Roy Lichtenstein
Look Mickey, 1961
Oil on canvas, 121,9 x 175,3 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein
Gift of the Artist, in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversaryof the National Gallery of Art
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963
Oil on canvas, 170 x 400 cm
Tate Modern, London
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein retrospective – Centre Pompidou Through an exceptional selection of over a hundred important works, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presents the first complete retrospective of Pop Art legend Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) in France. 3 July – 4 November 2013]]>
Source: Centre Pompidou, Paris
A pop painter, Roy Lichtenstein was also eager to experiment with materials, to invent icons and pictorial codes which blurred the lines between figurative and abstract art, between pictorial and 3-dimensional objects. His work as a painter kept feeding upon his early practice of sculpture and ceramics as well as his passion for prints. A connoisseur of modern art, he was fascinated above all by Picasso, Matisse and Léger – all of whom he quotes in a number of his works. Towards the end of his life, Lichtenstein returned to the traditional genres of classical painting: the nude, still-life and landscape.
This exhibition not only transcends Pop Art, it also delves beyond the medium of painting, as from an early stage Lichtenstein produced a regular and prolific body of printed work and also displayed an ongoing interest in sculpture. By working on all three simultaneously, each constantly feeding the others, Lichtenstein was striving to attain “the hardest kind of archetype”.
The chronological and thematic approach of this exhibition underlines how Lichtenstein ventured far beyond Pop Art, his new slant on avant-garde movements ranking him as the first postmodern artist. The retrospective is divided in 10 rooms: “Pop Art looks out into the world”, “The aggression of commercial art”, “What I do is form”, “Highly-charged material in a removed style”, “The brushstroke, the depiction of a grand gesture”, “Art as subject matter”, “Painting as an object”, “A kind of feeling about Matisse”, “Nudes: the separation between reality and artistic convention”, and “A printed version of Zen”.
Highlights of the exhibition include “Whaam!” (1963, Tate Modern) -arguably Lichtenstein’s most famous work-, “Look Mickey” (1961, National Gallery of Art, Washington) and “Drowning Girl” (1963, The Museum of Modern Art, New York).
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Chicago presents ‘Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective’ (exhibition, 2012)
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