( harpsichord music ) man: with the advantages of the example and instruction

which you could have in europe you would be a valuable acquisition to the art and one of theirst painters in e world, provided you could receive these aids before it is too late in life, and before your manner and taste were corrupted or fixed by working in your little way at boston. narrator: an impressive letter to a young painter and from the distinguished sir joshua reynolds. could he be right? ( harpsichord continues ) john singleton copley loved his country, but he wanted the richer artistic influences

of the old world. besides, talk of revolution was everywhere. political contests, he felt, were neither pleasing to an artist nor advantageous to art itself. in 1774, copley left; it would make him a better painter, he thought. sad for him, sad for america: he never returned to his home. at 34, john singleton copley was already one of the best and most popular painters in the american colonies. the young american artist john trumbull said of him, "an elegant-looking man dressed in fine maroon cloth with gold buttons, this dazzling to my unpracticed eye, but his painting, the first i'd ever seen deserving the name riveted--absorbed my attention and renewed my desires to enter upon such a pursuit."

copley had more work than he could do. early in his career, he mastered the popular rococo style: rich texture of laces and lush fabrics, empty faces. but like many pre-revolutionary americans, copley could not suppress his belief in individual and personal expression. ( drumbeats ) taxation without representation: copley's father-in-law an english merchant, was importing tea to america. copley felt he could not speak out against his family nor could he defend them. seeking his artistic heritage, he sailed for europe. it wasn't long before he became part of that heritage

a forerunner in the great romantic movement. still, the longer his self-imposed exile in england, the greater his loneliness. his children were his models. the commissions continued. but his greatest masterpieces were painted while memory and imagination were fresh. ( drumbeats, lively trumpet notes )

in his isolation in england, copley worked harder to be america's first great painter. "poor america," he wrote "yet certain i am she will finally emerge from her present calamity and become a mighty empire. and it is a pleasing reflection that i shall stand amongst the first of the artists that shall have led the country to the knowledge and cultivation of the fine arts."

narrator: ...yet george catlin had a grander dream: he was an artist in search of a cause. ( native chanting ) 1824: an indian delegation on its way to washington visited philadelphia. dazzd by their colors, george catlin wrote, "after ty took the leave i was ft

to reflect. the history and customs of such a people preserved by pictorial illustration are themes worthy of the lifetime of one man. and nothing, short of the loss of my life, shall prevent me from visiting their country and becoming their historian." ( crows cawing ) 1830: catlin became the first american artist to document indian life. ( native chanting ) "clear the way;

in a sacred manner i come. the earth is mine." ( birds chirping ) some years later the artist wrote "i love a people who have always made me welcome to the best they had; who are honest without laws, who have no jails, no poorhouse. and oh, how i love a people who don't live for the love of money." they trusted catlin. he was privileged to paint rituals which no white man had ever seen before: the steam baths of the mandan;

sacred dancing; ( men chanting ) ( horse whinnying ) the sacrifice; tragedy. ( fire crackling )

to promote the indian cause, catlin dreamed of seeing his paintings in a national museum. finding neither support nor recognition in america catlin took s family several indians, and his collection to europe. ( wind howling ) despite the great success of the indian exhibits the european tour brought catlin great misfortune. burdened with debts and ill health he sold his collection for pennies. resilient, bold, and determined

catlin returned to the life he most cherished: painting the indians of the americas. "i take an incredible pleasure in roaming through nature's trackless wild, and selecting my models where i am free and unshackled by the killing restraints of society." ( native man chanting )

( piano music ) narrator: although she lived most of her adult life in france, mary cassatt was steadfastly american. she painted the world she knew best, a world of quiet elegance and feminine tradition. she painted her subjects boldly and truthfully with remarkable discipline and intelligence.

in the 1870s mary cassatt discovered the work of edgar degas. she later wrote, "it changed my life. i saw art then as i wanted to see it." she painted her subjects honestly, as they were. the beauty of her finest work combines mastery of the human figure with superb composition.

her pictures were tightly structured composed almost abstractly. cassatt painted fields of color, patterns on an incasingly flattened picture plane.

somberiano music ) her study of japanese woodcuts inspired a series of etchings. in them, she found the sureness of line which she had worked so long to acquire.

her themes were agile; yet her energy and force are felt in the brilliant play of her colors and the dynamic precision of her design. mary cassatt was a master. her vibrant works resound with life.

( banjo music ) sasman: those who wish for a leness at a reasonable price areinvited to calsoon. persons wishin' a flat picture can have a likeness without shade or shadow at 1/4 price. narrator: william prior was but one of many self-appointed painters to the new republic.

some, like him, were prosperous and skilled-- painters by profession following the ancient tradition of the limner. others were just men and women who could turn a capable hand to many different tasks: village artisans who were also farmers, housewives schoolteachers, carpenters jacks-of-all-trade; or itinerants-- travelers infected with the restless exuberant spirit of early america.

they would paint for lodging and a meal. many remain unknown. all were academically untrained but their eyes were sharp. james bard spent a lifetime painting steamboats in new york. shipbuilders admired his accuracy claiming they could lay down the lines of a vessel from one of his paintings. ( lively banjo music ) in 1837, a visitor to america was struck by the manner in which the imaginative talent of the people had thrown ielf forth into painting. the country seemed to swarm with painters, and they left a pictorial diary of our past:

( choppy banjo music )

salesman: side views and profiles of children at reduced prices. one hour sittin', $2.92 includin' frame and glass. fancy portraits includin' pets and other details, $25.00. narrator: ralph waldo emerson expressed the spirit of many of these naive painters when he wrote "i embrace the common; i explore and sit at the feet of the familiar.

give me insight into today and you may have the aique and future worlds." still others, poets and painters alike saw visions of a future world in america. "i see a thousand kingdoms raised, cities and men numerous as sand upon the ocean shore. the ohio then shall glide by many a town of note, and where the mississippi stamy forest shaded now runs weeping on, cities shall grow, and states not less in fame than greece and rome."

