Roy Lichtenstein transformed Pop art from a style to a full-blown artistic movement. “Pop Art looks out into the world,” he said. “It doesn’t look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.” Detractors refused to understand and called his work vain and vulgar. In 1964, an article in Life magazine pointedly asked, “Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?” Lichtenstein began his career drawing portraits of jazz musicians. As he began to experiment with Pop Impressionism, he appropriated cartoon and comic-book images as well as their Ben Day-dot printing technique—his signature. Lichtenstein’s work exploded in popularity. The Kunstmuseum Basel brings together over 50 works of his linocuts, lithographs, silkscreens, and more. —Maggie Turner