In the Drowning Girl the water is [...] Art Nouveau, but it can also be seen as [a reference to the artist] Hokusai. *  I don't do it because it is another reference. Cartooning itself resembles other periods in art — perhaps unknowingly...I saw [the resemblance] and then I pushed it a little further until it was a reference that most people will get. I don't think it is terribly significant, but it is a way of crystallizing the style by exaggeration. #

*Katsushika Hokusai (Japan, 1760-1849), best known in the West for his woodblock prints, such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

#Excerpted from John Coplans, "Talking with Roy Lichtenstein," Artforum 5, no. 9 (May 1967); reprinted in Coplans, ed., Roy Lichtenstein (New York: Praeger, 1972), p. 91.