COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0000625
image_record_id
aahi0000625
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
Still Life with Net, Rope and Pulley
Image Title:
full view
Work Dates (display):
1972
Work Dates type:
creation
Work Creator (display):
Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923-1997)
Work Creator gender:
male
work_creator_or_agent_gender
male
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
(b New York, 28 Oct 1923; d New York, 29 Sept 1997). American painter, sculptor, printmaker and decorative artist. His paintings based on the motifs and procedures of comic strips and advertisements made him one of the central figures of American Pop art. He first studied under Reginald Marsh in a summer course at the Art Students League, New York, in 1939, continuing from 1940 to 1943 at Ohio State University in Columbus. He was particularly influenced by the teaching of Hoyt L. Sherman, a late Fauvist painter, designer and architect who introduced his students to modernism in a period dominated by American Scene painting. Sherman was interested in the psychology of perception and problems of pictorial representation. In his teaching he insisted that the act of representation should be separated from everyday experience and considered solely for its formal qualities, as an 'abstraction'. After military service in Europe in World War II Lichtenstein returned to Columbus in 1946, completing his Master of Fine Arts in 1949. The subject-matter of his early works became apparent c. 194950. Drawing on the biomorphic abstraction and heroic themes of Abstract Expressionism, Lichtenstein painted such subjects as anthropomorphic plants, beautiful women in gardens, and wild animals, as well as romantic medieval subjects of knights and battles. All this was painted with a subtle tongue-in-cheek irony, and stylistically oriented towards such European modernists as Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky and Miró. In 1951 Lichtenstein devised his first major theme: American history and the conquest of the 'Wild West' as in Inside Fort Laramie (1955; priv. col., see Alloway, p. 14). He borrowed subjects treated by 19th-century artists, first using such well-known models as Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851; New York, Met.) and early paintings of American Indians by artists such as Carl Wimar and Carl Bodmer, and then turning to anonymous illustrations. The source material on which he based his pictures was selected for its wealth of authentic detail and for its dependence on pictorial conventions; another critical factor was that he was working not from original works but from reproductions. He adopted a series of different artistic languages, first approximating Picasso's style of the 1940s, in 1956 turning to a more ornamental idiom and then to Rococo motifs, and finally turning to abstraction in 1958 in a late variation of Action painting. Lichtenstein taught from 1946 to 1951 at Ohio State University, then from 1957 at the State University of New York at Oswego, and from 1960 to 1963 at Douglass College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, where he met Allan Kaprow and other artists associated with Happenings (see Performance art). These contacts encouraged his interest in cartoon imagery, stemming initially from small-scale 19th-century illustrations and from an anthropomorphic treatment of animals in the work of such modern artists as Miró. Lichtenstein recognized that devices favoured by cartoonists were very similar to those employed by such painters as Picasso and Klee, whom he had studied so intensively. In 1961 Lichtenstein made the final break with his early work. Whereas he had previously translated his source materials into personal variants of Cubism or Constructivism, he now appropriated from comic strips not only the subject-matter but also the style. In these Pop paintings he favoured highly simplified colour schemes and procedures that mimicked commercial printing techniques, representing tonal variations with patterns of coloured circles that imitated the half-tone screens of Ben Day dots used in newspaper printing, and surrounding these with black outlines similar to those used to conceal imperfections in cheap newsprint. He applied these techniques to paintings based on small advertisements, as in Spray (1962; Stuttgart, Staatsgal.); war comics, for example Whaam! (1963; London, Tate) or As I Opened Fire (1964; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.); and comic strips on themes of love and romance, such as Hopeless (1963; Basle, Kstmus.; see fig.) or We Rose up Slowly (1964; Frankfurt am Main, Mus. Mod. Kst). Having established this apparently anonymous style as, paradoxically, his personal style, Lichtenstein began to apply it also to paintings based on familiar works by other artists. Man with Folded Arms (1962; Milan, G. Panza di Biumo priv. col.) was based on a diagram found in a book on Cézanne's composition, while Femme au chapeau (1962; Meriden, CT, B. Tremaine priv. col.) and Non-objective I (1964; Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.) were pastiches, rather than direct copies, after Picasso and Mondrian respectively. The essence of Lichtenstein's procedure lay in the enlargement and unification of his source material, whether its original purpose was to tell a story or sell a consumer product, on the basis of strict artistic principles. This involved a strengthening of the formal aspects of the composition, a stylization of the motif and a 'freezing' of both emotion and action. At its most extreme, for example in Tension (1964; Paris, M. Boulois priv. col.), the process of formalization, combined with one's awareness that the motif is only a segment of a larger narrative, transforms the image into a virtual abstraction. By such means Lichtenstein emphasized that comic strips and advertisements were not realist, as is often assumed, but highly artificial pictures that convey their messages with a sparing use of pictorial conventions. A constant if restrained irony and a gentle sense of humour contribute just as much to the cheerful lightness of Lichtenstein's work as the balanced, completely harmonious composition. By enlarging his source material, Lichtenstein emphasized the banality and emptiness of his motifs as an equivalent to the impersonal, mechanized style of drawing. This led to speculation as to his intended criticism of modern industrial America. The formalization and irony could be taken to support such a theory, but Lichtenstein ultimately would appear to accept the environment as revealed by his reference material as part of American capitalist industrial culture. In 1962, the year in which he held his first one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli gallery, New York, Lichtenstein made his first Pop prints, such as Foot and Hand (1962; see Waldman, 1969, p. 216), in which the association with comic books was strengthened by his choice of a technique generally used for commercial printing: offset lithography. In 1964 he made the first of his screen prints, Sandwich and Soda (see Waldman, 1969, p. 218), exploiting the inherent impersonality of the medium still further