you feel the seconds tick against the silence as a woman with an Angie Dickinsonesque mop of yellow hair intently watches a yellow alarm clock beside a yellow bedstead, wondering just how late Mr. Right is going to be.

“Blonde Waiting” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

The silence turns film noir in “Little Aloha,” where the main colors are black and dark blue and one of Lichtenstein’s few nonblondes casts a come-hither look from the shadows.

“Little Aloha” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

White is a crucial element in these works, visible in highlights, like the woman’s tears of happiness in “Kiss V.”

But mainly white is filtered through the scrims of Ben-Day dots. Lichtenstein’s cultivation and manipulation of the dot pattern is one of the show’s main subtexts.

“Kiss V” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

In the earliest works here — “Forget It! Forget Me!,” “Little Aloha” and even the classic “Masterpiece” — the dots are faint and uneven, not quite pulling their weight. But they quickly gain size and substance and diversify. For example, women’s lips are often rendered not in solid red but in Ben-Day stars, stripes or little bow-tie shapes that stand out from the Ben-Day dots of the faces.

“Masterpiece” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

The Ben-Day dots allow Lichtenstein’s painting to look both more and less artificial. They signify mechanical reproduction, but they also add suggestions of light and reflection, shifting colors and variations in touch. The reflections would eventually lead to Lichtenstein’s many portrayals of mirrors, but first they seem to have spawned ceramic sculptures and works in porcelain enamel on steel, a small selection of which is included in the Gagosian show.

On their shiny surfaces, fake reflections and shadows — like the aggressive, tattoolike scattering of Ben-Day dots on “Head With Red Shadow” — compete with real ones.

“Head With Red Shadow” (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

This show makes especially clear how Lichtenstein’s work functions as a kind of primer in looking at and understanding the grand fiction of painting: the thought it requires, its mechanics, its final simplicity and strangeness. These great paintings convey all this in a flash of pleasure, compounded by the thrill of understanding.

“Girl at Piano” (1963) (Photo: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery)

“Roy Lichtenstein: Girls” continues through June 28 at the Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, near 77th Street, (212) 744-2313, gagosian.com.

Lire "The Painter Who Adored Women" par Roberta Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/arts/design/11roy.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin