Roy Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York opened on February 10, 1962 and ran through March 3. The show included works such as Look Mickey, Blam, Engagement Ring and The Refrigerator, placing comic-book imagery, speech balloons and Ben-Day-dot effects in the arena of high modernist painting. Sources describe the exhibition as sold out before opening, a sign of the rapid market and critical traction Pop art was gaining in New York. Look Mickey in particular became a hinge work between Lichtenstein's abstract-expressionist training and his mature Pop vocabulary, using mass-culture sources to test ideas about reproduction, authorship and the museum.
The show helped establish Lichtenstein as a central figure in American Pop art.
