Comic strips have been a source of inspiration to both European and American artists. Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol assimilated the colors, graphics, and characters of comic strips and cartoons. Popeye, a 1982 collage by Elizabeth Murray, isolates and embellishes the popular cartoon character's bulging biceps, creating an abstract composition that is both elegant and playfully contentious. Using an entire gallery wall as his canvas, Simmons borrows individual motifs from film animation, abstracting them and rendering them in chalk on an enormous scale. Boom depicts the clouds and jagged lines that represent a cartoon explosion.
Dust clouds made from clapping blackboard erasers against the gallery wall add to the experience.