in works printed on synthetic materials, as in Seascape (1965; see Waldman, 1969, p. 222). The subtelty and technical inventiveness of his work as a printmaker, combined with his exquisite draughtsmanship, contributed greatly to his growing reputation. The principle that Lichtenstein had created of basing each painting on a specific source was broken in 1964 with a series of imaginary landscapes. These were followed by paintings such as Yellow and Green Brushstrokes (1966; Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.), which parodied the broad brushwork of Abstract Expressionism in his usual comic-strip style. In such works Lichtenstein began to devise his own compositions, sometimes taking specific motifs from his own or other artists' work as found objects or quotations. His pastiches of the brushstrokes of Action painting gave way in the later 1960s to paintings and sculptures based on the 'rational' geometry of Art Deco, such as the Modular series of canvases, and in the 1970s to parodies of such 20th-century styles as Cubism, Purism, Futurism, Surrealism and Expressionism, always processed into the same dispassionate comic-strip style. Over the years his palette became richer and more varied, and in addition to the dots he incorporated other textures such as imitation wood-graining and cross-hatching. Lichtenstein also periodically produced groups of sculptures. Some of the earliest of these were wood sculptures from pieces of furniture in the early 1950s; later followed glazed ceramics, including female busts such as Blonde (1965; Cologne, Mus. Ludwig) and a 1965 series, Ceramic Sculptures, which consisted of stacked cups and saucers (see 1977 exh. cat., pp. 726). These were followed by the Modern Sculpture series of 19678 (see Alloway, pp. 589), which made reference to motifs from Art Deco architecture. In his painted bronzes of the mid-1970s (see Cowart, pp. 14959) Lichtenstein made punning use of linear devices from his paintings to produce three-dimensional but flat-looking representations of familiar objects. In the late 1970s and during the 1980s, Lichtenstein received major commissions for works in public places: the sculptures Mermaid (6.4×7.2×3.4 m, 1979; Miami Beach, FL, Theat. Perf. A.) and Brushstrokes in Flight (1984; Columbus, OH, Port Columbus Int. Airport), and the five-storey high Mural with Blue Brushstrokes (1986; New York, Equitable Cent.). The theme basic to all of Lichtenstein's work was succinctly stated in his Mirrors series of 197072, such as the oval Mirror No. 2 (Philadelphia, PA, Kardon priv. col., see Alloway, p. 67), which explicitly questioned the assumption that the function of representational art was to reflect reality. Throughout his work in all media, he continued to affirm that the arrangement of forms and colours obeyed pictorial rules independent of the subject portrayed. The succession of styles alluded to in his art, rather than being taken for granted as a self-perpetuating system, thus becomes an instrument for understanding art as the expression of an ideal state. (Grove Art Online accessed 2007-10-23)
Work Style Period:
20th century
work_styleperiod
20th century
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
Pop
work_styleperiod
Pop
Work Style Period
false
Work Subject:
wood (plant material)
subject
wood (plant material)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
starfishes
subject
starfishes
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
pulleys
subject
pulleys
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
ropes
subject
ropes
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
fishing nets
subject
fishing nets
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
Ben Day dots
subject
Ben Day dots
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
windows
subject
windows
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
birds
subject
birds
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
oceans
subject
oceans
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
trees
subject
trees
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
bottles
subject
bottles
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
still lifes
subject
still lifes
Work Subject
false
Work Worktype:
oil paintings
work_type
oil paintings
Work Worktype
false
Work Worktype:
paintings (visual works)
work_type
paintings (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
paintings
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
paintings
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
oil, magna on canvas
Work Measurements (display):
152 cm (H) x 243.5 cm (W)
Work Inscription (display):
signed, dated
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Museum Ludwig
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Repository or Site) refid:
ML 1243
Work Location (Repository or Site) refid type:
accession
Work Location (Geographic) name:
Cologne, Germany
Image Rights (display):
© Ronald Wiedenhoeft. Licensed for educational use via Scholars Resource: Saskia, Ltd.
Image Rights license agreement:
SASKIA, LTD.: WHO CAN USE THIS SOFTWARE: (a) Licensee, including faculty, staff and currently enrolled students may use the Licensed Software to display and or print the corresponding graphic images without limitation for teaching and research purposes at the defined Sites, or at remote locations having electronic access to your Site(s). (b) This license include permission to use the Licensed Software on a multi-user network at the defined Site, and to permit remote access to a computer/server located at your Site. Simultaneous display in multiple locations at or connected to the Site is also permitted. (c) Licensee agrees to employ reasonable security measures designed to limit access to your faculty, staff and currently enrolled students. PROHIBITED USES AND LIMITATIONS: (a) Saskia hereby reserves all rights not expressly granted herein. (b) the License Software may not be used for preparaiton of any publication, scholarly or otherwise; or for any purpose other than teaching or research. Publication of an image from the Licensed Software requires a separate license from Saskia. (c) Licensee agrees not to resell, lease, transfer, sub-license or otherwise distribute a copy of the Licensed Software, or any image taken from the Licensed Software, in whole or in part. (d) Licensee also agrees not to modify, corrupt or alter any digital image graphic content or "digital watermark" or the like in the software provided by Saskia under this Agreement. (e) Licensee agrees not to remove, alter, cover or distort Saskia's copyright notice, trademark, or other proprietary rights notice placed by Saskia in the Licensed Software itself, or in the associated packaging, media or documentation. (f) And Licensee agrees to notify users of the Licensed Software, in writing or by sign-on screen display, of their obligations under this Agreement and solicit their cooperation and compliance with such obligations.
Work Rights (display):
© Roy Lichtenstein
Terms of Agreement and Conditions of Use:
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Holding Institution:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Center
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see