( music )

lichtenstein: when you look at picasso's lithograph series of "bull getting abstract," it looks like an art lesson. you don't need lessons, really in how to make it unrealistic. it really doesn't give you useful information. it gives you different takes on the same subject.

there's a certain point of view about the composition about the humor, about the difference between it and reality-- all of these things are done from the same viewpoint but starting with different subjects they come out to be different things. it's really more that i'm doing this from the preceding one. it's like taking the theme of the one in front of it and using it but changing it a bit and making it less realistic. i worked on these for a month or so before i came out, just sketching and getting a vague idea what i was going to do so that i would have some preparation so that i knew that it would actually come off. but this one i started with no preliminary drawing i just started putting things on it. i wanted a very, sort of, off-center,

nonsymmetrical kind of abstraction. i didn't want to destroy the bull in doing it-- that besides whatever else i was doing it had to look like a bull. i knew i wanted to do it as a print and i talked with ken. i may start with a collage then he'll do a lithograph from the collage and then i'll work on top of that thing and change it some more. but the suggestions about how it can be printed are made by ken and many times it results in something it wouldn't have ordinarily.

i'm just looking for efficient ways where the image will have the clarity that i want in it-- the quality of finish, of color, of matte, feeling. i seem to have finally wound up with a fairly limited set of ways of printing, but it's all been through experimentation. ( spanish guitar ) ( jazzy saxophone music ) these are drawings for prints. this little fellow here [is] called "the scream"; ( baby screams ) through the reflection you can see wonder woman;

a pilot with a view of outside the cockpit. natural brushstrokes and cartoon brushstrokes-- these have frames drawn on them. it talks about the painting and the way it's presented. i did the brushstroke on mylar-- a light one, a medium one, and a dark one. tyler: if we use that as the main one... it shouldn't be the main one. if you want me to do a main one, i'll do it differently. lichtenstein ( voiceover ): they print all three lithographically and in slightly different colors and it looks like one thing that modulates.

( tool buzzing ) i like the woodcut because no matter what you do, you get imperfections. it gives it a certain character. i want to feel that i'm reinforcing the position of the line that i'm putting on, not that i'm simply doing it over again. tyler ( voiceover ): no matter what techniques roy employs in a print his imagery remains still roy lichtenstein very strong, very clear. and technique doesn't seem to move it or destroy it or alter it in any way.

lichtenstein ( voiceover ): i try to make the work look graphic, and i want it to be simple- looking and direct. these are three different levels. yeah, uh-huh, i'd have to see them up or something. what happens is, you think you've got it right until you put the black on it, everything around it. so what we're experiencing now is this looking good until we put black on it. lichtenstein: i think this is really my light blue as i remember, and this is really a light green. but i'll get you the actual samples. tyler: but you see, it really is light green and light blue in that. let me just check this light yellow. lichtenstein ( voiceover ): it's an excuse, in a way to do almost anything, since the reflections can have almost any color and any kind of texture.

it seems like an interesting way of giving me a lot of material to play with. but before you do that--just kidding! ( chuckling ) do we want to mess with these a little bit? tyler ( voiceover ): that sort of nitpicking is roy's style of working. he's got a certain level of performance that he expects every one of his works to go through. and he has the ability and tenacity to sit there and keep correcting. the red seems a little although i like the red. this is the fit with the silver and we've trimmed twice now. but this cast is wrong. tyler ( voiceover ): he's one of the hardest-working artists. this man just works every day-- has always worked every day

has never not worked every day. ( sultry jazz music )

( muffled comments )

we had a double dot, but they're graded double dots which i never did. i think it's a little dense i think we'll just move the screen over a little bit when we do it again. i love that-- it really changes. that would be very subtle and very beautiful, i think. we can certainly try it and then do it both ways. yeah, this is wonderful, the blue, but in some of the papers we have, it's very dull. in this case, the reds are really dull. yeah, in that case the red is very dull. and we're dull here. you're in the ballpark. we're still dull. the nice part about these inks is we don't have to load them with a lot of working properties like varnishes and softeners and what have you, so we're not altering the color that much. ( paper rippling )

( faint tapping ) ( piano music )

( machine humming )

( muffled comments ) lips okay? yeah, both of them. it curves more than the one in there. this seems a little flat to me here. i think it's okay. all right, that curve's okay? yeah mm-hmm. alright, i think we can make a plate.

( machine humming ) this is a litho plate, which is really just what we're using to show you the image on paper. of course, once you approve it then we'll make the relief plate. ( indistinct comments ) we will have more dots, so we can get another row of dots in here,

if you wanted. that's okay. it's okay? so extend here? yeah. these four shapes, do you want these to be ellipses? no, let them be the way they are. as crudely as that? crude? "as sensitive" is the word. as designed. as sensitive. as sensitive as that, right. i think the blue is definitely... the best blue we ever had. yeah, it's a very good blue, great yellow. so it takes about three minutes apiece to make these, right? uh, yeah, plus about 30 hours for color. so it's 30 hours plus three minutes. man: there are 20+ colors in that whole image and we were able to do it in four runs. it's like rolling individual parts of a woodcut. yeah, it is a lot like that. tyler: we'll start out with that one there. yeah, this should sort of make a perfect

star of some sort. it will on two columns. over here we're going to have perfect stars, because this is a double. that's right yeah. ( muffled comments ) i think with that little spot of white in it, it'll probably look fine the way it is. john's going to keep playing with it so we can figure out a way of doing it. aren't you, john? yes. ( upbeat jazz music )

( machine whirring )