 This was painted at the apex of Lichtenstein 's use of enlarged dots , cropping and magnification of the original source . Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum curator Diane Waldman notes that Lichtenstein made Drowning Girl a cornerstone of his career because of " his extraordinary sense of organization , his ability to use a sweeping curve and manipulate it into an <unk> pattern " . According to The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists , the work is " a mix of cliché , melodrama , pathos , and absurdity ... " The result is described by art scholar Jonathan Fineberg as " a remarkably impassive style " . The image is typical of Lichtenstein 's depiction of comic subjects responding to a situation in a clichéd manner . 
